Miami — Southern Wine & Spirits appoints Gerald Rivero to lead new national Coastal-Pacific Group.
Miami — Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc. (Southern), the nation’s leading wine and spirits distributor with operations in 35 states, has appointed of Gerald (“Gerry”) P. Rivero, Jr. as executive vice president-general manager of the company’s new, corporate Coastal-Pacific Wine & Spirits (CPWS) group. The CPWS group will represent the Diageo-Moët Hennessy portfolios in the six open states of Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana and Kentucky.
“On behalf of the senior leadership team at Southern, we have every confidence in Gerry leading this important, newly-established group,” said Wayne Chaplin, Southern’s president & chief operating officer. “Gerry has proven himself to be a great builder and leader of high-performing teams.”
Rivero started with Southern in various on- and off-premise sales roles in Southern’s Tampa operation, moved to Miami as vice president-general sales manager and then led the Coastal division as its General Manager from 2006 to 2010. In 2010, Gerry moved half-way across the country to Indiana, ramped up a green-field operation within three months and last month celebrated the Indiana division’s delivery of its one-millionth case, all in less than one year.
Art Salvi will be taking over the reins as the General Manager in Indiana upon Gerry’s transition into his CPWS role. Salvi served in Florida’s Coastal division as the vice president, chains for Florida from 2005-2010 and moved with Rivero to Indiana as the vice president-general sales manager of the Prestige selling division in 2010.
Regarding his appointment, Rivero commented, “I am honored and excited to take on this new, challenging role at Southern. Coastal-Pacific is the culmination of a collaborative Southern-Diageo-Moët Hennessy effort that will ensure Southern’s market-level Coastal and Pacific divisions establish highly-trained, world-class selling teams; financial discipline, efficiencies and data transparency; consistent execution and elevated service levels; and best-practice trade marketing and promotions. All of this will be focused on successfully achieving the goals of the leading Moët and Diageo portfolios that we are entrusted to steward.”
Coinciding with Rivero’s appointment, the CPWS will also include Lawrence Kung, vice president-commercial strategy and former vp-strategy & business development at Southern, as well as Elena Sanchez, vice president-finance and former head of finance for Diageo in the State of Florida.
These appointments are all effective September 1, 2011.