Brewbound is pleased to announce that Brian Mulvaney, the senior vice president of Bank of America’s beverage finance group, will speak at the upcoming Brew Talks meetup. The event will take place at Golden Road Brewing in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. Mulvaney, who is actively involved in financing the growth of many emerging craft brands, will share his outlook on the craft sector and explain investment strategies for breweries looking to expand.
Today, Brewbound is excited to release the first glimpse of a project many months in the making: Learning Curve, an online documentary series produced in collaboration with Good Beer Hunting, showcases the entrepreneurial adventures of craft beer companies throughout the U.S.
The combination of low interest rates, explosive growth, and a surplus of buyer capital has led to a transformative time in the craft beverage alcohol industry, particularly in craft beer. As transaction advisors to the beverage alcohol industry, we’ve worked on numerous transactions over the last several years. This experience has afforded us the opportunity to understand the investment rationale of buyers as they evaluate entering, or growing, in the beverage alcohol industry. While there are many factors that are considered when making an investment in a beverage company, one common thread in all transactions is the strength of the brand.
Ninkasi Brewing is expanding its reach in the east once again. The rapidly growing craft brewery, based in Eugene, Ore., today announced it would add permanent distribution throughout the Philadelphia area next month. In a press statement, the company said it had signed agreements with Gretz Beer Co. and Penn Beer.
Upland Brewing will invest $4 million to expand its sour production capabilities, the Indiana-based craft brewery announced today. Using a combination of bank debt, cash flow and equity financing, the company acquired the property adjacent to its original brewpub last year, and recently began initial phases of demolition and construction on a new cellaring facility.
In what can only be deemed a search for the country’s sandiest beach, Maui Brewing today announced plans to expand distribution to Florida, signing with Cavalier Distributing for coverage throughout the state.
MillerCoors has tabled plans to release a new summer seasonal ale after some wholesalers — including those on the company’s distributor council — criticized the new introduction. The company will instead release “Blue Moon Belgian Table Belgian Pils,” it told distributors today.
Bayhawk Ales, the oldest brewery in Orange County, Calif., is being rebranded as Evans Brewing Co. This isn’t just any recalibration. This is the result of a lost proxy battle and the hostile takeover of a public company. But now, under the Evans name, the company, which is in some ways new and in some ways old, is finally looking towards the future.
Remember the class action lawsuit from earlier this year that alleged MillerCoors was deceptively brewing and marketing its Blue Moon Brewing line of craft products? Well, on Wednesday, a California judge all but dismissed the suit, saying that the company’s use of the Blue Moon Brewing Company name on its label “shielded it from liability under California’s consumer protection laws under safe harbor doctrine,” according to Law360.
It’s been nearly 16 years since Boulevard Brewing altered its appearance, but in an effort to appeal to more consumers in more places, the Kansas City-based brewery is now beginning to test new packaging designs. Over the next several months, the company plans to introduce new labels, designed in partnership with Helms Workshop, a Texas-based strategic design studio that has worked with beverage clients like Austin Beerworks, Spencer Trappist Brewery and Southern Comfort.
Oskar Blues is now nearly national. The Colorado-headquartered craft brewery today announced expanded distribution in Mississippi and Utah, bringing the total number of states where it sells beer to 46. The company has signed with four distributors in Mississippi — Clark Beverage Group, Stokes Distributing Company, Capital City Beverage and FEB Distributing — and M&M Distributing (part of Admiral Beverage) in Utah.
Casual burger chain Red Robin is beefing up its beer program, installing more tap lines and remodeling all locations with a new “gourmet burgers and brews” logo on the outside of its restaurants. To help bolster its reputation as a craft-savvy chain, Red Robin inked a three-year sponsorship of the Brewers Association-run Great American Beer… Read more »
Coca-Cola Company today signed a letter of intent with Great Lakes Coca-Cola Distribution L.L.C., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reyes Holdings, granting the company exclusive rights to sell and distribute Coca-Cola products in four new states.
Consolidation in the wholesaling business continued today when two prominent multi-state distributors of beer, wine and spirits — Chicago-based Wirtz Beverage Group and New York-based Charmer Sunbelt Group — announced a merger and the creation of a jointly owned venture, Breakthru Beverage Group. The two companies have signed an agreement that will combine their beverage alcohol operations into a new entity and simultaneously create the second-largest distributor of beer, wine and spirits in the U.S., with sales of more than $6 billion annually, behind Southern Wine & Spirits.
