News

Shifting portfolio mixes and the safeguard of supplementing with offerings beyond beer was a hot topic during a panel discussion featuring five distributor leaders at last week’s NBWA Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida.

Whole Foods Market is back with its annual look at expected trends for the year ahead, and while the grocer focuses mainly on food, there are some signals of where beverage could be heading next.

Sapporo USA is adopting the focused strategy many breweries have recently enacted, and taking it to the next level and narrowing its focus to one thing in 2027: Sapporo Premium Beer.

This week’s beer goes out to the pro sports team single-handedly doing its best to help out the beer biz in 2026, the Milwaukee Brewers.

Check out news items initially reported in the Brewbound Insider Newsletter October 12-16, including headlines from Canworks, Garage Beer, Almanac and more.

The hemp beverage industry is less than two months out from a federal ban on nearly all products in the market, pending legislative action.
Despite the looming deadline, Hemp Beverage Alliance (HBA) president and CEO Christopher Lackner is feeling “optimistic.”

Arguments in Colorado’s distributor termination dispute between Coors Distributing Company (CDC) and Constellation Brands began playing out earlier this week in the district court for the city and county of Denver.

Competition in the vodka-based tea and lemonade segment is fierce. Many brands offer similar flavor and pack formats. Packaging is often similar, with light color palettes and visual cues to the sun.

Influencers and former collegiate basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder are aiming to throw Azúcar Tequila an alley-oop as the creative directors of its new ready-to-drink (RTD) margaritas, the company announced Thursday.

Pernod Ricard closed its first quarter of fiscal 2027 with sales down 10% in the U.S., where it blamed consumers’ affordability concerns for the drop. The French spirits giant used its earnings call today to share a read on the U.S. market and reiterate that it continues to seek growth in smaller, affordable formats.

Summit Brewing Company’s loans have been acquired by a new lender, giving the St. Paul, Minnesota-headquartered craft brewery a pathway to developing and executing “a recapitalization and long-term growth strategy aimed at strengthening Summit’s balance sheet and supporting its vision for the future.”

Duvel USA’s 2026 distributor meeting presented a focused plan to build on and refresh its existing franchises, while adding a few new brands where needed – avoiding any bombshell innovation news, such as the 2025 meeting’s Quirk THC Seltzer drop.

In the wake of Martignetti’s acquisition of Girardi in Western Massachusetts, Atlas Distributing has added the Constellation Brands portfolio in Berkshire and Franklin counties, the Auburn, Massachusetts-based, independent blue-and-gold network distributor shared.

Two Robbers Spirits Co.’s partnership with the Philadelphia Eagles is helping the 7-year-old company fly. On the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast, Two Robbers founders Vivek and Vikram Nayar share how partnerships with Philadelphia pro sports teams have helped raise their local profile and increase rate of sale in off-premise retailers.