News

Stone Brewing’s World Bistro & Gardens location in Escondido, California, will soon return to familiar hands.

Costs continue to rise amid skyrocketing gasoline prices and stubborn inflation, but beverage-alcohol may not be one of the line items stretching consumers’ budgets, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI).

As distributors expand their portfolios beyond beer, they need to remember that “beer is the trump card,” incoming National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) chair Luke Dahlheimer said Tuesday during his speech at the trade association’s Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida.

Off-premise retailers still account for most of adult non-alcoholic (ANA) offerings’ sales, but the on-premise and e-commerce channels are now growing about twice as fast, according to a recent NIQ report. 

The beer category should hope for an early start to the holidays to juice sales, Circana EVP of BevAl Scott Scanlon wrote in the data firm’s weekly scans report.

A handful of wine and spirits distributors plan to acquire Republic National Distributing Company’s (RNDC) remaining operations in Michigan.

Nashville’s TailGate Brewing has acquired the campus and facility of Yazoo Brewing in Madison, Tennessee, which will serve as its primary production hub, the breweries announced Tuesday.

Mark Anthony Brands navigated the hard seltzer gold rush phase with White Claw coming out on the other side as the segment’s top-selling brand. The company is looking to repeat in the fast-growing hard sports drink segment with a challenger brand: RefreshAde.

“Total beverage strategy adoption,” “blurred category lines,” “a beverage-alcohol free-for-all” – there are numerous ways the current state of the bev-alc industry has been described. National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) president and CEO Craig Purser has added his own to the mix: “Freaky Friday.”

Carbliss, the ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail that has become one of the fastest-growing independent brands in its category, is launching a 12% ABV Cocktail Collection in November.

The National Beer Wholesaler Association’s (NBWA) Annual Convention and Product Showcase kicks off today and the Brewbound team is on the ground in Orlando, Florida, to hear updates from the trade group, as well as what some of the middle tier’s leadership has to say about today’s contracting bev-alc market.

Flavor has permeated all aspects of beverage-alcohol, and conventional wisdom holds that it is most concentrated in the ready-to-drink (RTD) space, rather than traditional iterations of beer, wine and spirits.

I gotta say, I’m not sure who had “price fixing” as one of the top trends in beverage alcohol these days, but now the Japanese are apparently (allegedly) getting in on the action.

Check out news items initially reported in the Brewbound Insider Newsletter October 8-9, including headlines from SpikedAde, Hardywood Park, Starr Hill and Athletic.