Molson Coors Beverage Company

St. Louis-based Urban Chestnut Brewing Company has acquired the beer brands of O’Fallon Brewery, which ceased operations after 24 years at the end of last year.

Refreshers are like opinions – no one’s the same, but everyone’s got one. Numerous fruity and colorful hard beverages have hit the shelves in the past two years, labeled as “refreshers,” but that is about where their similarities end.

Volume at craft breweries outside of the Brewers Association’s (BA) definition of small and independent declined 4% on a comparable basis, to 6.752 million barrels, in 2024, the trade group reported in the May/June edition of The New Brewer magazine.

Distributors have become increasingly more pessimistic about beer. But how do they feel about the biggest suppliers and their outlooks for 2025? Investment banking firm Jefferies asked this question in its latest beer distributor survey, which represented portfolios from Tilray (60% of respondents), Constellation (55%), Anheuser-Busch InBev [A-B] (50%), Molson Coors (50%), Boston Beer (40%) and more.

New breakout brands, Q1’s soft trends and the beer industry’s non-alcoholic (NA) plays were hot topics during Beer Marketer’s Insights’ Spring Conference, held earlier this week in Chicago.

The results of Molson Coors’ Q1 in fiscal year 2025 (FY25) were in stark contrast to the first quarter of 2024. Q1 net sales declined 11.3% year-over-year (-10.4% on a constant currency basis), the company reported Thursday morning. A year ago, Molson Coors reported 10.7% YoY (+10.1% in constant currency) net sales growth in Q1.

Gavin Hattersley will retire at the end of 2025 after six years as CEO of Molson Coors Beverage Company. Molson Coors’ board of directors will begin a search for Hattersley’s successor, tapping “a nationally recognized search firm” to review internal and external candidates.

Dollar sales of craft beer declined -4.2%, to more than $596.2 million, year-to-date (YTD) through February 23 in off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm Circana.

📉 January 2025 Shipments -8.7% YoY; 🫧 Jiant Wants to be Hard Tea’s Olipop; 🌑 Blue Moon Denver Brewpub to Close; 🍹 A Round With Austin Cocktails Founders; 📰 WellBeing Deal; Saugatuck Closures;🥉 Circana: 3 of 10 Segments Post Growth; 🚫 ‘You Can’t Fucking Make Beer Legally in DE’; 🖐️ Constellation’s Rule of Five Hard Punch

Molson Coors will close the Blue Moon brewpub in Denver’s River North Arts District at the end of the month, Brewbound has confirmed.

Molson Coors is not shying away from being a “category captain,” and plans to use its leading status with retailers to drive a new “category first, Molson Coors best” strategy, leadership shared last week during the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Beer category dollar sales were roughly flat (-0.3%) to start the year at off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm Circana. Sales reached $2.854 billion at multi-outlet grocery, mass retail and convenience stores (MULO+C) in the first four weeks of 2025, through January 26.

Non-alcoholic (NA) beer claimed a record 4.2% share of beer category grocery sales during Dry January, according to an analysis by Bump Williams Consulting chief strategy officer Dan Wandel. NA beer recorded double-digit year-over-year (YoY) increases in dollar sales (+23.5%) and volume (+20.2%) in U.S. food stores tracked by market research firm NIQ for the four-week period ending February 1.

Molson Coors Beverage Company’s overall business remained in the red as the company closed its 2024 fiscal year. However, the fourth quarter showed improvement over the double-digit declines reported in Q3, and leadership is confident the company can return to growth in 2025, according to Molson Coors’ earnings call today with investors and analysts.