Amid a sea change of top positions within craft this year, leadership at Rhinegeist Brewery explored the transition at the top of the Cincinnati, Ohio-headquartered craft brewery at the 2023 Brewbound Live business conference in Marina del Rey, California.
Adam Bankovich, who was named CEO in October, gave the keynote address and explained how Rhinegeist is getting focused and simplifying its commercial strategy in 2024. Bankovich admitted that the notion of Rhinegeist – which is also in the business of T-shirts and merch, distribution, private events and marketing, among other things – getting focused might sound rich to some.
But in a dynamic industry, those things can both be true. Bankovich pointed to RGBevs, Rhinegeist’s attempt at playing in the flavored malt beverage (FMB) space.
“I asked a lot of questions around this when I started,” he said. “And this was a sales plan that I inherited when I joined the company in October 2022.
“The more I unearthed when I was asking questions around RGBevs – how did we make the decisions to enter this space, how did we make the decisions on the flavors and the liquids, what consumer understanding did we have – it was really clear to me that there was no focus in this product line and it was potentially set up for failure.”
Much of the 2023 business plan that Bankovich inherited was banking on a big year for RGBevs. Citing Circana data through mid-November, the FMB brand family was down -47.4% (a decline of $1.7 million), while its beer brand family was up +14.6% (a gain of $3.6 million).
“We were betting on a lot of growth for our FMB line this year and it didn’t materialize because it was not focused,” he said.
Bankovich shared a slide that showed the percentage of resources – time, energy and money – devoted to the FMBs was outsized compared to its return on investment as the Truth brand family accounts for 56% of Rhinegeist’s volume, compared to 26% for other beers and 13% to FMBs/refreshment.
“Even at its peak, it was outsized,” he said. “It made no sense at all.”
So for 2024, Rhinegeist has pulled the plug on RGBevs and refocused on its core competencies. The commercial strategy for 2024 is on:
- Growing the Truth family to 1 million case equivalents (CEs);
- Growing Hop Box variety pack, growing the brand to more than 100,000 CEs;
- Bringing back the Bubbles family back to the beer aisle and returning its volume to 2021 volume;
- And making Cincy Light Cincinnati’s light lager brand.
Bankovich cited Cincy Light – Rhinegeist’s name, image and likeness (NIL) partnership with the University of Cincinnati’s collective Cincy Reigns – as an example of authenticity and something the company quickly commercialized with right-sized expectations. Cincy Light is not a full footprint play, but a targeted play in its home market.
“It’s now our fastest-growing beer that we’ve ever launched at the company,” Bankovich said. “That was not our goal. That’s not what we set out to achieve. But what we did do was lay the groundwork and the foundation and the road map where if this thing was successful, we could scale it and scale it quickly.”
Bankovich and Rhinegeist co-founder Bryant Goulding also discussed the leadership transition, creating space for leaders to create new pathways and much more in a Q&A following Bankovich’s keynote address.
“We started in our early 30s, we’re now in our early 40s, our passion for management is different from entrepreneurship and building, and a really clear sense of what you need to accomplish,” Goulding shared. “So given that we felt that we could realize better results with a fresh stance on leadership, we started thinking what does CEO look like. Who could realize the potential that we see in our business, and we could complement that as a board with the things we’re passionate and really good about. That kind of set us on that path.”
Brewbound Insiders can watch the keynote address and additional insights from Goulding on handing over the reins.