Eight Elite Light Lager is expanding to Oklahoma this week, its first distribution move outside of Texas since launching in 2022.
Entering its third year, the super premium lager brand backed by Monday Night Football broadcaster and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman is now on shelves in the Sooner State via the Molson Coors network (Capital Distributing, Fisher 59 and LDF).
Eight Brewing co-founder and CEO Ruchi Desai told Brewbound that Eight’s full product line of draft and 6-, 12- and 24-packs will hit retailers such as grocery stores Reasor’s Foods and Crest Foods, big-box retailer Walmart and convenience store chain QuikTrip.
Oklahoma as Eight’s first expansion state was due to a confluence of factors, including demand from consumers, retailers and wholesalers, Desai said.
“When you have all three things firing like that, it makes a lot of sense,” Desai said, noting some Oklahomans said they’d cross the state line to buy the beer.
Aikman and half of the Eight team will be in the state for this week’s launch to conduct media interviews, meet with retailers, attend launch events and go on crew drives. Eight will also look to drive brand awareness through sampling and out-of-home advertising, including billboards.
Eight (4% ABV) will launch a packaging refresh this spring that better communicates its product attributes – 90 calories, 2.6 grams of carbs, brewed with 100% organic grains – starting in Oklahoma in April and then trickling into Texas. The refresh will coincide with a campaign focused on “beer made right.” Among the lessons Desai and the Eight team have learned is that those attributes needed to be emphasized to consumers. The beer’s specs drive purchase, but the taste of the liquid brings drinkers back, she said.
“Troy’s a great awareness hack and validator, but he’s not driving as much of the actual purchase decision as we thought,” Desai noted. “Troy is part of the brand and he’s a great authenticator of who we are, but the brand has to stand on its own.”
Still, Eight’s strongest markets are where most would expect with Aikman on board. Dallas-Fort Worth is the brand’s top metro area, followed by Austin and San Antonio.
Desai admitted that the expansion into Oklahoma is “much earlier” than she expected. But she said the thesis behind the start of the brand has only “gotten stronger” in the last year. She believes Eight has the potential to be a national brand one day, while also cutting into the market share of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B’s) Michelob Ultra, which holds around 62% of of all dollars spent on the super premium segment in multi-outlet retailers and convenience stores for the 52 week-period ending January 28, according to market research firm Circana.
Few challenger brands have succeeded thus far, with some being discontinued such as Molson Coors’ Saint Archer Gold and Boston Beer’s Marathon Brewing 26.2 Brew.
Nevertheless, more have emerged, including Constellation Brands’ Corona Premier and Modelo Oro, Heineken Silver and Yuengling Flight. Molson Coors is also relaunching Blue Moon Light Sky, as Blue Moon Light, and MGD64 as Miller 65 Extra Light. Boston Beer is also launching Samuel Adams American Light in nine markets this year. Other regional brands have also launched, including Hero95 in Boston.
For Eight, the brand is still building awareness on a smaller budget compared to other new super premium brands, such as Heineken Silver with a $100 million marketing budget. Eight has spent a fraction of that number in its first two years, reaching around $2.5 million Desai said.
Desai believes that there remains an opportunity for challenger brands to carve into the super premium market as consumers seek better-for-you options.
“Yes, we’re a small team, and we have smaller budgets, but I have a small market,” she continued. “I have two states now to worry about, and we can show up. So when we partner with someone, we can do a lot more, we can be very nimble and responsive to what they need. And I think that’s one way we set ourselves apart and get some jump balls.”
The window of opportunity for other brands opened last year due to the conservative-led boycott of A-Bs top light lager brand, Bud Light, as well as contagion that extended to the rest of its portfolio, including Michelob Ultra.
Eight didn’t see an immediate pickup in the wake of the boycott, but Desai believes consumers are open to sampling other beer brands for the first time in a long time.
“We’re seeing an openness to shifting those same loyalties that wasn’t there before,” she said. “So that’s really exciting for us and the way we’re pushing it, this year we’re investing a lot more in out-of-home, radio, more traditional media, trying to build that awareness. We’ve seen a very high conversion rate.”
Eight has thus far built awareness by sponsoring events, such as marathons in its core markets. It’s a strategy that will continue in Oklahoma.
“We try to find our core drinkers that way,” Desai said. “And we’re investing very heavily in sampling.”
Eight off-premise dollar sales (-22.5%) and volume (-22.5%) declined double-digits in NIQ tracked channels, including liquor and convenience, for the 52-week period ending January 27. Desai acknowledged that lapping the brand’s launch was “a tough hurdle year.”
“[W]e built a solid foundation of brand loyalists and established what the Eight brand stands for,” she said. “We’re excited to continue to build our base of drinkers this year.”
Desai added that it’s too early to draw many conclusions from the early 2024 data. However, she noted that Eight’s trends are up +4% in the on-premise channel, and up slightly in the on-premise year-to-date.
Eight is set to nearly triple its footprint in Walmart stores during the spring resets, Desai shared. She described that as a “vote of confidence” from the big box retailer.
Grocery chains HEB and Kroger remain Eight’s top retail partners. Grocery, club and mass market, as well as the on-premise, remain the priority channels for Eight.
“It’s a tough battle,” she said. “But we’re outperforming some of these brands in our strongest markets, which is encouraging to see.”