WICHITA, Kansas, October 7, 2008 – While economic times are tough, it seems the beer business keeps booming. In fact, it has for the Wichita company House of Schwan.

Barry Schwan’s family moved to Wichita in 1960 with a tremendous opportunity to own an Anheuser Busch distributorship.

“We're a St. Louis based family that got transplanted to Wichita,” Barry said.

It’s virtually impossible to get into the game now unless you already have a foot in the door. So, when Barry had the chance to take on the family business, he jumped.

Three years ago, Barry bought out his brother’s share of the business.

Schwan and their Anheuser Busch products make up about 60 percent of Sedgwick County's market each year. That means of the 5 million cases sold here, 3 million cases, or approximately 72 million bottles of beer run through this warehouse every year. What's in your fridge?

Wine may get better with age, but beer needs to be fresh.

“If we weren't here, the product doesn't get rotated and old beer doesn't get thrown away and we throw away a tremendous amount of beer every year as it gets aged,” Barry said.

Some American beer drinkers are in an uproar over the sale of Anheuser Busch to Inbev, a Belgian liquor company.

But what will the mean for beer drinkers?

“It's going to be an American beer brewed by Americans,” Barry said. “I think that's all that people really need to care about.”

And marketing is such a huge part of Schwan’s business that Barry developed his own state-of-the-art graphics and printing department. They can contain costs and control quality of their promotional posters and signs.

The community has been good to the Schwans and Barry and his company return the favor by helping out more than 225 organizations with their philanthropic endeavors.

Barry is still in love with the business and has no plans to retire any time soon, but his daughter is already involved.

“I'm excited though that maybe we'll move into generation three,” he said.