Brewbound Podcast: Barrel One Collective Execs Discuss Deal That Merged Harpoon and Smuttynose

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love Bay Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with the Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head to Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch the Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. Next on the Brewbound Podcast, leaders from Harpoon Bay and Smuttynose share why they merged. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall. I'm Jessica Infante. And we do not have a Zoe Licata this week because she is out with a cold and doing other things. So get well soon, Zoe. But you will be hearing from her in our featured interview this week. Jess and Zoe both recorded with Barrel One Collectives, Dan Kenary and Steve Kierstead.

[00:01:08] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, it was a really great chat and we packed a lot into a short amount of time. It went well. It went well. Really interesting to talk to those guys.

[00:01:17] Justin Kendall: This is a story that you broke during the sort of in-between holiday, right? In between Christmas and New Year's?

[00:01:24] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, this one broke on New Year's Eve. And it's an interesting one because we had been hearing, I had been hearing rumors for like months and I was very persistent and I hope very polite. And I assume probably annoying, but I would just, you know, buzz the two of them every couple of weeks, be like, hey, just curious. And they were really nice about it. We had a lovely laugh about it. They were like, you're just doing your job. And I was like, I am just doing my job. Thank you for recognizing that. But yeah, this is huge. I was listening to our podcast last week that I sat out on for a couple of different reasons, one being in a moving vehicle and two, also having a cold. And you and Zoe and Sean talked a lot about how 2024 was the year of the New England merger. little did we know what... Well, we knew this was happening at some point, but to get confirmation that this... The mother of all the New England mergers, this roll up brings, I think, 14 brands under one roof, proverbial roof, because there are actually eight roofs. There are eight brewery taproom locations across four different states. But what we're talking about here is the combination of legacy craft brands in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, We've got the combination of Harpoon, Smuttynose, Long Trail.

[00:02:49] Justin Kendall: You're going to be quizzed, so you better... Oh, so I should stop?

[00:02:52] Jacqui Brugliera: Oh, boy.

[00:02:52] Justin Kendall: No, like, there's just so many of the brands to even say within this. You've got Duncan Spiked, you've got Rightcoast Spirits, you've got... Five Burrows. You probably said Otter Creek, you know. I didn't say Otter Creek.

[00:03:05] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. We got into it a little bit in our chat with Dan and Steve, like what these brands have meant to a New England craft drinker. Harpoon and the collective, we didn't get into this part, but the collective takes its name from the fact that Harpoon has Massachusetts Brewers License 001. And they are super proud of that. So my husband, before he was my husband, he spent a summer as a tour guide at Harpoon, which is funny because I spent much time as a tour guide at Sam Adams and we would always kind of compare tour notes. And that's something that they always would love to boast about. Like, hey, we've got brewing license 001 because we have Bay Brewing in Massachusetts longer than Sam Adams, which is true. Sam Adams is technically older as a brand, 1984 versus 1987. six, I believe, but Jim Cook was contract brewing before it was even really a thing. So they weren'Bay Brewing beer en masse and Harpoon was. So the name of the combined company is Barrel One Collective. As we just said, a shit ton of brands ranging from craft beer to Duncan Spiked to they've got a couple of different RTD things. And it's going to be really interesting to see where this goes and what comes of it.

[00:04:14] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing the interview. I haven't heard any of it as of this recording, but for me, MassBay has been acquiring assets or launching new brands throughout my time here at Brewbound. I remember, you know, writing about their acquisition of Clown Shoes way back when, like 2017. And it's crazy to even think about that now. And I remember seeing the Clown Shoes brand in like an independent liquor store in Des Moines, Iowa. Like it was one of those brands where I was like crossing through, visiting back home from when I was living in Kansas City. And so I would cross through Des Moines, I'd stop in, I'd see, you know, what toppling Goliath they had at the time and what, whatever. And I remember seeing bottles of clown shoes way back then, which I was like, how, you know, in hindsight, how did this reach Des Moines?

[00:05:07] Jacqui Brugliera: That is banana pants to me. And I also feel like it's like a total cautionary tale of how we got to where we are in 2025. Like if you're like your Massachusetts craft brand is being sold in Iowa. But you know what, that's like, that's what the past decade was.

[00:05:26] Justin Kendall: I mean, this is a conversation we had with Rob Todd at Brewbound Live, and it's a topic that has come up with him about, you know, shotgunning your beer everywhere and then retrenching. And then you see them being far more established going back into markets or opening new markets like in Colorado with our friends at Elite.

[00:05:45] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, and I would say not every brand can do that. I assume if you were shotgunning your beer out to distributors and retailers 10 plus years ago and it wasn't selling, I mean, maybe there's different people at those distributors and retailers right now, but I would assume you probably burned up a lot of goodwill. But Allagash is somebody that I would say has pretty much endless goodwill throughout the industry and the country. So they can do something like that. But yeah. This merger is big and it makes them the largest craft brewing entity in New England. According to last year's BA production data, I think the combination of brands sits at just over 165,000 barrels. So they are leapfrogging what is now Handler Bay Brewing, which is the rollup of Jack's Abbey, Wormtown. and night shift, which was prior to... You could have said that 2024 was the year of mass acquisitions before this even happened. It's just been an ongoing thing. There's the Henler Bay Brewing Combo, there's Lone Pine and Lord Hobo, and now there's this. So offices are based in Boston, breweries are all over the dang place.

[00:06:53] Justin Kendall: And for the person out there who is like raising their hand and saying, what about Boston beer and dogfish?

[00:07:00] Jacqui Brugliera: That was five years ago, homie.

[00:07:01] Justin Kendall: Please bring them up to date on why they're not the largest.

[00:07:05] Jacqui Brugliera: Oh, well, yes. So all of that production is not happening here. That is in Briningsville, Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Milton, Delaware, with a couple other much smaller brewing outlets in various other places like Los Angeles. the Hudson Valley of New York where Angry Orchard has an establishment. But for the most part, all of that production is happening elsewhere. The production for Barrel One mostly is going to be happening... You know what's funny? I'm going to interrupt my own thought here. We're having this whole conversation, but all of their brands, we didn't even bring up Wachusett. But they are also in this mix.

[00:07:44] Justin Kendall: And UFO.

[00:07:45] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. And UFO, which hasn't always been a standalone, but in recent years it is. So production for the Barrel One Collective brands is going to happen at Harpoon Brewery to start in Boston and Windsor, Vermont, which is interesting to me because Finest Kind, which is the parent company of the Smutty Crew, was on their own buying spree. Smutty knows how to acquired Five Burrows out of Brooklyn a little over a year ago, and they were going to start making that beer to scale in New Hampshire at Smutty. And then Smuttynose acquired Wachusett, which was right around a year ago right now. And they were moving Wachusett production over to Smuttynose in Hampton, New Hampshire, and keeping Wachusett's Westminster Mass Taproom open, but not doing much production there. But now they have the Mass Bay facilities, which are big enough that the Hampton, New Hampshire, the Smutty Brewery is going to pause production for a little bit.

[00:08:44] Justin Kendall: Which is crazy to me because if we want to rewind, there's so many different facets to this story. And one of them is that Smuttynose is essentially the first real crack. in the craft brewing foundation that I can really point to because it was the first sort of regional big-ish brand in sort of like the mid-2010s era to be sold off at auction and later acquired by this venture capital firm. But that to me was sort of like, wow, you know, like there is a chink in the armor here.

[00:09:28] Jacqui Brugliera: And that even predates my time at Brewbound. So that was a while ago, like 18 maybe?

[00:09:34] Justin Kendall: Yeah. I remember driving to the auction and watching it take place at the brewery and then having the results like flip. And there were so many like twists and turns to that one where it was like, you thought you had an owner and you didn't. And then there was this other potential owner that emerged and then, you know, death settles. And I think it's like runny made investments was the winner.

[00:10:00] Jacqui Brugliera: That sounds a lot like another brewery auction that I can think of that, frankly, I would have gone to if I knew we were covering auctions live and in person, but I assume that fell by the wayside with COVID.

[00:10:11] Justin Kendall: Driving distance was a little different when I lived in the Boston area.

[00:10:14] Jacqui Brugliera: Well, that too. Yeah. I mean, they're not that far from us. And fun fact about Smutty, it's actually one of the first breweries I ever visited. We visited Smuttynose, we visited what had been a combo taproom of Red Hook, Kona, and I think Widmer because CB, the former Craft Brew Alliance hadn't even acquired Cisco and that place got branded as Cisco and then they had some news of their own a couple weeks ago that they were closing the taproom facility there.

[00:10:44] Justin Kendall: Yeah, AB is still doing production.

[00:10:48] Barrel One: This episode is brought to you by the Craft Brewers Conference, where big ideas, bold beers, and brutally honest shop talk collide. Join thousands of industry pros leveling up their game. Don't miss it. Register now at CraftBrewersConference.com.

[00:11:08] Justin Kendall: some quick hits here before we get to our featured interview, but the Surgeon General's advisory was issued last week. It was a call by U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, saying that he recommends adding cancer risk labels to alcoholic beverages. And he also asked for, quote unquote, a reassessment of the guideline limits for alcohol consumption to account for cancer risk. And that comes as the U.S. dietary guidelines for 2025 are still being hashed out. We have one of the two big reports on those so far. And here we have a surgeon general that likely isn't going to have a job for very much longer, given the change in administrations. throwing out this advisory and also stating that there is a quote-unquote direct link between consuming alcoholic beverages and increased risk of cancer for at least seven types.

[00:12:14] Jacqui Brugliera: This is like on the far other end of the spectrum from when the National Academies released their report a couple weeks ago. I think we've always kind of known the murmurs of like alcohol and cancer risk. That's always kind of been a thing, but specifically the risk of breast cancer, like alarming to me as somebody that potentially, you know, could have that kind of cancer. It's not in my family or anything, but you know, as the owner of boobs and someone who knows a lot about alcohol, like alarming to me that I've never heard about that. And it's big too. I want to say the National Academies report called it a 10% increased risk and the Surgeon General pulled out some data that showed 16%. Like that's big. So I don't know, the coverage of the National Academies report, we talked about this. I felt a little weird about it because everybody, you know, that report concluded that there's not really any difference in terms of all-cause morbidity. There's not really a lot of difference between non-drinkers and moderate drinkers. So everybody was like, yeah, we can drink and you might not die. But everybody else having this conversation kind of ignored that, that the risk of breast cancer was there. And I still didn't feel right about it then. But to hear what the surgeon general is saying is, It's something. I don't think we're going to get to a point where we're putting warnings on labels.

[00:13:35] Justin Kendall: That's up to Congress. That's a Congress decision. And I would be shocked if that's something that actually happens right now. What the warning labels are about pregnancy and drunken driving, right?

[00:13:49] Jacqui Brugliera: Right. And how many people ignore those? So, yeah. I mean, I do think a lot of the financial coverage over the weekend noted that stock prices of publicly traded bevel companies kind of took a dive, but that seems to have been a blip. We'll see. I mean, Dr. Murthy, just going out, proverbial guns blazing.

[00:14:12] Justin Kendall: And the other news item that we have up right now is that World Wrestling Entertainment has taken a minority stake in Hulk Hogan's beer brand, Real American Beer, it's a minority investment. They announced it on the day that they launched on Netflix. So WWE moved its flagship program, Monday Night Raw, to Netflix. And Hulk Hogan's Real American Beer will have branding on the ring mat. And this is really one of the first times that they've had branding on the ring mat. Previously, the prime bottle was featured in the center of the ring. Now it's a Fortnite logo. But anyway. Did you watch? I did watch last night. How did it go? It did not go well for Hulk Hogan. Oh. Because he was booed out of the Intuit Dome when he came out. which I don't know if I would have guessed, but he has a checkered record, to say the least, dating back to the mid-2010s when the company disassociated from him, pulled him out of their Hall of Fame for racist comments that he had made back in, I think, 2012. And I can't remember the dates for sure off the top of my head, but in the 2010s. And it's a more modern era of a wrestling watcher now.

[00:15:34] Jacqui Brugliera: Is the racism why the boos? Or has he done something else to piss people off?

[00:15:39] Justin Kendall: I don't know what it was. I don't know if you can just pin it on the racism and, you know, the racist comments that he had made and really not apologizing for it, you know, atoning for it. And then, I don't know if it was, you know, this is the Los Angeles audience and his appearances on the Trump campaign was something that went over unfavorably there, or if it's they just don't have the love, you know, anymore for him. It was one of those eye-opening moments where you're like, I am surprised that this is happening because this has largely been like a feel-good, thank-you show. Like, oh, we're on Netflix and here's like some nostalgia from the past. And this drew attention. It was not something where it was just like, it didn't get headlines variety reported. And the headline is Hulk Hogan booed heavily during Monday Night Raw Netflix debut. And it wasn't like, you know, wrestling's like good guys, bad guys, and Hulk Hogan has been both over time. But you know, when you reach a certain age, like even the bad guys like the Iron Sheik or whatever, they get cheered, you know, like, it's like a feel good to see him. This was not a welcoming moment for Hulk Hogan.

[00:17:03] Jacqui Brugliera: crazy to me. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but when this beer first launched, its stated goal was to be a beer for everyone. You know, I think it's one of those brands that has kind of been born out of the Bud Light controversy of 23. And it's not, you know, conservative dad, ultra right beer, where that was saying like, hey, like right wing peeps, like here's your beer. And Hulk Hogan was really saying, here's a beer for everyone. And then he very much did extremely politicized things, thereby negating what he had said.

[00:17:32] Justin Kendall: Yeah, it took a very right turn and he appeared at the Republican National Convention. He was at the Madison Square Garden rally for Trump and he was on the campaign trail with them and he showed up in Los Angeles with a shirt that said MAGA powers. Like there was photos of him with that and it had Trump, Vance, Hogan on the shirt.

[00:17:56] Jacqui Brugliera: He was sober for a period, right?

[00:17:58] Justin Kendall: The year before he launched the beer brand, he did a media tour discussing his sobriety. And then as far as like what the beer has done so far, it's generated 1.7 million in off-premise sales according to NIQ data cited by Bump Williams Consulting. And I can't remember the period it was through, but that takes you launches in June, So June to December ish, somewhere in there. So that's where it is. But WWE's in bed with Real American beer and clearly the fan base is feeling a certain way about Hulk Hogan, who is, I mean, he's the face of the brand. So you can read those stories, you can read our earnings recaps, which will be hitting the site probably on Friday for Constellation Brands and Tilray Brands, both reporting Friday, having moved that from Thursday's day of mourning for President Jimmy Carter, our AP, thank you for what you did for Craft Beer, but. Yeah, with that, we should probably get to our featured interview with Dan Kenary and Steve Kierstead.

[00:19:12] Jacqui Brugliera: Massachusetts continues to put the MA in M&A with the most recent blockbuster merger between Mass Bay Brewing and Finest Kind. The combined company is Chris and Beryl One Collective, and it includes 14 brands and eight breweries and taprooms across four states. Here to tell us all about it are CEO Dan Kenary and CCO Steve Kierstead. Dan, Steve, I know you're super busy, so I really appreciate you joining us. But first of all, how are you guys each doing?

[00:19:38] Harpoon Brewery: Doing well. Happy New Year.

[00:19:40] Jacqui Brugliera: Happy New Year, Dan. Thanks for joining us. Steve, how are you?

[00:19:44] Bay Brewing: We're good. Yeah, I mean, we've been working at this for a while, so I think Dan and I are both excited that we're finally out with the finish line here.

[00:19:51] Jacqui Brugliera: We were just chatting about how you think this might've been the worst kept secret in beer for a little bit, but I am just glad that this news is out in the open and we can all talk about it because it's an enormous deal. You know, you have rolled up a ton of brands. We can run through them all if you want, but by your estimation, this is the largest craft beer producer in New England. which is massive. We're close to 200,000 barrels. I want to say the number quoted was 165,000. And this is a lot. This is a huge, huge deal. And I've now said that a million times. So Zoe, why don't you jump in here?

[00:20:28] Dan Kenary: I think the most obvious question to start with is why did you want to create this collective of all these brands? This is a big undertaking of putting all these brands together. So why was this the right decision to make at this time?

[00:20:39] Harpoon Brewery: Steve, I'll jump in first and then you can correct me afterwards. How's that? You know, I heard of Steve over the years and heard only really good things about him. So we were talking to a number of other breweries, you know, that we've done some acquisitions in the past, Clown Shoes, Long Trail, The Shed, etc. Some people said to me, you need to talk to Steve Kierstead up and find this kind of smutty nose. And so we met late last spring, I think it was, and immediately just kind of, I felt like there was a kindred spirit of somebody who loves the beer business, loves craft beer in New England, you know, smutty's the OG in New Hampshire craft. You know, Harpoon is BrewingPirate01 in Massachusetts, we're the OG in Mass, and we own Catamount, Long Trail, the OG's in Vermont. It's like, man, we could really do something exciting together, putting together all these wonderful legacy brands. At the same time, these guys just, you know, completed acquisitions at Wachusett and Five Boroughs. And we said, you know what, if we come together here, we can jumpstart what we're both trying to do, which is to create this exciting platform here in the Northeast. And so the conversation went great, and one thing led to another. Always takes longer than you hope. But we finally got it over the finish line at the end of December.

[00:21:47] Bay Brewing: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think Dan summarized that well. I mean, first and foremost, you have to really kind of connect with people that you're going to be in business with long term and something of this scale. And we've looked at a lot of breweries and talked with a lot of folks, whether it be merger or acquisition. And as you know, we've acquired two recently that Dan mentioned. But one of the important things was really, you know, geography for us. And I think that was important to Dan as well. And we both have a large amount of resources in the New England market. So there were so many benefits outside of just that initial connection of being able to hit it off and have mutual respect for each other. And I've competed against Harpoon my entire career, particularly when I was at Long Trail. And it was like, serendipitous to be able to come full circle. I was at Long Trail for majority of my career and to be able to sell that brand again, there was just so many things that are exciting about this and that being one of them. We just felt like if we can combine resources, we're going to be stronger together than we are individually. And that was really what was the factor that got us over the finish line was like, let's do something that is special here in the industry in a region that we're both really already strong in, right? But from New York North is really where our strengths are.

[00:22:57] Jacqui Brugliera: Awesome. I mean, Dan, you mentioned these are all classic OG New England brands. And I don't know that I've ever had this conversation with either of you, but my dad passed when I was 24 before I even started working in beer. But one of my favorite memories that he and I have shared of me being a young adult was we used to go skiing together at Stratton, just the two of us. And before I was perhaps of legal drinking age, he would get a six pack for us to share at the condo. And I would ask for Long Trail because I was like, we're in Vermont, this is what we should have. So one of my last, probably too early times, I should have had a craft beer with him. I digress. M&A is such a hot topic right now, particularly in our area of the country. And you've said that you're open to adding to the collective. So when you think of a potential partner, what comes to mind in terms of size, portfolio, network, geography, you both have so much of that in common. Do you want to bolt on more of the same or are you open to adding brands from other parts of the country?

[00:23:56] Harpoon Brewery: I would say that we're you know geography is important to us. You know up and down the East Coast would be our primary. The markets we'd be looking at prime mid-Atlantic north size wise it has to be of enough heft to make sense. We all we have deal fatigue right now. Steve and I do for sure. So the idea of doing a lot of it's almost in some ways the same amount of work. If it's a 7000 barrel brief it's a 40000 barrel brewery. facilities, brands, people, retail, those are all really important to us. You know, the wholesale used to be in the, you know, you'd be focusing on wholesaler alignment and that's really nice in key markets. But I think we've found ways to kind of manage through that over time. Steve, did I miss anything there?

[00:24:37] Bay Brewing: No, I think that's spot on. I mean, a preference would be in the geography that Dan detailed. But I also think all of us that are involved in future M&A, we pick up the phone for any opportunity, right? Like we want to make sure that we're doing our due diligence and we talk internally about the strengths of whatever the opportunity is. And then maybe some challenges that that opportunity may have. But I think we're set up for larger acquisitions, meaning, you know, barrelage, 10,000 plus barrels than we are smaller, just due to size of facility, et cetera.

[00:25:10] Jacqui Brugliera: Awesome. Well, I apologize in advance for how much your phone's going to ring after this, because I feel like we've had quite a few podcast episodes where people tell us later on, everybody called me. But Steve, you mentioned production and that makes a lot of sense. So right now we're putting that on pause in Hampton, but how long is that expected to last? Could it be permanent? And is there the possibility to bring the Smuttynose Brewery back online sooner than expected if you do find other smaller partners?

[00:25:37] Bay Brewing: Yeah, I think you nailed it, right? The reality is based upon the volume that we need to fill the facility. And the sooner we do that, I think the better for all of us. We do have plans to produce product here, but not at a manufacturing scale that we were at the moment. I think there's many things. It could be contract, too. We could land a large contract partner and get this facility open very quickly, right? And I know a lot of people are looking for contract and really not interested in running their breweries anymore, a lot of folks, or consolidating contract to one facility rather than multiple facilities. I think we have a few things there, not just M&A, contract being the other one that could potentially accelerate reopening in a quicker fashion.

[00:26:16] Dan Kenary: The range in the size of all these brands is quite different. There's a lot of different brands. And like you said, a lot of them, these are pretty big legacy brands. I'm going to put my own anecdote and say that Harpoon IPA was the first craft beer that I ever had. So like locally, these are big, well-known names. What is your approach now moving forward with just your growth strategy for these brands? What are the priorities and focuses that you have moving on with this step with balancing all of those?

[00:26:45] Harpoon Brewery: Well Steve as CCO can take this one although I'll just use the one word we're talking about Steve which is focus right. But I'll let you take it from there.

[00:26:52] Bay Brewing: Yeah, we spent a lot of time, even though it's, you know, what, four business days old here on this merger. John Schwartz, our vice president of sales, he and I have worked very closely with the details around that. And we believe that there should be four priorities, but they're not priorities that are specific as a company. We're going to get down to the state level, right? Massachusetts priorities are much different than New York priorities. And we're going to dig in and lean into those top four priorities. That doesn't mean that We're not selling the whole book, right? Just like distributors, they have huge, enormous books selling, you know, 8 million cases annually, 10 million cases annually, but they have to focus on their priorities and what's important to them. We're looking at it the same way. And we're getting down to the state level detail of, okay, these are the priorities for this state. That doesn't mean that we don't sell the other items in the portfolio. And that could vary by state, right? Like New York, New York City, five boroughs is a large priority. However, we don't sell it in Massachusetts at the moment, right? So of course, it's not going to be a priority there. So we're being very specific and thoughtful about that approach. And we're keeping it to four major priorities in each state, depending upon where you are.

[00:28:00] Jacqui Brugliera: When you're selling a house of brands like this, like this conversation is making me think of sitting through an annual company meeting at my last job at Boston Beer, when Boston Beer was just starting to become a house of brands. And I want to say it was like 10 years ago. you know, like 80% of the brands in the family were all launching a new product with grapefruit. Which is tough because I was sitting among my friends in sales who were like, how am I supposed to walk in somewhere and sell like a million different varieties of grapefruit? So when you are selling broad families of brands, how does that change your approach to innovation?

[00:28:33] Harpoon Brewery: It's a great question. And, you know, one thing we talk about is the kind of pixie dust, like across our different breweries and the staff. We had a great sales luncheon last Friday up in Wachusick, bringing everyone together for the first time. And the ideas and energy flowing around the table, it was, I left fired up, Steve. I know you and I talked about that. People are brimming with ideas and you know things that work in certain geographies or with certain brands there can be resonance with other brands. It doesn't mean hey grapefruit is working here so it's going to work every place. I don't think that would ever be our approach. It'd be more you know the combination of some great exciting liquid potentially and then probably more of a sales approach to the marketplace because I don't we're not going to the resource to do blanket advertising in our brand building. That's the difference between us and Boston Beer for example. But we've got to work hard and we have to be creative and we have to be in the trade all the time.

[00:29:28] Jacqui Brugliera: We talked about this a little bit over email last week, and I think I botched the question a little bit thinking of what hospitality location you had in Worcester, but how does your hospitality strategy change in the future? Like I know, Dan, you said there's not gonna be every brand at every taproom, and I totally understand that, but will there be any crossover of brands and could any outlets be reconcepted in the coming years?

[00:29:52] Harpoon Brewery: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, really, to all of your questions in the sense that already in the Harpoon side, In Boston, we sell all the long-trail portfolio, and we do it here in Windsor as well. In Bridgewater, we don't. That's just a long-trail shed and auto creek facility. That's something, Steve, we're starting to talk about across the company, about what our approach is going to be to that. I think as of right now, each facility will have a single brand as far as how it's identified. This is the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor that I'm at right now. For example, Long Trails in Bridgewater, Stevis, Muddy Nose in Hampton, Wachusett in Westminster, Five Bars in New York. But over time, you could see that evolve. I think the first interesting conversation we're going to have is we're opening up a new retail outlet up in Manchester, New Hampshire later this spring. And that was all in the queue to be Harpoon branded. And we are having meetings this week, actually, to start the conversation like, OK, does that make sense, or should we consider something different? So we also have a job posting for a new retail czar or overall manager of the business. In other words, up to almost eight facilities this year, we need to bring in some serious senior management to oversee that side of our business. So there will be a lot of changes coming, I would think, starting later this year in our approach to those operations.

[00:31:15] Jacqui Brugliera: That sounds like a super fun job. So if you're listening and you're curious.

[00:31:20] Harpoon Brewery: Absolutely.

[00:31:21] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. And I know this has been a big part of Harpoon's culture at least, but Dan, what does this mean for MassBay's ESOP program?

[00:31:28] Harpoon Brewery: Yeah. Well, the ESOP unfortunately had to come to an end as part of this transaction. It was a, man, 10 and a half years, no one labored harder than me to kind of make it work. And we gave it our absolute all, but at the end of the day, it just didn't pan out for us. kind of as a result of our financial situation, the structure of the deal, ESOP effectively had to be terminated just prior to close. Are you happy to say that there was some cash in the ESOP? So there was almost a half million dollars paid out to participants, but it was certainly not the outcome that any of us had hoped for in 2014 when we took that on. But we're very, very proud of the work that we did. I'm still a great believer in employee ownership. It's unfortunate we had to take on the debt that we did to become employee-owned, and it's just something we never quite could get out from under.

[00:32:19] Jacqui Brugliera: Really hard programs to manage across the board. I feel like that's super common.

[00:32:23] Harpoon Brewery: And listen, we still, and I know the way Steve runs his company, we still intend to absolutely be very, very focused on our culture and taking great care of our employees. That's something, and Chris Broome, the owner of FinestKind, you know, myself, Steve, our other leadership team, we're not changing that approach to the way that we treat people. So, yeah, the ESOP's gone away, but the culture will hopefully remain every bit as strong.

[00:32:48] Dan Kenary: I wanted to get from you guys before we close here. I mean, you both have been working within craft beer in New England for a while now, and we've seen how that has changed. And there's been a lot, even just this past year, of change within the New England craft beer market, a lot of consolidation, a lot of movement there. From your perspectives, what is this next chapter era for craft in New England? What are we going to see from this region that is so craft heavy?

[00:33:16] Bay Brewing: I think the unfortunate reality is that there's not room for all of us in this environment that we're in. I think that's the unfortunate reality where there'll be more consolidation. There is some fortunate news there, right? There'll be consolidation. There'll be folks like us that are building platforms or acquiring or merging. On the flip side, there'll be folks that just go out of business, and that's sad, right? And I think that We've had this growth in the craft industry for over a decade and more of just new licenses every year, just out-trending licenses that are going away, and that seems to be going the other way now. That's too bad, but I think that we're going to be in an environment where this consolidation the more resources you have, the easier it will be to navigate these waters. I don't think that you read articles that beer is dead. I don't believe any of that. I know it's not true. There's no truth to that in my opinion whatsoever. I think we're in a cycle of a downturn. I think that it's just a cycle, just like there has been in the wine industry. Bourbon, 10 years ago, they said it was not going to be on the shelf, and now look at what's at the number two spirit in the country. So I just think that we're in a cycle that we have to weather the storm. And I think the folks that are going to be able to do that are going to come up stronger and us being one of them. And we're going to continue to be opportunistic and look forward and not look backwards.

[00:34:37] Harpoon Brewery: And I think it's actually a question for you all not to answer now but it does seem like this is happening more rapidly in the New England market. than elsewhere. And I don't know enough about the rest of the country, I guess, to know why that is. But when you think of the mergers that have happened in New England in the last eight months, pretty significant. And I just have not been reading about similar levels of activity elsewhere, although both Steve and I have gotten a number of calls since we announced from people from other regions of the country looking to set up calls with us to talk about how we did it.

[00:35:11] Dan Kenary: It's a question we've definitely asked ourselves a lot, and we haven't quite put an answer to it. And we don't know if it's just our bias of we're living here, so maybe we're paying more attention to it. But it does seem like there is something going on in this region where it's happening quicker.

[00:35:28] Jacqui Brugliera: I don't know if it's a byproduct of being more community minded. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about this at the beginning, like this is a small world, particularly in these six states where everybody knows each other. And there's generally, in my experience, been a willingness to help out and team up and assume that, you know, we can be greater together than we are apart. And now it sounds like I've trashed the entire rest of the country, which is not my intention.

[00:35:54] Harpoon Brewery: No, we will not tell. We agree. Other than New York, we love New York now.

[00:35:59] Jacqui Brugliera: Dan, what's your second favorite baseball team?

[00:36:03] Harpoon Brewery: I can't do that. The Cubs, sorry.

[00:36:10] Jacqui Brugliera: Funny. Well, you guys have so much to do. You're combining two gigantic companies. So we really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. We can't wait to see what's next for you. We are kind of sorry about how many phone calls you're about to get, but only kind of. And again, you know, I think we touched on what some of the brands in your books have meant to us. And we're just really excited to see what the future holds.

[00:36:34] Bay Brewing: Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you both very much.

[00:36:38] Jacqui Brugliera: And that is our show for this week. Thank you so much to Dan and Steve for joining us and really, you know, getting into the details of this very, very big deal. We really appreciate their time. Thank you so much to Zoe for joining the interview. Thank you to you, Justin, for everything you do to make this podcast happen every week. And another person who really makes this podcast every week is our audio wizard, Joe. Thank you all for listening. If you enjoy the Brewbound podcast, please like, rate, and review. Drop a comment because you can do that on Spotify now. And we will be back with a fresh episode next week.