The Reyes Beverage Group announced plans today to merge operations of its Chicagoland wholesalers — Windy City Distributing and Chicago Beverage Systems — into one company by mid-October.

With new cases of COVID-19 on the rise in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker today announced the state’s reopening plan would pause at Phase 3 and new operating restrictions would be placed on restaurants.

With the nation’s can supply tightening, President Donald Trump yesterday announced the reimposition of a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum, claiming that America’s neighbor to the north was flooding the market.

Molson Coors Beverage Company’s hibernation of the Saint Archer Gold brand is benefitting upstart active lifestyle lager maker Island Brands. In the Southeast, grocery chain Publix has begun filling the void left by Gold with the Charleston, South Carolina-based beer maker’s Island Active — an 88-calorie, 4.2% ABV light lager, which launched in March just ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Breweries nationwide are under pressure from a tightening can supply, but relief could be on the way — next year. The Ball Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of aluminum cans, announced a new production line at its facility in Rome, Georgia, will come online next week, joining another new production line at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility, Ball executives said during a conference call discussing Q2 earnings. Even with the addition of those new production lines, demand is outstripping supply.

Danny Brager, the long-time leader of market research firm Nielsen’s beverage alcohol practice, is exiting the company to pursue other opportunities after nearly 40 years.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were easy to see in Craft Brew Alliance’s latest earnings report. Shipments of CBA products during the three-month period ending June 30 — in the thick of the pandemic and its shut down of on-premise establishments — declined 10.2%, to 206,900 barrels, down from 230,500 barrels in Q2 2019.

After some tense weeks of picketing and negotiating, Philadelphia-based Dock Street Brewing announced it would change its service model so that front-of-house employees at its West Philadelphia location would be paid regular hourly wages, rather than relying on tips.

The National Beer Wholesalers Association’s Annual Convention won’t be taking place in-person in Orlando, Florida, this October after all. The largest meeting of beer wholesalers in the country will instead go virtual from October 4-7. The NBWA was set to host its Annual Convention in Orlando in early October, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has rendered those plans unfeasible.

On this week’s Brewbound Frontlines, Fresh Fest co-founder Day Bracey joins to discuss the upcoming beer festival showcasing Black-owned breweries, and industry professionals share taproom staff management best practices.

Stone Brewing CEO Dominic Engels has departed the Escondido, California-headquartered craft brewery, according to an internal letter to staff from co-founder Steve Wagner and obtained by Brewbound.

The clock seemed to expire last week on Massachusetts craft brewers’ hopes of finally achieving franchise law reform. After finally reaching a compromise with wholesalers after a decade of contentious negotiations, the measure (S. 2841) unanimously passed the Senate but couldn’t get out of the House Ways and Means Committee before the expiration of the legislative session last Friday.

Eight trillion dollars. This almost unfathomable sum of money could be added to the U.S. economy in the next 30 years if not for racial disparities baked into social and economic structures, according to “The Business Case for Racial Equity — a Strategy for Growth,” a paper Ani Turner wrote for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Under normal circumstances, about 10% of all the beer consumed in the U.S. flows from kegs, through draft lines and into pitchers and glasses at bars, restaurants, brewery taprooms and other venues using a combination of physics and chemistry. Few people understand draft system wizardry better than Neil Witte, so who better than the Master Cicerone and draft expert to ascertain the quality of draft service at on-premise retailers?