Last week, we traveled to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. to ask attendees how market segmentation was impacting the retail landscape. Many noted that growing interest in small local brands is making it tougher to compete while others were more optimistic about the potential growth of shelf space. Hear those responses in our latest video segment.
Dogfish Head today announced significant changes to its executive leadership team, including the departure of longtime vice president of sales, Adam Lambert, who will leave the company to pursue a new opportunity within craft beer. The Delaware-based craft brewery also announced it would promote current chief operating officer, Nick Benz, to the role of CEO.
There’s now a steady stream of private equity money flowing into craft — but will the floodgates open fully? How will the influx of investment capital impact the competitive landscape? We traveled to the 2014 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. to ask attendees for their thoughts.
Rogue Ales & Spirits has hired Jim Schembre, the former Monarch Beverage and World Class Beer general manager, as its new vice president of sales. Schembre, who has served on Rogue’s Board of Directors for the last eight years, will immediately replace outgoing Rogue VP Steve Irwin.
Oskar Blues will continue its ‘aggressive’ expansion efforts next month when it launches new distribution in Missouri via a wholesale arrangement with Major Brands Inc. The Longmont, Colo.-based craft brewery — which also owns and operates a secondary production facility in Brevard, NC — yesterday announced it will broaden its footprint, launching draft and can packages on November 10 with a string of market blitz initiatives and kick-off events.
Founders Brewing is about to make a $35 million bet on its projected growth over the next five years. The Michigan-based craft brewery announced Tuesday that it will expand its production facility in Grand Rapids, adding 57,000 sq. ft. of brewing, fermenting and office space in two phases.
To kick off the their second annual national distributor meeting, CBA-Con, held today in New Orleans in the wake of the NBWA gathering, the company blared the kind of musical mashup that would only make sense to a room full of Bud wholesalers who just happened to spend the previous evening drinking ice chests of Widmer Hefe and dancing to Daft Punk.
Three craft brewers and one ‘big beer’ executive walk into a room of beer distributors at 9:00 a.m. One of them pulls out a vaporizer. I forget how the rest of that joke goes, but everyone ends up laughing. That was the scene this morning at the 77th annual National Beer Wholesalers convention, being held in New Orleans.
Another top-50 craft brewery has sold a piece of its business to private equity. Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing today announced that it has sold minority interest to TSG Consumer partners, a private equity firm that invests in middle-market consumer brands.
Attention beer geeks! Your next pint of Pliny could be coming from Paso Robles. Russian River Brewing, the award-winning craft brewery from Santa Rosa, Calif. today announced that it will produce a limited amount of its acclaimed flagship, Pliny the Elder, under an exclusive contract partnership with Firestone Walker Brewing.
The world’s largest brewer today announced a set of global management changes, scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2015. Anheuser-Busch InBev said it will transition current North America zone president, Luiz Edmond, into a global role as Chief Sales Officer. Taking over for Edmond will be current Latin America zone president, Jo├úo Castro Neves.
The stage is set for a mega-merger between two of New York City’s largest beer distributors. A tentative agreement between Bronx-based Manhattan Beer Distributors — which will sell and deliver more than 35 million cases of beer in 2014 — and Brooklyn-based Windmill Distributing (d/b/a Phoenix\Beehive Beverage Distributors) is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015, according to Mike Mazzoni, an advisor on the transaction.
Southern Tier Brewing, a fast-growing top-50 craft brewery based in upstate New York, today announced it has sold a percentage of its business to Ulysses Management LLC, an investment firm with offices in New York City. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Southern Tier co-founder Phineas DeMink told Brewbound that he would retain a financial interest in the company and remain in a leadership role.
Hold on to your trucker hats, America’s most hipster beer company is reportedly being sold to the Russians. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are reporting that Pabst Brewing Company — the Los Angeles-based producer of heritage beer brands like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Lone Star and Olympia — will be sold for upwards of $750 million.
