Jessica Infante joined Brewbound in 2019 after nearly a decade in a variety of marketing roles in the craft beer industry. Prior to that, she was a daily newspaper reporter at the Jersey Shore. Jess holds a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and a master’s degree in integrated marketing communication from Emerson College. She is a certified Cicerone and lives in Salem, Massachusetts.
Since its debut in 2016, New Belgium Brewing’s Voodoo Ranger line has become a growth engine for the Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered craft brewery. The IPA brand, fronted by a snarky, skeletal “spokescreature,” came at just the right time. Sales of New Belgium’s Ranger IPA were down 50% and the team decided the brand wasn’t salvageable.
“We needed something fresh; we needed something more relevant to the IPA category,” CEO Steve Fechheimer said during the Brewbound Live business conference earlier this month. “It was time to take a risk.”
Leaders of four emerging “beyond beer” brands shared their strategies for differentiating in an increasingly crowded field during the annual Brewbound Live business conference, which took place virtually earlier this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s cancellation of in-person events. “Your product has to be amazing,” canned cocktail producer Five Drinks co-founder and CEO Felipe Szpigel said during the discussion.
Federal excise tax cuts for brewers and importers have finally been made permanent. After nearly a week of uncertainty, President Donald Trump on Sunday signed into law the $900 billion economic relief package and $1.4 trillion government funding bill Congress passed last week.
U.S. brewers shipped 12.3 million barrels of beer in November 2020, a decline of 0.8% (or 96,000 fewer barrels than in 2019), according to domestic tax paid estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) shared by the Beer Institute (BI).
After a tumultuous year, the beer industry is expected to finish 2020 down by 0.5% in volume, according to National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) chief economist Lester Jones. “Despite losing all this keg volume and all this on-premise, having 20% of the on-premise market shut down basically for a certain period of time, having fewer establishments, fewer occasions, the beer market in total is going to look a lot like it has in previous years,” Jones said. “It just means a whole bunch of beer got shifted around.”
Chicago’s Revolution Brewing has promoted Doug Veliky to chief strategy officer. In his new role, Veliky will be tasked with leading the finance and marketing divisions of the company, as well as helping set the overall strategic direction of the craft brewery.
Distributors expect the hard seltzer segment to end the year with 155% growth and come close to doubling in 2021 with much of the growth coming from leading brands, White Claw (Mark Anthony Brands) and Truly Hard Seltzer (Boston Beer Company), according to a report from Goldman Sachs Equity Research arm.
Consumers are continuing to trade up in their alcoholic beverage purchases, even as the COVID-19 pandemic-induced economic downturn continues, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson said during a webinar last week. “People still see beer as an affordable luxury, while beer has taken on a lot of price relative to wine and spirits,” he said.
Two of the largest beverage alcohol producers in the country are teaming up. Pabst Brewing Company and Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Froman today announced a partnership in which Pabst will produce, sell and distribute Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails, the whiskey brand’s line of flavored malt beverages.
The nation’s supply of carbon dioxide is expected to be able to meet brewers’ needs, even as the dry ice industry’s demand increases for the shipment and storage of COVID-19 vaccines. “There is enough capacity in the system to meet the 5% we’re anticipating that the dry ice needs will increase by,” CGA president and CEO Rich Gottwald told Brewbound.
On-premise retail sales will not rebound to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson shared yesterday in a webinar for members of the trade group. “The on-premise is not fully going to recover next year,” he said.
An up-and-coming hard seltzer brand focused on Asian fruit flavors has won the 2020 edition of Brewbound’s Pitch Slam Competition, presented by Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Brewers Collective craft division. Lunar Hard Seltzer, a New York-based hard seltzer brand, won the 12th edition of the Pitch Slam competition, which invites entrepreneurs in the alcoholic beverage industry to compete before a panel of industry experts.
The Cincinnati Beverage Company (CinBev) will shift production of its four beer brands — including Christian Moerlein Brewing Company — to an unnamed contract brewing partner. “Right now, this is really about returning to quality, consistency and reliability for us,” chief marketing officer Jodi Woffington told Brewbound.
The BA, which represents the nation’s small and independent brewers, is advocating for several measures at the federal level that would support craft breweries, whose businesses have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.
