According to IRI, which tracks off-premise sales in grocery, drug, club, dollar, mass-merchandiser and military stores, the craft pilsner category has added more than 317,000 cases year-to-date (through Aug. 9). Only four other categories – IPA (3,507,963 cases), Variety (557,753 cases), Fruit/Veggie/Spiced beer (493,344 cases) and Pale Ale (349,240 cases) – have added more incremental volume in 2015. That’s significant, and no doubt one of the factors prompting Goose Island, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, to rollout its own craft take on the classic pale lager style.
Starting in late September, the brewery’s beers – including Total Domination IPA and Oatis Oatmeal Stout – will be available throughout New York via a partnership with the Sheehan Family distributor network, comprised of Craft Beer Guild of New York, Union Beer Distributors, T.J. Sheehan Distributing, and Tri-Valley Beverage.
Two months after debuting its $2 million “Why Woodchuck” advertising campaign, Vermont Hard Cider has lifted the veil on a completely redesigned set of core packages. First teased in June, the new “deconstructed” six-packs, as Vermont Hard Cider’s vice president of sales Terry Hopper describes them, feature a more stylized arch to the “Woodchuck” type and focus on the primary flavors in each of the company’s core offerings: Amber, Granny Smith Pear and Hopsation.
The Kansas City Bier Company has announced plans to more than double its production capacity and begin bottling beer as part of a $1.5 million expansion.
As part of an ongoing effort to take back control of its sales and distribution responsibilities, Shipyard Brewing today announced it has re-launched in Illinois, tapping MillerCoors’ OneIllinois network for distribution of both its namesake and Sea Dog brands.
Less than a year removed from first opening last November, Playalinda Brewing has detailed plans to build a multi-million dollar production brewery and distillery about five miles south of its current headquarters in Titusville, Fla.
Three top-level employees of the Utah Brewers Cooperative, comprised of Squatters and Wasatch Beers, were laid off from the company last week, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. According to the website, the company let go of brewmaster Dan Burick, CFO Sean Boyle and national sales director George Allen as part of a restructuring initiative.
The Beer Institute has updated its voluntary marketing and advertising code in an effort to streamline how breweries and importers self-regulate the promotion of their products.
There are now more than a dozen craft brewers looking to sell all or parts of their businesses, according to a Reuters article that, citing unnamed sources, claims beer companies like Lagunitas, SweetWater Brewing, Ballast Point and even Dogfish Head are exploring transactions. One of those companies, New York City’s Brooklyn Brewery, has consistently turned down investments from private equity firms for more than 20 years, founder Steve Hindy told the news service.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the next IPA, because there won’t be one. Not in the near future anyway, according to Bart Watson, staff economist for the Brewers Association. The style has just grown at too rapid a clip to be replicated: in just seven years, the IPA has gone from accounting for less than 8 percent of all craft volume to more than 27 percent, according to Watson, citing IRI scan data.
Appalachian Mountain Brewery (AMB) has extended its strategic partnership with Craft Brew Alliance (CBA), entering into an alternating proprietorship agreement that will include increased production of the North Carolina-based company’s core beers at the larger company’s east coast brewery. In an earnings release, AMB said it is “excited to be able to increase capacity significantly by leveraging excess capacity that CBA has in Portsmouth, N.H.”
Continuing its exploration of the craft alcoholic beverage sector, Alltech, a global biotech nutrition company, is investing $13 million in the construction of a new 27,972 sq. ft.brewery and distillery in downtown Pikeville, Ky. Having broken ground on the project earlier this summer, the company expects Dueling Barrels Brewing & Distilling Co. to be open in 2016.
Inc. Magazine’s annual ranking of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. is out and, not surprisingly, several craft breweries made the cut. Nine craft breweries appeared on this year’s list, which is ranked according to percentage revenue growth over a four-year period.
