BeatBox

Smog City Brewing co-founder Laurie Porter is a prepper. Even during craft’s days of double-digit growth in the middle 2010s, Porter, who calls herself “an incurable optimist,” was eyeing a future when that growth wouldn’t be there.

Anheuser-Busch InBev’s will-they, won’t-they $700 million acquisition of party punch maker BeatBox is still awaiting an answer. However, Dan Wandel, Bump Williams Consulting chief strategy officer, indulged what a combination of the two companies would mean for high ABV (8% and up) and flavored beverage-alcohol.

BeatBox, the cross-category party punch producer, is reportedly discussing a potential acquisition with Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B), according to a story by the Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” the WSJ estimated the deal at $700 million, but couched that negotiations could “fall apart.”

The founders of BeatBox are hoping 2026 will bring them their second hit brand aimed at a new generation of consumers. BeatBox parent company Future Proof will launch Chillitas in February, a new-to-world, flavored malt beverage outside of the company’s flagship party punch brand.

Bev-alc volumes declined in the two-week period ending June 14 except for cider and some ready-to-drink subcategories, according to analysis of NIQ data from Goldman Sachs Equity Research.

Beverage-alcohol’s embrace of flavor and craft beer’s shifting distribution trends were among spotlighted issues during last week’s Beer Marketer’s Insights Spring Conference in Chicago. Leaders from BeatBox Beverages, Boston Beer Company, Atomic Brands, Columbia Distributing and Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) shared where their business and the beer category is heading. Here are a few soundbites from the conference.

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.

Resealable packages, smaller sizes and non-carbonated beverages are among the hot bev-alc trends Total Wine & More’s senior leadership team are watching in 2025.

BeatBox founders Aimy Steadman, Justin Fenchel and Brad Schultz’s ask to wholesalers is to help them build a “flavor wall” at retailers across the country. They described the flavor wall – two to three shelves, featuring assorted flavors of the party punch – during BeatBox’s first large-scale distributor meeting in Houston last week.

Party punch maker BeatBox hosted its first national sales meeting in Houston, which had the feel of a Meow Wolf, with a faux convenience store decked out in neon, a trippy giant mushroom-covered hard tea garden, a Las Vegas-themed area with casino games, a lab for new innovations with “scientists” that looked strikingly like Rick of Rick and Morty Adult Swim fame and the usual presentations about the coming year.