News

Lagunitas Brewing Company has named Kelly Murnaghan, the former vice president of marketing at Vans, as its new chief marketing officer. The Heineken-owned craft brewery announced Murnaghan’s hiring on Thursday afternoon. Murnaghan, who started earlier this week, will join the Petaluma, California-based craft brewery’s leadership team and report directly to CEO Maria Stipp.

The William K. Busch Brewing Co. is “ceasing all operations” eight years after after launching the Reinheitsgebot-adhering Kräftig lager brand in St. Louis. William “Billy” Busch, the great grandson of Anheuser-Busch co-founder Adolphus Busch, and son of Adolphus A. “Gussie” Busch Jr., founded the Kräftig brand in 2011 with visions of going national. However, those dreams never came to fruition as sales began to decline in recent years.

In episode 44 of the Brewbound Podcast, Verratti discusses her experience opening a second brewing location, and explains why the company structured its debt around reasonable growth projections. She also dives into the topic of diversity and inclusion within the brewing industry and shares strategies for reaching a more diverse set of consumers.

The Riverside Company, a private equity firm with offices in New York City and Cleveland, has exited its investment in Salt Lake City’s Uinta Brewing Company. Reached by Brewbound, a spokesperson for the firm, which acquired a partial stake in 2014, declined to comment on its decision to back away from the investment.

The Brewers Association (BA) has severed ties with longtime New York-based PR firm The Rosen Group. The Colorado-headquartered not-for-profit trade association representing small and independent U.S. craft brewers today announced it has chosen Backbone Media as its new public relations agency of record. Backbone, based in Carbondale, Colorado, supplants The Rosen Group, which had served as the BA’s public relations firm for more than a decade.