Next week, more than 13,000 beer industry professionals are expected to travel to the 2018 Craft Brewers Conference, held in Nashville, Tennessee. The four-day event (April 30 to May 3), taking place at Music City Center (201 Fifth Ave South), officially kicks off Monday evening with a welcome reception at Fifth Avenue of the Arts (201 Fifth Avenue). Brewbound has selected 11 can’t-miss talks to keep you engaged during the week.
The Brewers Association (BA) is doubling down on its efforts to help small breweries distinguish their brands from those owned by larger beer companies such as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. The non-profit trade association, which represents the interests of small and “independent” breweries producing fewer than 6 million barrels of beer annually, yesterday launched a website for retailers to download a variety of point-of-sale materials that feature the group’s “independent craft brewer seal.”
Boston Beer Company has returned to growth. The company — which makes the Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard, Twisted Tea, and Truly Spiked & Sparkling products — today reported its first-quarter 2018 earnings, which were highlighted by double-digit revenue and shipment growth.
In an effort to further establish itself in the high end craft beer category, Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Co. will launch a new line of premium-priced beers in the third quarter of this year, Duvel USA executives told Brewbound.
Brewbound’s first Brew Talks meetup of the year is less than one week away, and the official agenda has been released. The evening’s first panel, starting at 4:30 PM CDT, will feature Dogfish Head vice president of marketing Neal Stewart, Boulevard vice president of marketing Natalie Gershon and Trillium Brewing co-founder Jean-Claude Tetreault. Then, at 5:45 PM CDT, Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione will join Brooklyn Brewery vice president of sales and marketing Dave Duffy, Lowes Foods senior category manager Charles Slezak, and Dave Williams, the director of analytics for The BWC Company, in a discussion on the evolving retail environment for craft.
Building on its efforts to promote a more inclusive brewing industry, the Brewers Association (BA) today announced the appointment of Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham as its first diversity ambassador.
Leaders from the beer industry’s three largest trade associations are vowing once again to unite brewers and distributors in an effort to return the category to growth. Speaking to a group of nearly 700 U.S. beer distributors attending the annual National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) legislative conference on Monday in Washington, D.C., Beer Institute CEO Jim McGreevy called on industry members to work together to curb volume losses.
Draft beer now accounts for nearly two-thirds of all on-premise beer volume, according to the Beer Institute’s (BI) annual State-Level Packaging Report, released today. Last year, 61.7 percent of all beer sold on-premise was poured on draft — a 1.8 point share gain — which the BI said is the highest on-premise draft share ever recorded.
In this week’s edition of Last Call: A Massachusetts A-B wholesaler is cleared in a pay-for-play case; New Holland buys a building in Battle Creek for a third Michigan brewery; Sony sues Knee Deep Brewing over Breaking Bud; and more.
Fast-growing Massachusetts-based Night Shift Brewing will open a second brewery and taproom on the first floor of the building that houses the Converse World Headquarters, Brewbound has learned. Located at One Lovejoy Wharf, the new location will include a 10-barrel brewing system and have the capacity to produce upwards of 2,500 barrels, co-founder Michael Oxton told Brewbound.
Felipe Szpigel, president of A-B’s High End, told Brewbound that more of his division’s craft breweries will be releasing 15- and 18-packs in the next couple of months.
Downtown Boston is getting another summer beer garden, thanks to Mayor Martin Walsh and the City of Boston, Wachusett Brewing Company, and Delaware North, a hospitality company owned by Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs. Dubbed “Boston Seasons” and located at City Hall Plaza, the new pop-up beer garden, ice cream shop and mini-golf course will open May 4 and operate seven days a week throughout the summer.
Atlanta’s New Realm Brewing has won a bid to acquire the brewing equipment assets currently located inside Green Flash Brewing’s former production facility in Virginia Beach, sources told Brewbound.
While widely known market research firms IRI Worldwide and Nielsen have been able to accurately track large volumes passing through major grocery, convenience, and chain retailers, information from upwards of 50,000 off-premise independent retail accounts has been more difficult to access. Those days could be coming to an end, if 3×3 Insights, an upstart New York-based retail analytics company, which launched earlier this year and is backed by the founder of Priceline.com, is able to successfully scale.
