Staring at IRI’s latest spreadsheet isn’t exactly the most exhilarating way to spend a Thursday afternoon, but it can reveal some pretty interesting nuggets. Take this one, about Not Your Father’s Root Beer (NYFRB): The brand that everyone seems to be talking about, nonstop, is now the 11th best-selling “craft” product in IRI’s multi-outlet and convenience store (MULC) universe (which includes grocery, drug, Wal-Mart, club, dollar, mass-merchandiser and military stores).
Deschutes Brewery has named Veronica Vega, who started her career with the company in 2006 as a tour guide, its new brewmaster. In the position, Vega will head up the brewery’s research and development initiatives, alongside fellow brewmaster Brian Faivre, who leads Deschutes’ technical brewing operations, the company said.
When your brewery has experienced double-digit growth for the last 17 consecutive years, you’re bound to field a few offers. So it should come as no surprise, then, that the world’s largest brewery recently tried to arrange a formal sit down with one of craft’s most revered “indie” brewery owners: Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione.
As Night Shift Brewing continues to carve out its own niche in the Greater Boston craft beer scene, the brewery is spending much of its fourth year in operation expanding capacity and beautifying its facility.
It took more than eight months, but Dogfish Head has finally found its new vice president of sales. The company today announced that Todd Bollig, who most recently spent 16 years with Constellation Brands, will fill the long-vacant position left behind by Adam Lambert, who departed the company last November to pursue a new opportunity with New Holland Brewing.
Yet another established craft brewery is setting up shop in Denver’s flourishing River North neighborhood. This time, it’s Great Divide, which is scheduled to officially open its ‘Barrel Bar,’ a 30 to 40-person taproom with patio space for a 100 more along the South Platte River, on July 31. But that’s just the start of the project.
The U.S. beer industry contributed $253 billion to the American economy and supported 1.75 million jobs in 2014, according to the latest “Beer Serves America” report, jointly commissioned by the Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association. Findings from the study, which is released every two years, will be presented to Hill staffers, policy makers and members of the press during a Congressional briefing later this afternoon.
One of Oregon’s top beer distributors is investing behind its portfolio of craft offerings. Oregon City’s General Distributors Inc., a 3 million case-per-year outfit that delivers beer to 11 counties in the greater Portland area, last week announced plans to launch a dedicated “craft & specialty team” that will “position the company for future growth and success.”
Craft beer volume is up 16 percent at the midway point of 2015, according to a recent Brewers Association (BA) report. Year-to-date through the end of June, U.S. craft brewers sold approximately 12.2 million barrels of beer, per the BA’s data, up from 10.6 million barrels sold during the same period in 2014.
Alltech, a global biotech company focused on human and animal nutrition, has acquired two European craft breweries. Earlier this week, the company announced the purchase of The Station Works Brewery in Ireland and Cumberland Breweries Ltd. in England.
Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewing is reportedly planning to go public. Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, said Sweetwater is “in talks with banks about a stock market flotation that could come later this year and value the company in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” The news comes just one week after SweetWater made two key executive changes.
Anheuser-Busch InBev today announced it has agreed to purchase R. Ippolito Distributing, a 700,000 case A-B wholesaler based in Staten Island, New York. The transaction is expected to “close shortly” and specific terms were not disclosed.
A recent Nielsen survey aimed at “getting inside the minds of craft beer consumers” was outlined during today’s Brewers Association Power Hour conference call. 52 percent of all respondents considered beer a “strong fit” with the description “craft.” That’s compared to just 25 percent for spirits, 20 percent and less than 10 percent for items like coffee, juice, and chocolate.
Rapidly outgrowing its original facility, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery has announced plans to construct a $28 million production and packaging campus alongside Virginia’s Tuckahoe Creek.
