Even if you offered Eric Wallace $1 billion, he says, he wouldn’t sell Left Hand Brewing Company — the Longmont, Colo. craft brewery he co-founded in 1993 — to a private equity firm. Instead, he just entrusted more than half of it to his employees. That makes his semi-utopian business philosophy a bit more believable.
While preparing to build out its first large-scale production facility on American soil, the Scottish craft beer stalwart BrewDog is also working out plans to retake control of its U.S. distribution. Anchor Brewing, which has imported the BrewDog brand since 2010, has agreed to sell back the company’s distribution rights for an undisclosed sum, Anchor CEO and co-owner Keith Greggor told Brewbound.
Colorado’s Left Hand Brewing will join a growing list of craft brewers opting to sell at least a portion of their companies back to employees. The Longmont-based craft brewery today announced it has finalized the repurchase of common shares from current stockholders and established an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).
MillerCoors is rolling out a new set of print and billboard ads aimed at educating consumers about its company vision and values. The “We Stand for Beer” campaign is set to launch on July 6 in eight U.S. markets where the company operates brewing facilities, including Golden, Colo., Irwindale, Calif., and Fort Worth, Tex., among others.
Surprise, Surprise – sales of craft beer and cider continue to outpace other segments, up more than 20 percent and 34 percent, respectively, through June 14 in IRI Worldwide’s multi-outlet and convenience store universe (which includes grocery, drug, Wal-Mart, club, dollar, mass-merchandiser and military stores). The craft segment currently comprises more than 8 percent of total beer dollar sales, according to the research firm.
It’s official: Scottish craft brewery BrewDog today announced plans to invest $30 million in the construction of its U.S. brewing facility, which the company has said will be located in Canal Winchester, Ohio.
After completing an “extensive” internal and external search, Duvel Moortgat USA yesterday announced Bobby Dykstra as its new vice president of the sales. Dykstra, a 12-year beer industry veteran, takes over for Steve Mills, who left to become CEO of Uinta Brewing earlier this month.
In the last 16 months, Anheuser-Busch InBev has acquired three craft breweries in three key beer states. The question on nearly every craft brewer’s mind is “what’s the strategy?” Andy Goeler, A-B InBev’s CEO of Craft, is the man tasked with shepherding all of these newly acquired brands. Over the last four months, Brewbound has asked Goeler, on multiple occasions, to elaborate on the company’s dealings in craft.
Earlier this week, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery persuaded a Rehoboth Beach land-use board to let the company tear down and reconstruct its brewpub in the city, overruling an earlier rejection of the brewery’s plans to do so, reports Delaware Online.
At this point, craft brewers are probably sick of reading the words “trademark dispute” in a headline. Thankfully, we’ve got an opportunity to discuss the topic – and the increasing importance of performing proper trademark due-diligence before launching new products — in a far less contentious way
The Brewers Association and the Beer Institute issued a joint statement this afternoon in support of a new bill that would restructure the federal excise tax rate on beer, creating a unified front to take on an issue that has for years divided the beer industry’s two leading advocacy groups.
Lagunitas is planning another brewery, this time in Southern California. Brewery founder Tony Magee took to Twitter late last night to make the big reveal, detailing plans for the company’s third brewing facility, which will be located in Azusa, Calif., just 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
After eight months of self-distributing its products, a change in Kentucky law has forced a Cincinnati, OH-based beer company to find a local wholesaler. While Rhinegeist Brewery-owned Riverghost Distributing won’t be getting out of the wholesaling business altogether, it has sold the distribution rights to its parent company’s fast-growing beer brand to rival Heidelberg Distributing.
In an effort to support the growth of both its thriving and struggling brands, Anheuser-Busch InBev today announced it will invest more than $1.7 billion in its U.S. brewing, agriculture, packaging and distributing operations by 2018.
