A month away from its eighth anniversary, Cape May Brewing Company is quickly growing into one of New Jersey’s largest craft breweries. Last year, Cape May achieved “regional brewery” status — those breweries making between 15,000 and 6 million barrels of beer annually — increasing production by 75 percent, to 16,269 barrels, according to the Brewers Association. Speaking to Brewbound, Ryan Krill — who co-founded the brewery with his father, Bob, and friend Chris Henke in 2011 — said the company is on pace to sell as much as 23,000 barrels in 2019.
Mass Bay Brewing Company’s release of Arctic Summer hard seltzer also coincides with a search for the company’s first chief marketing officer, something co-founder and CEO Dan Kenary considers to be “the most important external hire” the 33-year-old company has ever made. Speaking to Brewbound, Kenary said interviews for a CMO are underway, and he hopes to hire someone who can “roll up their sleeves” and not “ask someone else” to do their work by the end of the summer.
An Illinois-headquarter maker of industrial, commercial and residential kitchen appliances has bought into the brewing equipment business. The Middleby Corporation today announced the acquisition of CM Brewing Technologies LLC, the parent company of California-based brewing system maker Ss Brewtech.
BrewDog USA is outpacing the overall craft segment (which is up about 2 percent), growing depletions (sales-to-retailers) 114 percent through May compared to last year. Last month alone, the company sold 51,000 cases, according to chief revenue officer Adam Lambert.
In the latest Last Call: Michigan’s Axle Brewing is searching for a buyer, as the company prepares to close its Ferndale-based taproom at the end of June. Also, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to sign beer-to-go measure into law on June 15, and more industry news.
The on-again, off-again effort to improve category health through an industry-wide campaign for beer is on once again. During the Beer Institute’s annual meeting, held Tuesday in St. Louis, president and CEO Jim McGreevy said the industry’s three top trade associations — the BI, the Brewers Association (BA) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) — have agreed to launch a pro-beer marketing campaign this summer. Category health was just one of several themes to develop during the two-day meeting, as multiple speakers touched on the growth opportunity in home delivery of food and booze, as well as the growing number of jobs open in the manufacturing and hospitality industries.
In episode 40 of the Brewbound Podcast, Athletic Brewing co-founder Bill Shufelt discusses his outlook on the emerging non-alcoholic beer sector in the U.S., and the occasions in which his products — and others like it — play.
In this month’s Beer Business Finance column, Wormtown Brewery CFO Kary Shumway digs into the details behind craft-on-craft consolidation and looks at the key numbers that shape a deal.
The Brewbound team hit the 2019 SAVOR event to ask several brewery owners — including James Beard Award winners Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and Rob Tod of Allagash Brewing Company — and other industry stakeholders how SAVOR and events like it help elevate the beer category.
The discussion of several headwinds facing the industry dominated the Monday afternoon session at the Beer Institute’s annual meeting in St. Louis. Beer Institute president and CEO Jim McGreevy opened Monday’s General Session and discussed several issues currently facing beer companies, including the effort to make permanent federal excise tax relief in the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, as well as the impact of tariffs on beer companies, and competition for market share with wine and spirits companies.
An important summer selling period is drawing near, and Brewbound has you covered with some of the most recent category data from market research firms such as Nielsen and IRI, as well as industry trade groups the Beer Institute (BI) and National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).
In this week’s Last Call: Heineken makes a minority investment in Amsterdam’s Oedipus; Bumble announces plans to open a brick-and-mortar bar in SoHo; the SEC lifts its ban on alcohol sales at sporting events; the future of Breckenridge’s brewpub is uncertain; and more news.
Alcohol producers’ efforts to make excise tax relief permanent reached another milestone today, as a majority of Congress now supports the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA). In a joint announcement, seven alcohol industry trade groups said a bill to permanently enact tax cuts for alcohol producers and importers now has 218 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In episode 39 of the Brewbound Podcast, Osterman shares his perspective on the current state of contract brewing in the U.S., and explains how Sleeping Giant competes for business at a time when some well-known regional craft players have opened up their breweries for contract opportunities.
