About Us

The captivating history of Clubs of America — How it all began over 30 years ago….

Clubs of America is a family business, built the way many other great American family owned companies were built: on a dream and a lot of hard work.

In 1994, Doug and Dirk Doretti had an idea, based on two things that were happening at the time. Book clubs and CD music clubs were popular by mail; the brothers found the concepts interesting and felt it was a unique way to run a business with subscription deliveries.  So, back in the 90’s small mom and pop microbreweries were just catching on with the American public; these local brewmasters were not only passionate about there craft beer, they were producing the very best beers in the country.  Many of these beers were only available within a limited area where they were brewed and hard to find elsewhere.

To solve the consumer problem of finding these great beers they asked themselves, why not home delivery with a Microbrewery Beer Subscription? Inspired, Doug and Dirk took the risk and jumped right in. Back then their was no internet, the only way the brothers got orders was a 800 number, with their popular phone number they advertised on radio: 1-800-TRY-A-SIP. It was still a tough start, the brothers lived lean, recruiting family members to help them pack-and-ship the beer club orders.

“It was a struggle, but we were raised to never to give up.”  “We were determined to succeed no matter what,” says Doug, now CEO. “Our first month’s shipment was only 40 packages. But we stayed positive, worked hard and kept our reputation strong. The important thing was — we took care of our customers first.”

In the end, the customers took care of them.  Word of mouth went viral and brought many more members. Before long the national media began to take notice. The Doretti brothers and their unique mail order company was featured on Good Morning America, Fox News and many TV segments, they were interviewed on TV on programs like CNN Financial and numerous live radio stations and written about in a host of major publications such as USA Today, Parade and Entrepreneur Magazine. The national PR exposure helped spur more rapid growth and the brothers continued to work seven days a week just to keep up with the orders.

With craft beer as their first club, customers asked for more so they launched — wine, flowers, cigars, coffee, fruit, pizza and chocolate of the month — and Clubs of America began to take shape as a one stop shop for subscription clubs.

Then in 1996 the internet was in its infancy and just starting to be discovered as a new place to shop, so the brothers registered their first domain “greatclubs.com” and started a website page in 1996, which is two years after the company’s first shipment.  Now, after 30 years in business and a major force in ecommerce with many diversified companies — they now have a full staff of dedicated office and warehouse employees and after shipping millions and millions of packages to nationwide customers since day one — now the brothers could finally relax. Right?

“Well, not fully relax,” says Doug. “These days we have our family involved in running the business day to day with us, but we’re still hands-on as ever.  We love what we do. We love innovating and creating things. We roll up our sleeves, work hard and we get involved in bringing the best quality and service to all of our customers. It’s amazing to be part of a journey in a family business dedicated to bringing happiness to people by delivering exceptional products right to their doorsteps, all back from our humble beginnings way before the internet.”