Pros
Jack Daniel’s iconic products & brand, good pay & benefits, profitable business, expertise and craft in distilling spirits, great community involvement supporting the city of Louisville.
Cons
- Mediocre Management: Inability to meaningfully grow the company outside the core American whiskey business, specifically JD, despite operating in the spirit industry for more than 100 yrs. Management does not have the diverse experience and knowledge needed to grow a global diversified consumer driven business. Management has relied on one single formula to grow the company while adding significant portfolio concentration risk to sustain business growth into the future. - Uninspiring Marketing: The well of creativity and innovation runs pretty dry; B-F innovation approach is basically to copycat successful products with their brands. These efforts have been quite fruitful when executed with the JD brand but they have failed miserably with all the other brands. Marketing and consumer understanding processes and capabilities are limited at best. -Politics on Steroids: The place is run like a country club. There is little accountability regarding results delivered and experience & skills needed to do the job. It is more about who likes you based on who you have lunch with and whose your friends are. Average or below-average performers can do well and even thrive if well connected (many examples of those). The company is more a little-minds place rather than a right-answer-wins place.