• Mission Statement
• Territory Map
• History
• Community Involvement
• Employment Opportunities

When it comes to business leadership, customer service and community support, Pepin Distributing Company sets the industry standard. Since incorporating the company in 1963 in Gainesville, Florida, the Pepin family has built a beverage empire that has experienced constant growth, with annual sales climbing to more than $157 million.

Pepin Distributing has been honored as one of the nation’s top distributors of Anheuser-Busch products and commands nearly 70 percent of the beer market in Hillsborough and Pasco counties.

Business has been good to the Pepin family over the years and the company, in turn, has been good to the Tampa Bay community. The family provided seed money to help establish Pepin-Rood Stadium, the home of athletics at the University of Tampa. A $1 million donation led to the development of Pepin Heart & Vascular Institute at University Community Hospital in Tampa. More recently, the family helped establish the Pepin Academy, a Tampa school for teenagers with learning disabilities.

Pepin Distributing is a national leader in promoting alcohol abuse prevention programs through the many bars, restaurants and other establishments that it services. The company has promoted recycling efforts that have resulted in major contributions to the MacDonald Training Center for the handicapped and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The list of philanthropic efforts that the company is involved in is extensive.

Art Pepin, the company’s late founder, and his son Tom Pepin, the company’s president and CEO, built the company on a simple philosophy: “Making friends is our business.” It’s a guiding principle that led them on a rewarding journey, both as businessmen and as community leaders.

Art Pepin: From New England to Tampa

Art Pepin was the son of a railroad worker and one of a family of 10. He was big and athletic, playing football, baseball and hockey at Middlebury College in Vermont until World War II interrupted his education. When war broke out, Art joined the U.S. Marines, serving from 1942 to 1946. After the war, he returned to Middlebury to finish his education and then re-enlisted during the Korean Crisis, serving again from 1949 to 1952.

Art began his beer distributing business in New England, making deliveries from the back of his station wagon. It was tough work but his business quickly grew. By 1960, he was heading an Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Gainesville, where his company held 98 percent of the draught beer market in its territory.

Art’s success attracted the attention of brewery magnate August Busch Jr., and the two quickly became friends. In 1967, Busch rewarded Art for his hard work by awarding him the distributorship in the Tampa Bay area.

In 1986, Art made history by becoming the world’s oldest heart transplant recipient at 65. “Art Pepin didn’t get a second life because of the heart,” Tom Pepin said, “the heart got a second life because of Art Pepin.”

The new heart enabled Art to carry on his life’s work for another 14 years, giving and caring and making friends all along the way. When Art passed away in June 2000, Monsignor Laurence Higgins told well-wishers that even in the days leading up to his death, Art “thought not of himself but of the other person.”

“I pray to God I can be like that,” Higgins added. “It tells me a lot about his character.”

Tom Pepin: Building on a father’s dream

Like his Dad, Tom attended Middlebury College. Soon after graduation in 1975, he came home to launch his career at Pepin Distributing. He rose quickly through the ranks, first working as a sales representative and later as an assistant sales manager.

By 1982, Art decided that Tom was ready to make the big jump and transferred leadership of the company to his son. Tom became president of Pepin Distributing and four years later assumed the positions of Chairman of the Board and CEO.

Tom has presided over an era of considerable growth at Pepin Distributing. When the company first arrived in Tampa, it sold 1.5 million cases of beer and 33,000 half barrels of draught in a year. Two decades later, annual sales exceed nine million cases and 150,000 half barrels. The company, which now employs about 250 people, recently sold 56,000 cases of beer in a single day - a good year’s sales when Art first started.

Pepin Distributing Company is located at a sprawling complex in East Tampa that includes more than 100,000 square feet of climate-controlled warehouse space. The complex has a complete maintenance facility for company vehicles, a fully equipped fitness center and a personal enrichment library for employees. “It’s a basic investment in their well-being,” Tom said.

The focal point of the Pepin headquarters is a comfortable, cypress-paneled meeting room adorned with Pepin family hunting and fishing trophies. The room is available for community functions and provides guests with a place to relax. As Art once noted, “The name of the game is hospitality.”

A Changing Business

Under Tom Pepin’s leadership, a new style of customer service has emerged, focusing on helping retailers manage their entire beverage inventory.

“We have evolved our company from a delivery/service organization into a sales/marketing and information-based service company,” Tom said. “We intend to continue to maximize our use of all available technologies, systems and products to further differentiate ourselves from the competition.”

The variety of products offered by the company is constantly changing, with light, dry, nonalcoholic, ice brews and malternative giving customers more choices than ever. In addition, Pepin now distributes the products of Modelo brewery, which includes the Corona family, Red Hook Brewery Brands and the Kirin family of beers. In all Pepin carries more than 30 brands, up from three when the company started.

In 2002 Pepin Distributing Company purchased the Persimmon Hill property at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and 56th Street in unincorporated Hillsborough County. The site encompasses 36 _ acres and the new facility will be 241,000 square feet. The new complex will be able will be able to house 20 million cases of beer. In a press conference Tom Pepin said Pepin Distributing Company accounts for 70% of the Hillsborough and Pasco County beer market and with the continuing population growth its time for us to expand.

SIGNIFICANT PEPIN MILESTONES