USA: Cobra Beer targets the high-end market with champagne-style-brewed Krait Prestige

Hoshang Chenoy, a Briton of Indian heritage, is attempting to tackle the high-end booze market stateside with Krait Prestige, a lager that is brewed in the traditional method of French Champagne, The New York Sun published November 14. But in this case, it's beer that is fermented a second time by injecting yeast and sugar to create carbonation.

The market share of high end brews that Mr. Chenoy hopes to conquer is about 3% of the entire beer industry, but is experiencing double-digit growth, the sales manager at high-end distributor Union Beer, Robert Hodson, said.

Mr. Chenoy has been handed the high responsibility of making Cobra Beer a success in America from his mentor and cousin, Lord Karan F. Bilimoria. Mr. Bilimoria’s story of ascendancy is a London version of the American Dream. Born in India, he moved to England for his education at 19 and, fulfilling the dream of any college student fixated with beer, started the Cobra Beer Company in 1990 while gravely in debt. Over the last decade, Mr. Bilimoria built the business into a multicontinent conglomerate with a current valuation of some 80 million pounds (by his estimates, of course).

"He became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Britain during a time, and in a place, where it was almost impossible," Mr. Chenoy said.

Over the last few years Mr. Bilimoria has racked up a slew of prestigious awards and honors in England, including the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts' Prince Albert Medal in 2004. He also was awarded London's entrepreneur of the year in 2003 and its businessman of the year in 2004. In May of this year he became a lord.

So, if Mr. Chenoy hopes to match the success of his teacher in New York City, a town filled with more entrepreneurs than lords, he will have his hands full. New Yorkers are a discerning bunch when it comes to premium beers.

The champagne-style beer that is brewed and bottled at the Rodenbach Brewery in Belgium has already made successful inroads into New York City restaurants and clubs, and is retailing at Whole Foods and Gristedes, Mr. Chenoy said. However, it has yet to get picked up by a major distributor in the city.

Krait Prestige, on the other hand, is sold by the liquor giant Southern Distributors in Las Vegas, in what Mr. Chenoy called, in an inexorably British manner, "quite a coup."

Mr. Chenoy, who served for two years as Mr Bilimoria's assistant, said in an interview with the Sun November 13th that he is convinced that Krait Prestige will become a leader in the American high-end liquor market. "We're going to use the same formula of hard work and intelligent decision making that worked in England," he said.

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