We’re less than two months away from our next Brewbound Session, and the team is excited announce its initial lineup of speakers for the December 1 event. The Brewbound Session, a full-day business conference for serious brewery professionals, will gather more than 200 attendees to discuss important industry issues and exchange ideas while learning strategies for success in the most competitive sector of the alcohol beverage category.
Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller are officially drinking buddies. On Monday, A-B InBev closed the year-long merger saga, acquiring its one-time rival for $100 billion.
Citing slower growth and an increasingly more competitive craft beer landscape, San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company today laid off more than 50 employees as part of what it termed a “restructuring.” Cutbacks extended across the entire organization, Brewbound has learned, including personnel in sales, marketing, media, administration, and production. In a statement, new Stone CEO Dominic Engels, who joined the company on September 6, blamed the downsizing on “recent declines in domestic growth for the category and for Stone.”
Cult beer maker Russian River Brewing will begin building its final brewery in Sonoma County sometime next year, co-founder Vinnie Cilurzo told Brewbound during last week’s Great American Beer Festival.
Brooklyn Brewery said Wednesday it had struck a two-pronged deal with Japan’s Kirin Brewery that would include the sale of a minority stake and the establishment of a new joint venture in Japan. As part of the two companies’ capital partnership, the Japanese beer company will acquire “an approximately 24.5 percent stake” in Brooklyn Brewery, according to a press release posted on the Kirin Holdings website.
As conglomerates scoop up more craft breweries, what are the ramifications for those who don’t sell out? That’s what a quartet of well-known craft brewery figureheads tried to address last week during a panel discussion at the 2016 Great American Beer Festival.
The brothers behind popular Massachusetts craft brewery Jack’s Abby are launching a new beer venture, Springdale Barrel Room, which they claim will be the largest barrel-aging program in New England.
The Brewers Association will change the way it processes Great American Beer Festival applications in 2017 after the group made a critical error that forced festival organizers to revoke one popular Ohio brewery’s “Mid-Size Brewing Company of the Year” award and give it to another brewery. Late Saturday evening — hours after the BA handed out 286 medals to 254 different breweries — festival organizers discovered their mistake and informed Fat Head’s Brewery that it had been stripped of its coveted “Mid-Size Brewing Company of the Year” trophy, with the award going to Karl Strauss Brewing Company instead.
Denver’s River North District is developing so fast that it pushed out one of its pioneers. Matthew and Jessica Hess’ River North Brewery was forced to move out of its namesake neighborhood when the property’s landlord decided to transform the space into luxury condos and apartments.
The shakeout of the MegaBrew deal will begin to be felt in Eastern Europe.
A new company that aims to provide small craft breweries with both growth capital and operating assistance has launched, and it has recruited a well-known industry veteran in the process. The company has tapped longtime beer industry veteran Adam Lambert — whose career includes sales and marketing stints at Virtue Cider, New Holland Brewing, Dogfish Head and Rogue Ales & Spirits — as its chief operating officer.
Behind last year’s $1 billion bet on Ballast Point, Constellation Brands Inc.’s big foray into the craft beer marketplace is beginning to pay off.
Amid declining production at its Redhook brewery in Woodinville, Wash., Craft Brew Alliance has laid off at least a dozen of the production employees who worked at the facility, Brewbound has learned. Reached for comment, CBA chief operating officer Scott Mennen confirmed the cutbacks, but declined to say exactly how many employees were let go, saying only that it was “about half” of the brewery’s production, packaging, warehousing, maintenance and brewery operations workers.
Georgia may not technically allow production breweries to sell beer directly to consumers, but if and when it does, Monday Night Brewing will be ready: It’s planning to open a large tasting room as part of a $2 million satellite brewery expansion.
