Stone Brewing continues to fill out its leadership team under new CEO Maria Stipp.
The Escondido, California-headquartered craft brewery has named Tom McReavy its new senior vice president of sales, effective March 29, the company announced Thursday.
McReavy, who will oversee Stone’s sales division as well as Stone Distributing Company, joins the nation’s ninth largest craft brewery from Heineken-owned Lagunitas Brewing Company, where he led the brewery’s sales division for nearly four years, overlapping with Stipp’s time leading the Petaluma craft brewery.
“Tom comes to Stone Brewing with great experience,” Stipp said in a press release. “His super skills are chain retail expertise, distributor management and building awesome teams with superior talent.
“He is the type of leader that is low on ego, creates genuine connections with the team and encourages creative thinking for problem solving,” added Stipp, who took the helm of Stone in September 2020 after leading Lagunitas from January 2015 through February 2020. “We are thrilled to have Tom be a part of Team Stone.”
McReavy joined Lagunitas in May 2017 as VP of sales and was promoted to senior VP of sales in May 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining Lagunitas, he spent more than 13 years in various sales roles at Activision Blizzard, maker of popular video games Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.
McReavy’s addition marks the second hire in Stone’s reorganization of its sales and marketing teams, which had previously been combined under former chief commercial officer Dan Lamb, who exited the company earlier this month after the split made his role obsolete.
Under the new structure, McReavy will lead Stone’s sales and distributing division, while vice president of marketing Erin Smith, who joined the company on March 1, will lead the company’s marketing department. Also reporting to Stipp is vice president of strategy Zachary Keeling, who returned to Stone in October 2020 after a two-year hiatus while he earned a master’s in business administration. Before his departure, he held the title of director of strategy, planning and analytics.
No additional hires are planned for Stone’s executive team in the near future, a brewery spokesperson confirmed.
Stone’s off-premise sales have posted modest single-digit growth since the COVID-19 pandemic shifted consumer spending away from on-premise establishments. For the 52-week period ending February 21, the company’s off-premise dollar sales increased 8.3%, to $82.6 million, according to market research firm IRI. However, this growth trails the overall craft beer segment, which increased 16% during the same period, according to IRI.
Year-to-date through February 21, dollar sales of the brewery’s flagship offering, Stone IPA, increased 1%, to $2.7 million — an improvement over its -5.7% decline for the 52 weeks ending February 21. On a recent episode of Brewbound Frontlines, Stipp attributed the beer’s growth in Stone’s home market of Southern California to a drop in price to bring it in line with competitors’ pricing.
Meanwhile, Stone’s distribution arm is in the process of moving operations to a 110,000 sq. ft former Markstein Beverage Co. warehouse in San Marcos that features 100,000 sq. ft. of cold storage space. Operations at the new facility are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2021, pending construction at the building.