Justin Kendall provides daily coverage of the beer industry on Brewbound.com, conducts live-streamed interviews during Brewbound’s events and co-produces the Brewbound podcast. Kendall is a nearly 20-year career journalist who led alt-weekly newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa.
Molson Coors today announced a sweeping restructuring and revitalization plan aimed at reinvesting $150 million annually in its core products, above-premium offerings, new innovations in the beyond beer space and digital capabilities. In order to achieve the savings, Molson Coors is consolidating its business units and office footprint and slashing its workforce.
Boston Beer Company reported third quarter depletions (sales-to-retailers) and shipments (sales-to-wholesalers) of 30% and 19.1%, respectively, according to financial results issued after the end of trading today. Boston Beer’s third quarter earnings marked the first with combined results following the merger with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. The combined company — whose brands include Truly Hard Seltzer, Samuel Adams beer, Angry Orchard hard cider and Twisted Tea — reported net revenue growth of 23.3%, to $378.5 million, during Q3.
“I did not take this job to lose,” Heineken USA CEO Maggie Timoney said near the close of the company’s national sales meeting with wholesalers in New York City last week. “We’re going to win and win together.”
Lompoc Brewing, one of Portland’s oldest craft brewers, announced it will close next week after 23 years in business. “For me, it just felt like this is the right time, and time to back away from the craft brewing scene,” owner Jerry Fechter told Brewbound. Meanwhile, Heineken N.V.-owned Lagunitas Brewing has closed its Portland, Oregon-based… Read more »
In the latest edition of Last Call: California’s Yurok Tribe to acquire Mad River Brewing; Boston Beer discontinues Marathon Brewing’s 26.2 Brew; Night Shift to launch a hard seltzer line; and more news.
The legal battle between the two largest beer makers in the U.S. escalated today, as Anheuser-Busch today accused MillerCoors of breaking state and federal laws by stealing trade secrets regarding beer recipes for its two top-selling brands, Bud Light and Michelob Ultra. In the heavily redacted 66-page amended complaint and counterclaim filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, A-B alleges that two of its former employees who now work for MillerCoors and its parent company Molson Coors either shared confidential trade secrets with their current employers or sought information from current employees about the making of A-B products.
San Francisco’s Fort Point Beer Company has signed with eight wholesalers in California, expanding the craft brewery’s distribution footprint statewide. “For six years, Fort Point has pretty much been sold in nine counties around the Bay Area with a couple of things being sold here and there outside of that,” Fort Point co-founder and CEO Justin Catalana told Brewbound. “But we just flipped the switch to sell through the rest of California.”
Boston Beer Company is upping the ante as it tries to unseat Mark Anthony Brand as the beer category’s top hard seltzer producer. The company — which makes the Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard hard cider and Samuel Adams beer offerings — announced today the reformulation of all 13 Truly flavors in an effort to make them “crisper and more refreshing.” Boston Beer also revealed plans to release a Truly-branded line of lemonade hard seltzers in 2020
Six months after acquiring a majority stake in Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewing, Legacy Breweries Inc. today announced the acquisition of two smaller craft breweries, Aspen Brewing in Colorado and Laurelwood Brewing in Oregon.
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Brewers Collective craft division is betting big on craft beer’s most popular style — the IPA — in 2020. Brewers Collective president Marcelo “Mika” Michaelis told Brewbound that the world’s largest beer company is making a multi-million dollar investment behind a new low-alcohol, low-calorie IPA from Chicago’s Goose Island, as well as a hazy IPA from from Seattle’s Elysian Brewing.
Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Co. has appointed long-time beer and spirits executive Mark King as its next CEO. King, who most recently served as president of BeatBox Beverages and co-founded Austin Eastciders in 2013, supplants Bill Boor, who unexpectedly exited the 31-year-old, Ohio-headquartered craft brewery after four years in April to become the CEO of Phoenix, Arizona-based Cavco Industries, which makes manufactured housing.
About 60,000 people attended last week’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver, but the 2019 edition of national trade group the Brewers Association’s (BA) largest consumer-facing event may mark the last in which beer is the only featured alcoholic beverage.
Constellation Brands has once again promoted Mallika Monteiro. Last Friday, the New York-headquartered maker of Mexican import brands Corona, Modelo and Pacifico appointed Monteiro as executive vice president and chief growth and strategy officer. Meanwhile, Ceria Beverages, which makes THC-infused, non-alcoholic beers, has appointed Greg Miller as its first vice president of business development.
After three decades, Odell Brewing’s founders — Wynne, Doug and Corkie Odell — plan to exit the brewery’s day-to-day operations starting in January 2020, as part of a planned leadership transition. The employee-owned, Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered craft brewery will turn to chief sales and marketing officer Eric “Smitty” Smith as its next chief executive officer.