Two years after selling her startup to Anheuser-Busch InBev, Meg Gill, the co-founder of Los Angeles-based Golden Road Brewing, can’t imagine life without the support of the world’s largest beer company. “There’s a lot of complexities involved with a big partner, but it’s been an amazing journey for us,” she recently told BevNET’s Taste Radio podcast.
Last month, San Diego’s Novo Brazil Brewing was named the winner of Startup Brewery Challenge 9, held during the Brewbound Session conference in Santa Monica, California. But the business pitch competition – which gives entrepreneurs four minutes to showcase their brands for a chance to win $5,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Portland, Oregon – also featured four other emerging brands.
In this week’s edition of Last Call: Summit downsizes its workforce; A-B reconsiders its 3.2 beer portfolio; Nebraska looks to tweak its come-to-rest provisions; and more.
A task force formed earlier this year to examine Massachusetts’ decades-old alcohol laws has unveiled a lengthy report that offers 37 recommendations to “improve the operations” of the state’s Alcohol Beverages Control Commission (ABCC). The suggestions — which the task force made after reviewing laws in other states and meeting with ABCC officials, alcohol industry members and consumers — include modernizing franchise laws, increasing excise taxes and clarifying pay-to-play rules.
New Belgium will finish 2017 “flat to slightly up,” which newly appointed CEO Steve Fechheimer considers a victory in a crowded craft beer industry that has slowed to single-digit growth.
Crooked Stave owner Chad Yakobson wants his wild and sour ales to be more “approachable and available” in 2018. To that end, the Denver-based brewery began transitioning a handful of its core releases from large-format bottles into 6-packs of 12 oz. cans earlier this year.
In his column for Brewbound Voices, Andrew Zender, the founder of ‘The Beer Label Guy,’ highlights some of the common mistakes that can slow the beer label approval process and outlines some of the label changes that require breweries to submit a new COLA.
In this week’s edition of Last Call: President Donald Trump makes tax reform law; Left Hand seeks $6 Million in damages in White Labs lawsuit; the Beer Institute releases November domestic tax paid estimates; the Brewers Association offers to pay to return lost kegs; and more.
Lawrence A. Katz is a shareholder and Kristen E. Burgers is a principal in the Tysons, Virginia, office of Hirschler Fleischer. In their column for Brewbound Voices, Katz and Burgers provide an overview of the bankruptcy process and discuss the tools available to a debtor in bankruptcy.
Propelled by the continued growth of flagship session offering All Day IPA, Founders Brewing reported this week that it would produce approximately 468,000 barrels of beer in 2017, up from about 348,000 last year. The Michigan-based craft brewery, which sold a 30 percent stake to Spain’s Mahou San Miguel Brewery in late 2014, and now ranks as the ninth largest brewery in the U.S., was “pleasantly surprised” to exceed its initial projections, co-founder and CEO Mike Stevens told Brewbound.
Seven months after purchasing Speakeasy Ales & Lagers out of receivership, new owner Cestra “Ces” Butner has reconstructed the company’s California distribution network and reopened the San Francisco brewery’s taproom.
The U.S. Congress voted along party lines to pass the Republicans’ $1.5 trillion rewrite of the federal tax code, which includes two years of excise tax relief for alcohol producers and importers. The bill now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law before the end of the week.
Brew Hub has hit the pause button on an ambitious plan to spend $100 million to build five new contract brewing facilities throughout the U.S. by 2018. “Building a new brewery in another geography doesn’t seem as strategic as it did four years ago,” Brew Hub CEO Tim Schoen told Brewbound.
The Beer Institute (BI) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) have made an early New Year’s resolution: improve beer category health. The boards of directors for the two industry trade organizations each passed resolutions earlier this month pledging to work together with other industry players in support advancing the beer category and reclaiming market share from wine and spirits.
