Tecate

Recently we were invited to go down to Mexico to tour the Tecate plant. It was to be an article in our magazine and looked kind of interesting on paper. Anyways, we thought we could have a pretty fun adventure and we drove down at the crack of dawn to east San Diego where we would board a train for a nice tour. The train has cheap tickets and is fairly rustic.

We settled in and took in the views, which by the way, aren't exactly that nice once you leave the 'ol US of A behind. I don't think anyone down there had any idea about the concept of recycling or even something as simple as a trash can. Anyways, the train chugs along much like a bay cruise and right through the heart of the desert. We decided to post up in a car that had the side door open with only a chain to keep us from going further. It was a nice day, not too hot and we enjoyed a few cold ones. As we approached the factory with anticipation, we noticed a big group of people who we had traveled with on the train had the same idea. I did notice, this wasn't exactly a fun, let's get down and party kind of crowd, instead it resembled more of an AARP convention, with hipsacks, Dockers, and  ends up playing bingo rather than tying one on and ringing the bell. After getting off the train we were corralled like cows and lead to something "special."

Like a bad "Love Boat" rerun, we were put in front of a pretty cheesy Mexican "authentic" dancing squad (let the golf clap begin). Of course this was done below huge Tecate banners and we were handed one "Free Sample" beer. If we'd like to have round two, we were going to have to shell out our own hard earned dough. That was going to be pretty much required when you are sitting in plastic chairs for about 2 hours.

Shortly after, we were whisked in to a theater where we were shown a movie by the folks at Tecate. In reality, it was a bad marketing scheme with 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Oh, and by the way, no cameras allowed in the plant. We felt as important as a fly on the wall. Ok, maybe that's a stretch, since they did appoint us a PR representative to hand us a photo CD with pre-approved images for our use. Awesome.

Not long after, we tried to slip out the back without creating a PR nightmare for our magazine (well we were trying to do a story on the factory with hopes that the company might increase their advertising budget for us) and find a local tavern to enjoy a bit more of the local scene. Well the Tecate plant is huge and one of the only reasons why the town exists. In fact, they make a lot of beers; Tecate, Sol, Bohemia, Modelo, etc., along with soda like Pepsi. If you think all those beers are made by some tiny, cool garage type operation, with some guy in the background who happens to be the second most interesting person on the planet, you'd be way off. The plant stretches for as far as the eye can see, and a huge part of the Mexican economy. You are more likely to see a forklift or a huge bottling machine than anything else. You think Anheuser-Busch is big, this thing may just rival it, in fact its just part of a huge network of distribution and manufacturing worldwide. Only this company isn't exactly used to the big marketing budgets of the American breweries and have about as much tact as Spicoli. So other than some quickly thrown up tourists shops in town, there wasn't much to see or do.

Oh well, we did make the best of it and really didn't have too many options. After all, the train conveniently left just shortly after the tour of the plant, and if we decided to skip out and enjoy more of the town, we were stuck for another 24 hours. Wow, chalk that one off the list of things to do.