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GREENSBORO — The employees at I.H. Caffey Distributing Co. didn’t spend a lot of time crying over spilled beer.
They checked on an injured employee, relocated their computer system and began loading trucks.

The first shipments of Miller, Coors and Samuel Adams rolled away from the distribution center on West Market Street about 30 hours after a tornado hit the 130,000-square-foot building on May 8, 2008.

“I was really shocked that we could get back in business (so quickly),” said Chris Caffey, the company’s president and CEO. “It was pretty amazing.”

The storm, part of a string of twisters that hit North Carolina and Virginia that night and the next morning, caused millions of dollars in damage in western Guilford County.

Locally, it caused the most damage at Caffey, which ships nearly 5 million cases of beer annually.

The storm, which struck about 10:45 p.m., tore off parts of Caffey’s roof, collapsed a wall, and damaged trucks, causing $4.5 million in damage.

At first sight, some workers feared the building would be a total loss.

Later, officials figured the company would be out of business for two weeks.

But as the company implemented its disaster plan, which had been in place about two years, they kept shortening the time the company would be closed.

In the end, Caffey lost only one day’s sales.

The company came back so quickly because the storm destroyed very little of its stock of beer.

“We had product that we could sell,” Caffey said. “We just had to figure out how to get it out of the facility and ... into the stores.”

For two days, executives operated out of conference rooms at a nearby hotel.

They sent the company’s computers to a sister facility in Concord.

They brought in restroom trailers and portable air conditioners.

They ordered temporary lighting and generators and began loading beer onto trucks from the parking lot. That continued for more than a month.

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Bill Richardson, the company’s chief financial officer. “We gave (the employees) some pretty bizarre circumstances. The landscape was changing every day and they dealt with it.”

Suppliers diverted shipments. Competitors even offered their help.

“We were back in business so quickly we didn’t need the help,” Caffey said. “But it was refreshing to know it was available.”
By Feb. 1, repairs on the building had been completed and operations had returned to normal.

Earlier this week, the company marked the anniversary of the storm with a party. Each worker got a brick salvaged from the building inscribed with date May 8, 2008.

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com