REMEMBERING HARVEY ALLEN
By Kirsten Amann
In an industry full of big personalities, Harvey Allen was a standout, widely regarded as a man who embraced life to the fullest. With his passing this summer, the Massachusetts beverage alcohol industry lost one of its most colorful principal characters. Mr. Allen passed away peacefully on July 25th, surrounded by family and loved ones at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. While he may be gone, he has left an impression on both the industry and his family’s company, M.S. Walker, that will loom large for future generations.
BORN TO SELL
Harvey was born on February 14th, 1938, in Newton, Massachusetts, and it seems fitting that a man who was remembered in his obituary as living fully, “surrounded by family, friends, love, and laughter,” was born on Valentine’s Day. His father, the late Leo Allen, was the son-in-law of Maurice S. Walker who incorporated M.S. Walker in 1931, expanding into the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages shortly after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933. Born to Leo and his wife Ruth just five years after repeal, Harvey grew up both in and alongside the American liquor business as it embarked on a new era and the three-tier system. He would go on to have a profound impact on the business, both within and beyond his home state of Massachusetts over the course of his 86 years.
As it happens, Harvey nearly took a different career path in his youth. “He was about to play for the Red Sox as a pitcher,” remembers his eldest son, Scott Allen, General Manager for M.S. Walker. “He was training for it and about to sign up, but his father said you’re not doing that, you’re going to college,” believing his son to be better off in business than baseball. Harvey instead attended Colby College and joined his family’s company after graduating: “It was his lifelong career,” says Scott, “he was in the business for his entire life.”
From the early days of the burgeoning three-tier distribution system to today, it would be impossible to overstate the changes Harvey observed in the beverage alcohol business over his lifetime. His persona and knack for building relationships and connections never wavered: “He was always larger than life,” says Scott. “He always made an impression, he always made you feel that you were first, you were the most important when he was talking to you.” Harvey will be remembered for “his love for the business, his love for customers, always being out and about, always knowing people,” says Scott. “His goal was to always be out there, be seen and be present and always be an emissary and ambassador for M.S. Walker.” Scott recalls his father and fellow industry icons Ray Tye of United Liquors and Robert (Bob) Rubin of Ruby Wines palling around at accounts together: “Eight nights a week they would go out and they would be seen and that was their shtick,” he recalls. “They loved people, they loved to be seen, they loved to be the center of attention and meet people.” Harvey was a tried-and-true people person, something Scott cites as helping the business enormously over the years: “He put his DNA on all these accounts, that’s how people knew M.S. Walker.”
Brett Allen, Harvey’s son and the Vice President of National Business Development at M.S.Walker, says his father’s gregarious personality was tremendously impactful for developing and maintaining business with customers. “He grew up in a time before chain accounts and national accounts,” says Brett, “where relationships really dictated how much business you were going to do.” Harvey’s larger-than-life persona became both his personal brand and calling card, which Brett believes created a reputation and a name for himself and the company “that would attract them to do more business with us.” Privately, Harvey was different, remembers Brett: “When I was with him watching football or playing golf or doing other things that we had done together as father and son he was very nurturing and reserved. As I got older and I went out with him, you know, he put on a great show. He said a lot of times that we’re in the entertainment business,” Brett remembers. “In general, he was just trying to have fun and get other people to have fun with him.”
Restaurateur and nightlife impresario Seth Greenberg is among those who count Harvey as a friend for life. “We had a very close relationship and I can tell you that I loved him dearly, like I loved my dad or like you love a close relative. He was very important to me,” says Seth, whose own career has shaped nightlife and culture in Boston. The pair met when Seth was getting started in the industry: “I met him when I was like 18 or 19, when I had just started promoting parties in Boston.” Harvey needed help marketing a wine brand to a college-aged audience, so sought help from Seth, who was making a name for himself as the go-to person for such a venture in the clubs on Lansdowne Street. “Harvey was so gracious, and he had that gregarious personality, and he was a big jovial, happy man,” says Seth. “As he befriended me and I got to know him better, I realized he had this incredible community of friends that he loved and they loved him. He was a guy that loved life,” Seth remembers.
Harvey’s favorite places to see and be seen in Boston represent some of the city’s most iconic bars and restaurants: “Mistral was a favorite haunt because of his relationship with Seth,” says Brett. He was a regular at Greenberg’s legendary nightclub M80, and a frequent guest of the Lyons brothers at their clubs in the heyday of Lansdowne Street in the 1980s and 1990s. “Whether it was Spit or Mothers or hanging out at Daisy Buchanan’s with Charlie Sarkis, Jason’s, Division 16, Sonsie,” Brett recalls, Harvey had a presence at Boston’s hottest spots. Most of these locations have long since closed, but they had a notable impact on the culture of the city and what it has evolved into. They provide a snapshot of a time described as “the most glorious nightlife era in Boston since the jazz club days of the 1940s,” by BOSTON MAGAZINE in a 2009 story. Harvey was there for it.
NEVER A DULL MOMENT
Harvey’s zest for life and having a good time made him a legend in the industry, and colorful stories about his adventures abound, such as an impromptu drive into Boston during the blizzard of ‘78. “He had a snowmobile,” remembers Brett, “and he decided he would drive it right into the town to go see his friends. We lived 18 miles outside of Boston, and he drove it right down the Mass Pike.” Harvey was indeed fun-loving and fearless!
Making sure everyone was having a great time was important to Harvey. Once, on a wine education trip to New Zealand, he took an entire group of people to see Coldplay on a whim. “I think he was in his mid-sixties,” says Brett, “and most of the other people attending were there to learn, and in their twenties and thirties.” He had decades of experience and expertise in the wine business but joined the group enthusiastically. “He went to the requisite vineyards and tanks, tasted the wine, like everybody else,” says Brett. Later, when Harvey found out that Coldplay (who were on a meteoric rise to fame at the time) were playing in Auckland, “He went ahead and bought everybody tickets to go. I’m sure they already thought he was a character. Then he took a couple dozen people, strangers, to go see Coldplay and they all had a blast into the wee hours in the morning.” Harvey had never listened to Coldplay before, as Brett notes, the evening made him a fan.
Even Harvey’s business card was one of a kind, bearing the M.S. Walker logo on one side, but in place of address and contact info on the reverse it read simply ‘Harvey Allen, I’ll call you.’ “Harvey believed, ‘we’re in sales, so they shouldn’t call us. We’ll call them,’” says Brett. “It’s part of the joke, everybody gets a laugh, they’re now having fun, and their guard is down.” It always left an impression.
A PEOPLE FIRST APPROACH
As a leader within M.S. Walker, part of Harvey’s legacy was his passionate belief that the company remains a family business: “The number one thing that was the most important to him was his family,” says Scott. “That was his legacy, of keeping us together and always helping the family.” Harvey was deeply committed to this. Scott notes that he worked tirelessly to make sure that things “didn’t get disjointed or out of whack. I would say for a 5th generation business, 99.9% of the time everyone is aligned,” he says, “which is very rare.”
Although the last 20 years have seen massive consolidation among beverage alcohol distributors, Harvey was a stalwart supporter of his vision for the company. “Over the years there have certainly been people who have inquired about purchasing M.S. Walker,” remembers Brett, “and [Harvey] would vehemently say: ‘this company [was built by] my grandfather and my father and me, and this company is for the family,’ meaning that this is what keeps the family together,” says Brett. “That’s the mark that he has left on all of us, that his job was to keep everybody together.”
Harvey’s “people first”, family-oriented philosophy helped shape the company culture that M.S. Walker is known for. “He preserved a certain kind of mentality that was very common back in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s when Boston was smaller and when people were direct and personal with each other,” says Brett. “That is something that he was a custodian of through his actions and it was certainly something that he passed on to Scott, Doug [Shaw, President], Gary [Shaw, Executive Vice President], and me,” says Brett. He adds: “Our culture is what sets us apart. We have a very different culture, and it’s what we live and breathe. We don’t have the biggest brands like some other companies, but what we do have is passion and a personal touch and a family feel.” An open-door policy, appreciation of direct conversations, and openness and honesty are all hallmarks of M.S. Walker’s company values.
Scott’s sentiments echo his brother’s: “We are not just zeros or ones, it’s a people first culture here,” Scott says. “Harvey always felt, you shouldn’t treat people as a number, you should treat people as part of your family. And he always considered people who worked here as part of this family. That was the culture he built.”
Both Brett and Scott attribute longevity and low turnover at M.S. Walker to the “people first” ethos that was so integral to their father’s leadership. “How do you motivate a sales team? You can stand up in front of a sales team and say ‘money, money, money,’ and the funny thing is, that has rarely ever worked, at least for our teams,” Brett says. To successfully motivate teams, he feels, “The primary thing is satisfaction with your job and where you work, doing something you believe in, liking the people that you work with, getting up in the morning and liking what you do.” His brother Scott echoes these sentiments: “We are people first,” says Scott, “because if you care about your people, you make your people care about the business. That’s how we have extremely low turnover.”
Harvey’s ability to forge long-term relationships can be seen across all three tiers of the industry. “M.S. Walker is one of the oldest customers that we’ve had on a continuous basis since the inception of our business in 1935,” says Max Shapira, Chairman of spirits supplier Heaven Hill. “We have dealt with five generations of the Allen family, which is really rather extraordinary, and we consider it to be one of our closest relationships within the industry,” he notes. “Now as to Harvey, Harvey was a very unique person. Ultimately, from my perspective and from our company’s perspective, he was the quintessential relationship person, and he approached not just us, but everyone that he worked with in a very collaborative way, wanting to set standards, to develop solutions and strategies for the future. And he built his business based upon these relationships. I can also say that today the word ‘integrity’ sometimes gets lost in translation and we forget about that word, but Harvey, in all of the dealings that we had with him over the years, did them as both a skilled professional businessperson and with the highest sense of integrity,” says Shapira. “We thought of him not only as a business person but as a friend, a colleague and a customer of ours. We knew Harvey and the whole family for years and years and expect his legacy will continue for many years to come at M.S. Walker. And we are delighted to be a part of that.”
LEADERSHIP AND LEGACY
As both a parent and a people manager, Harvey was supportive without being overbearing. “He was big on guiding but not dictating,” recalls Brett, “He always supported me in my decisions in whatever it was that I was doing, playing sports or in school.” His workplace leadership was very similar, says Doug Shaw, Harvey’s nephew and the President of M.S. Walker. “I think one of Harvey’s really strong points was giving people a path to grow, then getting out of the way and allowing them to grow and flourish,” Doug remembers. “He was not a micromanager by any stretch of imagination. He was a good motivator and ultimately wanted people to flourish and support their growth and not get in the way of it. He was a big picture guy and really allowed us as a family to take over and expand the business.” One of Harvey’s talents seemed to be helping ignite passion in his teams, then letting them take the lead: “He helped stoke the fire but then he got out of the way, he really wanted people to grow and flourish and truly let that occur naturally,” Doug says.
For all of his charm and conviviality, Harvey possessed a remarkable acumen in business. “He was very insightful and shrewd in a lot of ways,” says Brett. “Being a bon vivant and a larger-than-life character, people might not have always expected that. But he definitely had a very good head on his shoulders when it came to business and what to do in either crisis situations or just the inner politics of working a business,” says Brett. “He was artful at that.”
Doug Shaw points to Harvey’s unflappable dedication as something he strives for in his own leadership: “His passion for people, for connectivity, love for family and extended family, his fun-loving ways of bringing everyone together — that really defines for me Harvey’s role here. I want to emulate this along with his ability to connect with all kinds of people in a very meaningful way.”
“The Allen family is a great family,” says Max Shapira. “They’ve been so positive, not just for their business and their standing and the leadership positions that they’ve taken in the industry; but they’ve created a sound organization of what a quintessentially privately owned company is all about.”
For Brett, Harvey’s ‘people first’ style of connecting, and the culture it fostered is a key piece of his father’s legacy. “I’d like to try to uphold the culture that we have worked so hard to establish because it is what sets us apart. Again, we aren’t the biggest distributor and the biggest business, but we’re a family business that aspires to run professionally and with inclusivity,” he says. “Things that were kind of instinctual for prior generations are very intentional for our generation. That’s the goal, all while obviously achieving our sales goals, because there wouldn’t be any culture if there’s no business,” he says. This way, “when things are challenging, we know we have each other, we have a great team, and we at least know we’re leaving everything on the field when we go to battle or go to do business.”
“At the end of the day, his legacy is majestic,” says Seth Greenberg. “All of his kids are very focused, they’re very successful, they’re all intelligent, hardworking, they have good values that he instilled in them. They’re all big supporters of Israel, and he was a very charitable man in his life,” Seth notes. “Ultimately, it’s your legacy that matters. He started in Somerville in a little warehouse, and it’s such an accomplishment to see what they have grown to today. But it’s more of an accomplishment of character. He was a mentor and a friend. I called him Uncle Harvey and I meant it. He embraced it and he treated me like family and I loved the guy.”
By all accounts, Harvey Allen lived a rich and full life and left an impression on the beverage industry as a whole that will not soon be forgotten. Cheers to a life well-lived and well-loved.
