Obituaries
Media Coverage Highlights Van Munching’s Pivoting to Keep Brands Dominant
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Leo Van Munching Jr. of Darien, who recently passed away, pushed his family’s already successful beer-importing company into national prominence from the 1970s to the 1990s, with marketing and ads that responded to new challenges and opportunities, according to Tuesday’s New York Times. He died at home on Sunday, at the age of 89 from heart failure, the Times reported in an obituary that added several details about his career. By the mid-1970s, he was running day-to-day operations of Van Munching and Company, which his father, Leo van Munching Sr. (who preferred a lower-case “v” in his name), had founded in 1946 as the sole importer of Heineken products. The company maintained its dominance as the importer of the largest foreign beer in the country through successful advertising and marketing campaigns, including radio ads starting in the 1970s that would end with the familiar “Imported by Van Munching and Company, New York, New York.” Television ads were introduced in the ’70s, focusing on the brand’s distinctive green bottle and the tag line, “America’s No.
