The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) this month announced the acceptance of a $420,000 offer in compromise from Constellation Brands’ Crown Imports LLC subsidiary. According to the TTB, between January 1, 2016, and April 25, 2019, Constellation used a third party to make illegal payments to retailers in an effort to secure draft beer placements.
In this week’s edition of Last Call: There Colorado breweries are set to close; Sierra Nevada asks breweries to honor their Camp Fire pledges; U.S. beer shipments decline in April; Boston Beer delays its downtown Boston taproom opening; and more news.
Texas craft brewers’ efforts to legalize beer-to-go sales is closer to passage than ever before. On Wednesday, Texas Senators unanimously passed sweeping legislation to maintain operations of the state’s alcohol regulatory body, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC), along with several changes to the state’s alcoholic beverage code, including an amendment that would permit a majority of the state’s manufacturing breweries to sell their offerings for off-premise consumption.
In episode 37 of the Brewbound Podcast, Villa discusses his days of brewing and selling the iconic Blue Moon brand, and shares his outlook for the future of cannabis-infused drinks.
A number of small brewery transactions have emerged this month, as craft breweries across the country fight to remain competitive in an increasingly more crowded industry.
Despite months of rumors to the contrary, Stone Distributing Company (SDC) is not for sale. In a memo to employees last week, Stone Brewing CEO Dominic Engels sought to quash talk that the San Diego craft brewing company was attempting to offload its distribution business.
After 12 years of debating North Carolina’s self-distribution and franchise laws, brewers and wholesalers are one step away from their compromise being written into law. On Monday, the North Carolina Senate voted 38-3 to approve the Craft Beer Distribution and Modernization Act (House Bill 363), which the House approved in mid-April. The legislation now advances to Gov. Roy Cooper.
The U.S. beer industry was responsible for creating more than 2.19 million jobs that paid more than $101 billion in wages and benefits in 2018, according to a joint study released today by industry trade organizations the Beer Institute (BI) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).
Nearly a year after imposing aluminum and steel tariffs against Canada and Mexico, the Trump administration today officially lifted levies imposed upon the two longtime trade allies. Ending tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Canada and Mexico marks a significant moment for the beer industry, as about 43 percent of aluminum used by U.S. beverage companies comes from Canada, according to Washington, D.C.-based trade group the Beer Institute (BI).
How might a lender approach the funding for your brewery expansion? In many cases, it’s possible the individual underwriter will not be intimately familiar with the brewing industry, which means you must prepare your business and loan application in anticipation of facing headwinds. This column explains four financing methods for owners to consider.
The Texas Craft Brewers Guild’s effort to legalize beer to-go sales inched closer to reality this week, when powerful lobbying group the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas (WBDT) agreed to back a measure that, if passed, would allow consumers to purchase up to a case of beer a day from the Lone Star State’s manufacturing breweries.
In episode 36 of the Brewbound Podcast, Edelson and Boerema discuss the opportunities and challenges of running a brewpub chain at a time when brewery taprooms have become so popular, and explain how they see the taproom-focused business model evolving.
A minority activist investor in Craft Brew Alliance (NASDAQ: BREW) has sent a letter to the brewery’s board of directors urging the company to consider a sale. David Cohen, the founder of Boston-based private investment fund Midwood Capital Management LLC — which owns about 2 percent of CBA’s outstanding shares and currently has about $70 million under management across 20 different small cap-stocks — believes CBA “must seek a sale to maximize shareholder value.”
Starting in June, nine U.S. states will begin receiving limited shipments of popular but hard to obtain craft beers via a new program called “Guest Brewer.” Brew Pipeline, a so-called “direct-access platform” started by Steven Kwapil and Trip Kloser, is playing matchmaker for craft breweries and wholesalers through the Guest Brewer program. Kwapil and Kloser have tapped industry veteran Marty Ochs — who served as Ninkasi’s director of sales between 2009 and 2013 before launching his own craft beer consultancy — with curating the program’s portfolio of breweries and building its network of wholesalers.
