Craft Brew Alliance today announced it has signed a letter of intent to form a strategic partnership with Appalachian Mountain Brewery, a publicly traded craft brewery based in Boone, North Carolina. Although specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, CBA told Brewbound the two companies will explore ways to “drive business growth and shareholder value through sharing resources in key strategic areas.”
Maui | Stone Craft Beverages, the Hawaiian distribution arm jointly owned by Stone Brewing and Maui Brewing, has built out its portfolio and is now selling 21 craft brands throughout the island of Maui, the company announced today. The company, which launched in February, sells a curated lineup of beers and ciders from California, Hawaii, Colorado and Oregon, refrigerated “through every link of the distribution chain.”
Acclaimed San Diego brewer Tomme Arthur is launching yet another brand of unique craft beers. Already lauded for his popular Port Brewing and Lost Abbey offerings, Arthur and his team plan to launch a third distinct line products in 2015 under the ‘Hop Concept Brewing’ moniker.
What sets J.J. Taylor Distributing apart from other wholesalers is what president and general manager Jay Martin calls “the three P’s.” “It’s our people, it’s our portfolio, and it’s our planning process,” he says, while conceding “I guess you could say some of that sounds cliché-ish.” Perhaps, but it’s helping the Florida distributor move beer in a growing, albeit underdeveloped market.
Brewbound is pleased to invite all Brewbound Session attendees to the official Brewbound Session welcome reception on Wednesday Dec. 3, the evening before Brewbound’s bi-annual business conference at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa in San Diego. Sponsored by Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and Moss Adams LLP, this year’s welcome reception will be hosted at Modern Times Beer, located at 3725 Greenwood St., San Diego, Calif.
Perhaps the most startling fact from the Wall Street Journal’s recent report on the state of Budweiser is that, by Anheuser-Busch InBev’s own admission, nearly half — 44 percent — of 21- to 27-year-old drinkers have never even tried the beer. To bring young drinkers back to the brand, A-B InBev, the article adds, plans to trot out some “distinctly un-Budlike” marketing in the next year to appeal to the highly sought after millennial demographic.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling that requires chain establishments with more than 20 locations to list caloric information on their menus may have left a significant gray area for craft beer. The new ruling, announced Tuesday, affects both on-and-off-premise establishments, including chain restaurants, movie theaters, vending machines as well as grocery and convenience stores serving prepared foods.
Somehow, amidst all of the growth and excitement in cider, the category’s second-largest producer, Woodchuck, is suffering. Sales are in a downward spiral. In the six-month period ending Aug. 31, parent company C&C Group’s U.S. volumes fell 21 percent. Operating profit is down almost 90 percent and production of Woodchuck has declined 29 percent.
The state of Virginia and Loudoun County are together awarding $80,000 in grants to aid an effort to build the Mid-Atlantic region’s first ever commercial-scale hops processing facility. Black Hops Farm LLC will itself invest $1 million to convert a 15-acre pasture in Leesburg into the state’s largest hops yard to operate in conjunction with the processing plant.
Florida’s Office of the Attorney General has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit that calls into question the constitutionality of the state’s long held and controversial ban on 64 oz. growlers. Currently, 32 and 128 oz. growlers are legal in the state, but 64 oz. packages, which are most commonly used for sales of take-home draft beer, are prohibited, something that many argue is harmful to the burgeoning craft beer industry.
It’s hardly news that craft beer is incredibly popular among the millennial demographic. But it can be hard to market to them armed with that information alone. As such, the bulk of Thursday’s “Power Hour” conference call, hosted by the Brewers Association, was spent further dissecting this demographic, specifically highlighting the untapped potential there is in the Hispanic population of young drinkers.
Brewbound is pleased to announce that video playback from Brew Talks Connecticut is now available. The business and networking meetup, which took place at Two Roads Brewing on Tuesday, Nov. 18, featured two engaging conversations with Connecticut-based beer industry experts.
Whoops, file this one in the retraction column. Apparently the Russians aren’t actually buying Pabst Brewing Company. In September, it was widely reported that Russia’s Oasis Beverage was teaming up with TSG Consumer Partners, a New York-based private equity firm, and beverage entrepreneur Eugene Kashper to buy the Pabst brand from C. Dean Metropoulos for upwards of $750 million.
In light of disappointing third quarter earnings results, Anheuser-Busch InBev has laid off an undisclosed number of U.S. employees, according to Market Watch. The cuts include salaried positions in a number of divisions, the report adds, from marketing, procurement, sales, and brewery operations. While the specific number of layoffs is unknown, one person close to the matter estimated it could be in the hundreds.
