A new report from Bart Watson, the BA’s staff economist, found that an influx of female drinkers, greater engagement in the Hispanic market, and geographic diversity of brewery locations have played pivotal roles in shaping a more well-rounded craft consumer base.
Rogue Ales & Spirits has hired Jim Schembre, the former Monarch Beverage and World Class Beer general manager, as its new vice president of sales. Schembre, who has served on Rogue’s Board of Directors for the last eight years, will immediately replace outgoing Rogue VP Steve Irwin.
Having finalized agreements with seven wholesalers in the state, Boulevard Brewing will expand its distribution throughout South Carolina by the end of the month, the company announced today. The brewery, which was acquired by Belgium-based Duvel Moortgat in 2013, has inked deals with Lee Distributing, Comer Distributing, Greenco Beverage Co., Beverage South, H&S Wholesalers, Better Brands, and Crown Beverages, per company statement.
Oskar Blues will continue its ‘aggressive’ expansion efforts next month when it launches new distribution in Missouri via a wholesale arrangement with Major Brands Inc. The Longmont, Colo.-based craft brewery — which also owns and operates a secondary production facility in Brevard, NC — yesterday announced it will broaden its footprint, launching draft and can packages on November 10 with a string of market blitz initiatives and kick-off events.
The most popular hop of tomorrow won’t go under trellis today. That is to say, to innovate in the hops market is to play long odds. The Simcoe hop, for instance, was nearly torn completely out of the ground and discarded as a failed experiment. Perrault Farms just couldn’t sell the aromatic hop during the early aughts.
Founders Brewing is about to make a $35 million bet on its projected growth over the next five years. The Michigan-based craft brewery announced Tuesday that it will expand its production facility in Grand Rapids, adding 57,000 sq. ft. of brewing, fermenting and office space in two phases.
File Under: Crazy. Remember back in December when a Vermont woman was charged with illegally selling five cases of Heady Topper, the highly touted Alchemist-brewed double IPA, on Craigslist, netting nearly $1,000? Remember?
To kick off the their second annual national distributor meeting, CBA-Con, held today in New Orleans in the wake of the NBWA gathering, the company blared the kind of musical mashup that would only make sense to a room full of Bud wholesalers who just happened to spend the previous evening drinking ice chests of Widmer Hefe and dancing to Daft Punk.
Though a partnership has been in the works for two years, Saint Archer Brewing is now finally set to expand distribution throughout the San Francisco Bay area with DBI Beverage Inc. Beginning October 6, the San Diego brewery’s four core offerings will be made available throughout San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Truckee, Chico, Ukiah, Stockton and Napa in the canned 6-pack format as well as in 22-ounce bottles.
Three craft brewers and one ‘big beer’ executive walk into a room of beer distributors at 9:00 a.m. One of them pulls out a vaporizer. I forget how the rest of that joke goes, but everyone ends up laughing. That was the scene this morning at the 77th annual National Beer Wholesalers convention, being held in New Orleans.
A couple years ago, Ballast Point foresaw a distribution footprint that would include 35 states. In the words of chief commercial officer Earl Kight, however, the company is “still stuck” at 26. It’s not that the San Diego brewery hasn’t grown: Ballast Point made the Brewers Association’s list of the 50 largest craft brewers for the first time this year, having sold 88,204 barrels in 2013, up 86 percent over the previous year.
Another top-50 craft brewery has sold a piece of its business to private equity. Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing today announced that it has sold minority interest to TSG Consumer partners, a private equity firm that invests in middle-market consumer brands.
Attention beer geeks! Your next pint of Pliny could be coming from Paso Robles. Russian River Brewing, the award-winning craft brewery from Santa Rosa, Calif. today announced that it will produce a limited amount of its acclaimed flagship, Pliny the Elder, under an exclusive contract partnership with Firestone Walker Brewing.
Highland Brewing is investing $5 million into a facility expansion that will enable the company, which is based in Asheville, N.C., to boost annual capacity by 60,000 barrels and create additional jobs. Backed by bank loans and some gradual tax incentives offered up by the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County (EDC), the brewery plans to occupy an additional 30,000 sq. ft. of its current building with new tanks and a bottling line.
