Brewbound Podcast: Brewers Association Changes, Lagunitas’ CEO Swap & a Brewbound Live Preview

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love City 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 Live. 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 Live at booth 956 during CBC. Next on the Brewbound podcast, we preview Brewbound Live. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:46] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante. And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:49] Justin Kendall: And this week we will be previewing Brewbound Live, as I mentioned at the top. So stay tuned for that. We've got a whole lot of news to get into, but first, how are you both doing?

[00:01:00] Zoe Licata: Ready for Brewbound Live.

[00:01:02] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Is that true or is that like an overestimation of where you're at at this point?

[00:01:08] Zoe Licata: That's like, I want it to be here because the buildup is always intense, so I'm ready for it to be happening.

[00:01:19] Justin Kendall: feel like you're, you're doing some visualization.

[00:01:22] Zoe Licata: Yeah.

[00:01:23] Justin Kendall: Manifesting it.

[00:01:24] Zoe Licata: Yeah.

[00:01:25] Justin Kendall: Yeah. I can live with that. Let's get into the news of the week and some not so great news at the Brewers Association. The organization is reorganizing and that has led to some staff cuts. They cut six positions, three of those on their senior leadership team, including Paul Gata.

[00:01:48] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I unfortunately can't say any of this is surprising. I know in their most recent stewardship report, revenue was down in a lot of key areas. So it can be hard to keep an organization this big afloat when your income is shrinking. And I think the beer world is really going to miss Paul.

[00:02:08] Justin Kendall: I would agree. And yeah, this is at a time when Kraft has been reeling and it is not unexpected. They said that the job cuts are 11% of their workforce. They, as I said, included three senior leadership positions and they have reorganized how they are structured on a senior management team. Going forward, there are going to be five reports to the CEO. They include VP of Events and Sales, Lacey Gaudier, VP of Operations, Dan Golobak, VP of Marketing and Communications, Anne Obenshain, VP of Government Affairs, Mark Cerini, and VP of Strategy and Membership, Bart Watson. And there's going to be a sixth role on the senior management team, and that's going to be held by Dr. J. Jackson Beckham. She's going to serve as member resources director and will report directly to Bart Watson.

[00:03:07] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I mean, unfortunate situation, but the BA, I think to their credit, has been very good at rolling with the changes ever since the pandemic. haven't been afraid to make internal changes and I've done it a few times. I hope those six people affected land somewhere quickly and we will see what happens with the new CEO. That's the one interesting thing here is making a very large change like this when you are going to have a new president and CEO potentially within the next six months, which could mean more change, you know, and I've lived through this. I've lived through so many department reorgs when The person at the top of the department was in flux. It's really stressful.

[00:03:51] Justin Kendall: Do we know before their next board meeting in December who the next CEO is? Just speculation wise, do you think that we'll know?

[00:04:00] Jessica Infante: I don't think so, but you know what? I don't know. I was going to say it's rare to make big changes like that at the end of the year like this, but that's not consistent with what we saw last week elsewhere. So yeah, who knows?

[00:04:13] Justin Kendall: Speaking of changes elsewhere, Heineken is changing CEOs at Lagunitas, Dennis Peake is leaving after five years, and Heineken Panama chief marketing officer Bernardo Spielman is taking over in January.

[00:04:28] Jessica Infante: Both of these stories broke late in the day on Thursday and we, you know, cranked them out. Not like old times, not going to lie. And yeah, Dennis has been leading Ligonetus for about five years now after Maria Stipp had left and was gone for a bit and then landed at Stone and she has since left there as well. But Dennis took the helm at a really challenging time for Kraft, which is the theme of this entire conversation. I went maybe a little too far into the numbers, but Lagunitas was producing over a million barrels in 2018, which was the year after Heineken finished acquiring it. Heineken-owned Lagunitas over two different deals, 50% in 2015 and the rest in 2017, 2018. With all of that sweet, sweet Heineken money, they were able to top a million barrels. They also topped a million barrels in 2019 and they have not been over that since. But there's a lot of different stuff going on in craft and that's not entirely, you know, anyone's fault. I think it's probably difficult to put out that much beer in the market that we're in. So this is not at all to say any of this belongs to Dennis, but Lagunitas was really interesting. Definitely caught my eye in the last round of scan stories I was writing last week in that their trends have been improving quite a bit, you know, from year to date. through early November to the last four weeks, you know, which is mostly just October, but they've been able to see a turnaround on a lot of their, their key SKUs. So that's interesting. And we'll see what continues to happen for them.

[00:06:02] Zoe Licata: And that's after them kind of walking back a rebrand, right, or refresh with their packaging, where they did that, that kind of re-imagining of what everything looked like and consumers were complaining about, like, not even being able to find Lagunitas on the shelf.

[00:06:15] Jessica Infante: Which was interesting to me because I didn't think it was that different.

[00:06:19] Justin Kendall: A refresh of a refresh.

[00:06:21] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Right? Like, I don't know, consumers, like, maybe, like, look.

[00:06:26] Justin Kendall: This is one of those situations too, where the larger company takes over and over time they have installed Heineken people at the top C suite positions, whether it's sales or marketing. And this is, this was a Heineken CEO appointment and this will be another Heineken CEO appointment. So they definitely do a lot of things in house.

[00:06:51] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And they also, they, for some leadership roles, they put them on a five-year assignment. I think that's super fascinating. You know, if you work in this company, you could kind of be anywhere. You could be in the Netherlands. You could be in Petaluma. You could be in Panama. And then you take on these roles for a fixed amount of time. And at the end, you kind of see where things are. I think that's kind of an interesting way to live.

[00:07:16] Justin Kendall: Well, you can't be in Chicago.

[00:07:17] Jessica Infante: You cannot be in Chicago.

[00:07:19] Justin Kendall: Anymore.

[00:07:20] Jessica Infante: Or in Portland.

[00:07:21] Justin Kendall: Yes.

[00:07:22] Jessica Infante: Or in Seattle.

[00:07:23] Justin Kendall: Yes. This is other locations that they have shut down and in most cases, all cases, probably auctioned off all those assets.

[00:07:34] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And then they're not alone in having to do this. This is pretty universal.

[00:07:39] Brewers Association: 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.

[00:07:59] Justin Kendall: Another change that we're seeing is Sapporo Stone is ceasing export operations for stone brewing, starting in 2025.

[00:08:09] Jessica Infante: Yeah, this story first broke in the drinks business, which is, you know, a bivalve trade publication across the pond in the UK. Broke last week. They shipped to about 50 markets and they are going to stop in 2025. The bulk of them are in Europe. There's 33 countries in Europe that they distribute to, 10 in Asia. And then the rest are throughout the rest of the world, nothing in Africa or Antarctica. Sorry to the penguins who were maybe hoping for Buena Vista, but not coming. And this caught my eye because it was like, all right, here we have a situation where an American craft brand partnered with an international brewing conglomerate. And you would think that maybe they would do more of this, but no, they are doing none of it and checked in with them. And they said that they did a more robust export business when they had international taprooms. So they had Stone Berlin, they had a stone taproom in Shanghai. And I think that probably did a lot to generate local interest in the brand in those places. But famously Stone Berlin is now in the BrewDog family. That happened in 2019, like long before the pandemic.

[00:09:19] Justin Kendall: The beer Jesus giveth.

[00:09:21] Jessica Infante: And the beer Jesus taketh away. I don't know what just came out of my mouth, but I don't think it sounded right. Yeah. If you want to hear more about the Stone Berlin saga, check out the Beer Jesus from America documentary about the whole ordeal. Basically, they announced that they were going to do this in 2014. They opened in 2016 and they closed in 2019. millions and millions of dollars in overrun for construction and delays and enough to sink the operation. Then the Shanghai taproom they opened in 2018 and closed in like the first week of March 2020 for a variety of reasons that you can imagine.

[00:10:04] Justin Kendall: That story's also up at Brewbound.com. You can read that. You can also read our latest exclusive three up, three down with three tier beverages. The Chicago based data and consulting firm gives us exclusive reports every quarter and we bring them to you. So one of the benefits of being a Brewbound insider. Let's get into Brewbound Live. We are. A few weeks away still. The calendar hasn't flipped to December yet, and I think that we have a stellar lineup, and I'm very excited about this year's Brewbound Live. I'm looking at the site, and by the time you're listening to this, it will be two weeks out. Let's go through some of the agenda items and we're going to start on day one. You're going to get the Pitch Slam to kick things off. That's where we're going to have 11 up and coming brands compete in a shark tank like competition. And we've got an expert panel of judges. We just added the buyer from Applebee's to our judging panel there. We'll have buyers from Whole Foods on the panel. Last year's Pitch Slam winner, Samuel Chuinga from People's Republic of South Central will be one of the judges as well. So it's always a fun competition and it's great to see these up and coming brands and really get to know what's next in this bedock space.

[00:11:34] Jessica Infante: A lot of our past winners have really gone on to do some great things. Crowns and Hops, Lunar, Funkytown, Sunboy.

[00:11:43] Justin Kendall: Appalachian Mountain Brewery. The list goes back quite a ways, but even if you don't win, there are some standouts in there. I always throw out Athletic Brewing as one of those standouts because Bill Shufelt competed on the stage. They did not win. They have clearly gone on to be quite successful.

[00:12:04] Jessica Infante: they've been all right.

[00:12:05] Zoe Licata: Bit of an understatement.

[00:12:07] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:12:07] Zoe Licata: Or even Crooked Owl was a hard to podge a brand that was in last year and they got some great connections with Whole Foods after participating. So it's just brings a lot of awareness to some of these new brands too.

[00:12:18] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:12:19] Justin Kendall: Well, we're going to open up with our keynote speech this year. It is going to be given by Russian River co-owner, Natalie Cirluzzo. She's going to talk about how Russian River made plenty of the younger an experience and experiences are so important in any industry at the moment. Consumers want them. This is one year round that has just nailed it. And Natalie is going to talk about how they did it, why they did it, and how you can possibly create your own annual event.

[00:12:52] Jessica Infante: I would just like to share that Cora Corbett is wearing her Pliny the Younger hoodie at daycare right now. Cute. Coolest kid in the classroom, I'm sure.

[00:13:02] Justin Kendall: Definitely. 100%.

[00:13:06] Zoe Licata: I'm really excited for Natalie's talk because I mean, one, Natalie is just a tremendous human and it's great to listen to her. But also the Pliny the Younger release is kind of like old school craft still. It's like where people used to line up all the time for beer releases and that doesn't happen as much anymore. But Pliny still exists. People are still going for that beer. And so Natalie can really speak to like why that is, how they're able to sustain that even in this new age of Bevalk.

[00:13:36] Justin Kendall: And then we are going to have a presentation by Lester Jones and Jennifer Hawk from DraftLine. Lester, of course, is from the NBWA, and they're going to talk about the on-premise channel and really what the opportunity is with draft.

[00:13:52] Jessica Infante: totally a hot topic in beer this whole year. And Jennifer is absolutely the lady to talk to about this. So I'll be super excited to hear exactly everything they have to say. And I'm really looking forward to hearing the audience questions that come in about this.

[00:14:08] Zoe Licata: Oh yeah, definitely. We had a little prep discussion about this a couple of weeks ago, and they're going to dive into some regional trends too and see what specifically is going on in certain markets. So it's a little bit more detailed than some of the broader on-premise conversations we've been hearing throughout this year.

[00:14:25] Justin Kendall: Very excited for this one. And DraftLine has proprietary data that they get, so it's going to be a lot of great stuff that you probably haven't seen elsewhere. Then we're going to have a chat, a fireside chat with the leadership team from Suntory. We're going to talk about their playbook for winning in the fourth category. We've got Christian McMahon, former Wachusett, former a lot of different things.

[00:14:51] Jessica Infante: Former Boston beer.

[00:14:53] Justin Kendall: Yep. Chief growth officer now for Suntory. And we are also going to have Satoru Shimizu, the president of Suntory's RTD North America company. So very excited to speak with both of those guys. And then we're going to have a special lunch thanks to them. And a whiskey bar.

[00:15:12] Zoe Licata: Yeah, there's some kind of a mysterious nature because we're not really handling that part of what's gonna go down at that lunch. So I'm excited to see what that looks like. They're setting up some things, we've heard. Physically setting up things.

[00:15:30] Justin Kendall: We talked about experiences at the top. It will be an experience. We've got a packed afternoon too. We've got a distributor conversation that we're going to have with Jennifer Grant from Mark Stein Sales, Lauren Dahl-Schieder from Dahl Distributing, and Rebecca Mizell from Gulf Distributing, who is also the NBWA chair. So I think we're going to get a lot of great perspective on what distributors want.

[00:15:53] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and across those three different wholesalers, not only do we have a bunch of geographic diversity, we've got the Gulf Coast covered, we've got Iowa, we've got California, but between the three of them, they have, I think, almost any supplier you could think of is in at least one of their houses. huge, huge insight on what they're seeing out there in the world and what they want from their suppliers. I always enjoy this panel because I think it's a really great way to get direct feedback from not necessarily your wholesaler, but a wholesaler. And that should hopefully help inform the conversations you need to have. You learn how they like to be communicated with. It's just a really, really great way to take a look under the hood of what these really important relationships can be.

[00:16:33] Justin Kendall: And a subject I think that they're going to be speaking about a lot is intoxicating hemp, Delta-9 beverages, hemp-derived THC-infused beverages. And we're going to have a conversation with Climbing Kites co-founder Scott Selix, Chris Herron, who is the co-founder of Creature Comforts in Georgia, but also of BevStrategy LLC, which is this new consulting firm that they've really taken on the distribution in the South for climbing kites. And then Ryan Bandy from Indeed Brewing, who was a fast mover in THC hemp.

[00:17:12] Jessica Infante: It'd be interesting to hear his takes on the Minnesota market because that's really, I think, the test case for everybody. Whether or not their lawmakers intended to, they certainly paved the way. And it's been really interesting to watch that whole segment develop there. It's like a little lab almost.

[00:17:29] Justin Kendall: We'll have a whole lot more on day one, but let's talk a little bit about day two. And we're going to start the day with a conversation on Focus featuring Deschutes CEO, Peter Skrbek, Mary Giver from Whole Foods Market, and Brian B.K. Kruger from Bump Williams Consulting.

[00:17:46] Jessica Infante: I just want to see what sneakers Mary's wearing.

[00:17:48] Zoe Licata: You know, always a highlight. But yeah, it's quite a way to start day two. I mean, that focus has been like the word of 2024 from any ABPs or quarterly calls that we're listening to to even we're recording a bunch of interviews with folks right now. And so many times I've heard people be like, we are doing well because we have focused. So yeah. It's the word. It's what everyone needs to be doing right now. And I mean, Mary Guyver will tell you exactly how to do that with retailers. She will not hold back there. And BK from Bump Williams Consulting will have the data to back that up. Peter has what they're doing at Deschutes. So it's going to be a really great way to start day two.

[00:18:28] Justin Kendall: They may be a little bit more focused than Sazerac with their book of 500 products.

[00:18:34] Zoe Licata: Just a little bit.

[00:18:36] Justin Kendall: And then we've got a fireside chat with Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head, and he's going to talk about keeping craft vibrant and really why he's excited and not so scared these days about where dogfish is heading into its 30th year.

[00:18:52] Jessica Infante: And I hear he might be bringing a surprise and some new news. So stay tuned for that.

[00:18:58] Justin Kendall: Yeah, definitely some great stuff there. We've had a lot of stuff up on New Belgium recently, and we're going to get a different perspective. You've heard their CEO. He's been out there everywhere, but you haven't heard much from Rebecca Dayanishunis, the new CMO. And we're going to dive into marketing with speed. And Zoe, you're going to be taking the reins on this conversation with Rebecca and Zach Francis from Beatbox and Julie Rhodes.

[00:19:26] Jessica Infante: I am actually running that one.

[00:19:27] Justin Kendall: All right.

[00:19:28] Jessica Infante: pumped for it. I had two different prep calls because as you can imagine, this crew is super busy. So when we chatted last week, it got me even more amped up to have this conversation and to give you a little bit of insight on why we've picked the crew that we have. Something that New Belgium has been doing that's super interesting is they really meet people everywhere they are. And if people are online, that's where they are. They do a lot with gaming. And I am so dumb that like when I hear gaming, I immediately think video games, but no, there are video games. But then there's like real life tabletop gaming too. And they've just made this a brand platform for Voodoo Ranger, which is super interesting. So Rebecca's going to shed some light on everything that they're doing to really like bolster the Voodoo brand on its own, what Voodoo's point of view is, tone, all of that, but how that differs from the rest of their portfolio. And then Zach's really going to talk about their massive, massive in real life music festival strategy that really puts Beatbox front and center at all the fun times, basically. We've got two major brands who are doing really well, doing things that are almost diametrically opposed, when you look at it, but they're actually very, very similar. They're going really big in the places where drinkers are and talking to them in the way that works for them. It's one of my favorite stupid marketing cliches, but fish where the fish are. Don't make it hard on yourself. Don't try to get people to come to you. Meet them where they are spending their time, where they're looking to learn about new brands, where they are creating memories. And then Julie Rhodes, founder of Not Your Hobby Marketing Strategies, is going to break it all down for people who don't have the marketing budgets of Voodoo Ranger. So that is going to be super, super interesting. Julie is going to be like our craft translator.

[00:21:21] Justin Kendall: Day two is really about forging consumer connections. From what I can tell from our program, it just kind of all sets up. We've got Lindsey Kumkel from Foresight Factory, an insights firm into generational data. And then we also have a conversation on making Kraft or Bev Alk in general accessible to underrepresented groups. There we've got a great panel with Karen Hertz from Holiday Lee Brewing, Jess Fiero from Atraveda Beer Company, and Dave Bracey from Barrel and Flow Fest.

[00:21:54] Jessica Infante: Yeah, that's going to be a super interesting one because you hear these conversations in craft all the time, like, how do we get new drinkers in? These guys are walking the walk and talking the talk and just like doing the fucking thing. So we're really going to get into it with them on the weeds on how they're doing, what they're doing, what the results are, and why being open and welcoming is actually beneficial to your bottom line. So I am really excited about that conversation too.

[00:22:21] Justin Kendall: And this is just really a snippet of what we've got going on. We have a presentation with NIQ and three-tier beverages. We've got talks on platforms, pivots, and partnerships. We've got talks about making it through turbulent times. Like I said, this is just like the short snippet of what you're going to get at Brewbound Live. Tickets available now. You can get those at Brewbound.com.

[00:22:46] Jessica Infante: The one thing we haven't talked about is the parties. We have super fun parties. You know, the night before everything kicks off, everybody gathers at June Shine's tab room, which is really fun. It's always cool to see what they've got on, different flavors, great combos, and just a really cute space.

[00:23:05] Zoe Licata: So cute. Every year there's some new product for us to try. So they've really expanded. The personal benefit for us of them expanding their portfolio is now we have more and more things every year to drink at the party.

[00:23:17] Justin Kendall: Yep, and then we're going to have the opening night party on day one at Firestone Walker. So once day one wraps up, we're going to head over there. We'll have light apps. beers conversation. I'm sure people will end up after that at Shea Jay, but lots going on over these two days, three days, whatever it is. And we'll have one-to-one conversations that attendees can sign up for with Whole Foods Market, Extra Mile Convenience, Breakthrough Beverage California, Reyes, and then California Beverage Solution, which is Stone Distributing, Markstein Sales, and Highmark Distributing.

[00:23:55] Jessica Infante: Yeah, this is something that our teammates at BevNET pioneered last year with BevNET Live, and it worked out so well that we said, we need this for the Brewbound community. And the three of us really have no part in it, which is great, you know. It's really for the audience and the people who are attending to get these super valuable, like one-on-one times with these really important decision makers. And whether this is just to get advice, to pitch your product, to land in a new retailer or a new distributor, I think these should be of great interest to anybody who's attending.

[00:24:30] Justin Kendall: And our awards. I forgot the awards. We will give out the awards and the rising stars on day one. Look for that announcement at Brewbound.com around noon Pacific time on the 11th. You'll be able to hear from our award winners too, because the three of us have recorded interviews with all our award winners and rising stars. So look forward to seeing those.

[00:24:55] Jessica Infante: Yeah, well, we would love for you to join us in Marina Del Rey. If that's just not in the cards, we will be live streaming the conference. And if you are watching at home, you will get to see all of those one-on-one in-depth conversations with all of our award winners, which I always love doing.

[00:25:11] Zoe Licata: Yes, we have Brewbound Live. We also have BevNET Live happening right before this. And if you were in Marina Del Rey for that or any earlier, there is a whole Spirits and RTDs focused lineup happening on Sunday. There's some great conversations around RTDs and how you can navigate that space. So there's a bit of crossover content if you're already there. And our Spirits editor, Farin Salnikar, is helping with that. So definitely check it out.

[00:25:40] Justin Kendall: Absolutely. I think we can wrap up this week because we got a lot to do before Brewbound Live still to get everything prepared. But happy Thanksgiving to everybody out there. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks to Jess and Zoe for all they do. Thanks to our AV team for putting this together. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.