Less than a year after opening a $50 million U.S. production facility, Scottish craft beer makers BrewDog have embarked on a $10 million crowdfunding campaign to fund its U.S. expansion plans. BrewDog announced the campaign last week in a video in which founders James Watt and Martin Dickie drop stuffed cats from a helicopter on Wall Street in order to “openly mock the caricature of the Wall Street fat cat banker.”
In this week’s edition of Last Call: President Trump says he may support bill to end the federal marijuana ban; new brewery trademark lawsuits emerge; breweries close in Colorado and New Hampshire; and more.
At the urging of Constellation Brands, California’s Markstein Beverage Co. has sold the beer company’s distribution rights in northern San Diego County to Reyes Beverage Group for an undisclosed sum. In a memo to employees issued on Wednesday, Markstein Beverage president Travis Markstein announced that Constellation Brands had informed the San Marcos-based wholesaler in late April of plans to terminate their 23-year partnership.
Molson Coors today announced the acquisition of California-based Clearly Kombucha, marking the multinational brewing company’s first purchase of a non-alcoholic beverage brand. The deal was led by TAP Ventures, a division within Molson Coors’ enterprise growth unit that launched last year and is tasked with identifying investment opportunities outside of the traditional beer segment.
An electrical contractor was severely burned Tuesday afternoon while trying to repair equipment at Trillium Brewing Company’s production facility in Canton, Massachusetts. According to Canton Fire Department Chief Charles Doody, the independent contractor was exposed to “boiling liquid and suffered significant burn injuries on a large portion of his body” just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was flown by medical helicopter to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Denver-based Tivoli Brewing has announced plans to shutter its 6-year-old distribution business over the course of the next 60 days.
Heineken USA today announced that Maggie Timoney, who currently serves as the CEO and managing director of Heineken Ireland, will take over as CEO of the international beer maker’s U.S. division starting September 1. With the appointment, Timoney, a U.S. citizen who got her start in the beer business in 1993 as a sales supervisor for New York’s Sound Distributing Corporation, will become the first female CEO at a major U.S. beer company.
U.S. beer dollar sales increased 4.1 percent as volume sales grew 2.1 percent through the four weeks ending May 20, according to retail data provider IRI Worldwide.
Ryan Sentz has handed over the Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery in Boca Raton, Florida, to family friend and homebrewer Allen Steen, who is transforming the space into the Robot Brewing Company & Quixotic Lounge. Sentz, the founder of Funky Buddha, told Brewbound that the transaction, which was finalized about a month ago, gives Robot Brewing the lounge’s 1-barrel brewery and neighboring homebrew supply shop for “zero dollars.”
As the clock turned to midnight, the exemption on aluminum and steel tariffs expired on Canada, the European Union and Mexico. The levies imposed by President Donald Trump — 25 percent on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminum — will now be collected from the nation’s trade allies, who have subsequently threatened to impose their own tariffs on U.S. exports. Brewbound stopped by the Beer Institute’s Washington, D.C., offices to discuss the news with CEO Jim McGreevy. Watch the video above.
In this week’s Last Call: Stone Brewing files an injunction against MillerCoors and terminates its sponsorship deal with NOFX; the New York state Liquor Authority fines Boston Beer for unregistered products; Good City Brewing announces plans for second brewery near Milwaukee Bucks’ new arena; and more news.
Following months of turmoil, Green Flash Brewing Company has identified its next chief executive. The San Diego-based craft brewery, which was sold to a new investor group last month, today named former Anheuser-Busch executive Michael Taylor as its new CEO.
Yazoo Brewing Company plans to break ground in mid-June on its new, six acre, 30,000 sq. ft. destination brewery in the Madison neighborhood of northeast Nashville. In a conversation with Brewbound last month, Yazoo founder Linus Hall said he is targeting a spring 2019 opening for the new facility. He added that a development group is under contract to purchase the land where Yazoo’s current facility, in Nashville’s The Gulch neighborhood, is located.
In this edition of People Moves: Avery Brewing’s COO resigns, and the Boulder, Colorado-based craft brewery lays off six workers; Wormtown Brewery names a new general sales manager; Heineken USA forms an new sales operations team; and more industry personnel moves.
