A group of investors has acquired Willie’s Superbrew after a tumultuous several months for the Boston-based hard seltzer brand.
The acquiring group, Superbrew Acquisition Corporation (SAC), is led by Amos Beason, managing director of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Seward Capital. Craft Business Daily (CBD) first reported the acquisition.
Other investors involved in SAC include Eric Low and Marcia Hooper. Hooper is a Boston-based leader of three investment firms (Bowside Capital, Branch Venture Group and HooperLews, according to her LinkedIn profile).
“We did it because we believe in the liquid,” Beason told Brewbound. “We think it’s the best liquid of its kind.”
The group plans to bring Willie’s fruited hard seltzers back to retailers by next spring after an absence from the market. A team of seven or eight will handle daily operations, Beason said – “lean and mean with a focus on the liquid,” he added.
“Our hope is that we can get everything finalized by the end of October, which is probably aggressive, so that we can have production starting this winter so we’d be shipping next spring,” Beason said.
As part of the company’s next phase, Beason said Willie’s priority is “to nail and crush the answer to the question ‘What is a superbrew?’” referring to the name Willie’s christened its products with after its 2018 rebrand. After rebranding from Farmer Willie’s to Willie’s Superbrew, the company shifted production from ginger beer to “superbrews,” a self-defined hybrid of hard cider and hard seltzer.
Although Beason said the new Willie’s portfolio will be “slimmed down a little bit, at least initially,” he called out Real Ginger + Lemons and Juicy-Hazy-Hopped as flavors that will feature prominently in the brand’s future.
Confusion about Willie’s status still swirls around the brand. Willie’s has not posted to its Facebook or Instagram profiles since April 4, when it promoted a beach cleanup at the Jersey Shore in partnership with a local environmental nonprofit.
The product finder tool on the brand’s website has been deactivated. Reached by phone today, a Massachusetts liquor store clerk said his store had not sold Willie’s recently and the store’s beer buyer said the brand had folded.
SAC, a Wilmington, Delaware-based LLC, was incorporated on June 30, according to Delaware’s division of corporations, about two and a half months after Good Beer Hunting reported that nearly all of the company’s staff had been laid off.
However, co-founder and former CEO Nico Enriquez disputed the report to CBD on April 12, admitting that an unquantified number of layoffs were made to put the company “in a spot where it can succeed in the future.” Willie’s had “hit a cash cliff,” which forced the job cuts,” when an investor backed out after getting “cold feet,” he said.
Speaking to CBD in April, Enriquez said he, CFO Jason Halsted, chief sales officer Lee Schill and chief brand officer Greg Owsley were all still employed.
In mid-May, Schill posted on LinkedIn that he was promoted to CEO. In a comment on the post, Enriquez congratulated Schill on the promotion and called it “an honor to hand you the keys” and added “you are going to kill it.”
At the time, Enriquez did not return multiple requests for comment from Brewbound.
This month, Schill updated his LinkedIn profile to indicate that he is now the director of commercial strategy for Diageo Beer Company and added that he is “very excited to be back with Diageo.”
Following the 2018 rebrand, Willie’s produced 50,000 case equivalents (about 3,629 barrels) in 2019 and 115,000 CEs (around 8,346 barrels) in 2020, Enriquez told Brewbound in August 2021. He declined to share production numbers for 2021.
In October following Owsley’s hiring, he and Enriquez told Brewbound they planned to double Willie’s sales in 2022 and complete the brand’s East Coast distribution footprint. As part of that plan, Owsley guided the brand through a packaging refresh that more visually aligned the brand with its beachy roots, renamed its variety packs and launched Beach-ade hard lemonade.
Citing a former employee, Good Beer Hunting reported in April that Willie’s began to show signs of financial stress in March, as the company was forced to “buy back out-of-code products as well as inventory with the previous packaging, which reportedly cost it more than leadership had anticipated.”
Those issues were coupled with retailers cutting back on hard seltzer brands beyond the segment’s top heavy players, a deceleration in hard seltzer and cider sales this year, and a shift among consumers to spirits-based, ready-to-drink canned cocktails.
Year-to-date through August 7, off-premise dollar sales of hard seltzer have declined -9.6% at multi-outlet food and convenience stores, according to market research firm IRI. Those trends accelerated over the four-week period ending August 7, as hard seltzer dollar sales declined -12.4% compared to the same period last year. Hard seltzers hold a 9.8% share of beer category dollar sales, a decline of -0.91% year-to-date (YTD).
Cider, which is much smaller than hard seltzer, has also declined (-5%) YTD through August 7 and holds a little more than 1% of beer category dollar sales, according to IRI.
In 2018, Willie’s won Brewbound’s annual Pitch Slam competition during the trade publication’s end-of-year business conference.