Brewbound Podcast: Friday Beers and Its Ready-Made Audience

[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 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, how Friday Beers reverse engineered a beer brand. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound Podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:48] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante.

[00:00:50] Zoe Licata: And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:51] Justin Kendall: And this week we are bringing you an interview with Almost Friday Media co-founder and CEO Jack Barrett and Corestone Capital founder and CEO Will McDonough. We're going to talk Almost Friday Beers, the light lager brand that was launched by Almost Friday Media. That's the company that brings you viral memes and Gen Z millennial drinking culture. It's all wrapped into one, so stay tuned for that. But first, please like, rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast. Also, we've got Brewbound Live coming up in December. It is our annual business conference taking place December 11th and 12th. We've got a great speaker lineup. We're adding more speakers to it every day. So stay tuned for more information there. And how's everybody doing? I think you're doing better than I am.

[00:01:44] Jessica Infante: I don't know about that. I think we're starting what week four in New Jersey at my mom's house, where we've had a never ending stream of house guests who are all members of my extended family. It's fun, but I'm exhausted.

[00:01:59] Justin Kendall: And what are they all drinking?

[00:02:01] Jessica Infante: Well, a vast variety of things, but I am the one who has been drinking the Surfside.

[00:02:08] Justin Kendall: So was it your truck that picked up all that Surfside?

[00:02:12] Jessica Infante: No.

[00:02:12] Justin Kendall: Are you the mystery Surfside buyer?

[00:02:15] Jessica Infante: I am not. Can you see me driving a pickup truck? No. I could see it. Yeah? I don't know. I'm exclusively a Subaru Outback mom. But yeah, if you got Brewbound insiders have totally gotten the newsletter we sent out earlier this week featuring a Instagram post from Surfside, I think I've almost become the Surfside reporter these days, in which a pickup had a legit entire pallet of cases of Surfside loaded into its bed. It actually was happening right over on the mainland across from the island where I live. And somebody was having a party and I was not invited. So rude. So rude. It's okay. I've been trying really hard not to cross the bridge as it is. So it's fine.

[00:03:03] Justin Kendall: So is your surfside reputation following you around the shore?

[00:03:07] Jessica Infante: No, cause I'm a late comer. I noticed it last summer that all my friends were drinking it. And, you know, came back to work after Matt leave and said to you guys, Hey, this brand is really doing something. And, uh, I think I had my first surf side at last year's Brewbound Live. I was like, Oh, I get what my friends are into now. This makes sense. It's very good.

[00:03:27] Justin Kendall: I think Zoe and I had it for the first time at NBWA last year. during the product showcase.

[00:03:33] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I think so.

[00:03:35] Justin Kendall: So Zoe, how are you doing? Just a general check in vibe check with you. How are you?

[00:03:41] Zoe Licata: I think I'm good. I don't have any complaints at the moment. gearing up to leave you all for the Bahamas pretty soon, so no complaints.

[00:03:52] Justin Kendall: I think we're all leaving each other at some point in the next three weeks. I'm leaving you all for San Diego this week to go to Comic-Con and I will send you any pictures I can get that might be parting shot worthy if there are any. That'll be fun. Yeah, it's not quite the Bahamas.

[00:04:13] Zoe Licata: Look at us though, all of us having some breaks for once. Some good work-life balance. Look at us. It only took three years of me telling and yelling at all of you to do it.

[00:04:28] Jessica Infante: Zoe, I'm trying to think of what the beer of the Bahamas is and it's escaping me, but I think it might be Kalik. Kalik, I think is how it is. Kalik.

[00:04:37] Zoe Licata: Yes. Lawrence is very excited to drink as many Kaliks as he can. particularly ahead of our, we are going to be on Cat Island, which is a very, very tiny island. And so we have to take a very, very tiny plane from NASA to Cat Island on our first day. So Lawrence plans to prepare for that tiny plane, 30 minute ride with many colleagues.

[00:05:02] Jessica Infante: I have a follow-up question. Are there cats on the island?

[00:05:06] Zoe Licata: I mean, yes, but not like a abundance of them. It's not like that. I think there's also a Japanese cat island that is like completely taken over by cats. That's exactly what I was thinking of. Yeah.

[00:05:20] Jessica Infante: No, unfortunately, no, this is still a human dominated island. And is this one of the islands in the Bahamas where there are swimming pigs?

[00:05:28] Zoe Licata: No, I don't believe so either, but there will be lots of boats. There's like a, what is it called? What are those like boat championship things called? A regatta? Yes, there is a regatta going on when we first get there.

[00:05:43] Jessica Infante: Love this for you.

[00:05:44] Zoe Licata: Yes, that'll be very exciting, but no pigs. That's okay. We got enough pigs in Northfield. Fair.

[00:05:53] Justin Kendall: Well, let's switch gears, hit a little bit of news, and then get to our featured interview. And let's start with you, Zoe. Barth Haas has released its annual report. So which hops are hot? Which hops are not? Let's hear it.

[00:06:09] Zoe Licata: Yeah I think the best place to start is just to break some hearts a little bit and just say no we are not anywhere near done with this surplus of hops as BART has been warning us about for a couple years now. There's still too many hops and not enough beer demand and Jess I believe you informed me on what this stands for the CTZ hops so the Columbus, Tomahawk, Zeus hops are doing insane numbers and are growing, I think it was 40% in just acreage from last year, which is notable as it's a double-digit increase, but also people aren't really increasing acreage of any hops right now because of that surplus I just mentioned. It was the only top five variety hop, at least in the US, to increase acreage. It moved up to number two. It was number three the year before for just crop yield. People are really into that. And Jess, you were educating me on what kind of beers that probably means. Do you want to remind me?

[00:07:12] Jessica Infante: So stuff like that is going to go into pretty classic bitter and hoppy beers. It's not really something that's like super prized for having like a tropical and fruity aroma. So I don't know what that really means. It could mean that maybe we've reached PKZ IPA, but I, I am not the person that should be making that call. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of the, the CTZ guys are mostly like super bitter.

[00:07:38] Justin Kendall: That's super interesting, given the recent reports that we've talked about on this podcast and reported on where everything's sort of flavor and wanting juicy flavor or whatever it may be, and maybe less so bitter. And here there's this hop trend that you're seeing, Zoe.

[00:08:00] Zoe Licata: Yeah, and the acreage for these hops went down last year too. So I think we thought that potentially that was an indication that we're getting away from some of these bitter things, but I guess not people are back and interested in them, at least on production side.

[00:08:16] Jessica Infante: It sounds like if you're a hop farmer, it might be a great time to figure out some alternate uses for your crop.

[00:08:23] Zoe Licata: Yeah, very good time. Particularly as Barth has noted that producers are starting to re-evaluate their contracts for hops as well because they do not have the demand that they thought they would. So they're coming to Hop Farmers kind of mid-contract and being like, hey, can we redo some of this? They saw a bunch of that last year and they expect it to continue this year. You already planted them, you got them, so what are you going to do with them? because breweries don't need as many as they said they would, and they can't store as much as they used to. Yikes.

[00:09:00] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about your Cigar City story. They are renaming High Low, which was, I think, a really, it was a well-named beer, but they're making it Highlight Light and they're redoing some packaging.

[00:09:19] Jessica Infante: Yeah, you know, this all started, we got a press release about new packaging for HiLi, which is Cigar City's flagship beer. And, you know, Cigar City, obviously formerly of the Canarchy fam, which is now the Monster Brewing fam. HiLi has, you know, been like their workhorse for forever. And it is an IPA and it is not a hazy IPA. So I guess it kind of ties into Zoe's hops report. Hi-Li is getting rebranded new cans, 12-ounce, 16-ounce, 19.2-ounce, also new six-pack and 12-pack cartons. They're coming out this summer. My husband buys Hi-Li a couple of times a year, and I showed him the packaging and was like, hey, what do you think about this? He, who probably doesn't, like he knows the backstory-ish, but he was like, it looks like an energy drink. And I was like, oh, funny, you should say that. That is their new dad, an energy drink company. and not new anymore. It's been two and a half years. So in addition to doing that, I also just kind of, like I was poking around NIQ data and noticed that HiLow, the very cleverly named session IPA, had a really, really, really low sales. So low that I was like, something's up. So I just said, hey, what's going on with HiLow? And Justin, exactly like you said, consumers were getting a little confused and they decided that the move here would be to rename it HiLiLight. It's getting new packaging, rolling out in its own 12 packs. There's also going to be a variety pack of OG Highlight, Highlight Double IPA, and Highlight Light. And this is not at all the first craft beer brand to do this, you know, line extend its flagship and then offer it in a variety pack. We're seeing that happen a lot of different places, including within sibling brand, Oscar Blues with Dales. If you are curious about more about that, check out Brewbound Live conference videos from last year where we talked all about it. But yeah, I mean, it just makes a lot of sense to me. So here we all are. We talked about this earlier, and I think maybe something that we can deduce here is that the idea of a light beer is no longer sacrilegious to craft beer drinkers, because we've seen this a few other places. Most notably, Blue Moon. Blue Moon rolled out Light Sky Citrus Wheat in 2020, same year as Hilo. And they rebranded it this year to Blue Moon Light. It's just easier to remember. And I don't think anybody is getting too pressed about things being light beers these days. No longer a dirty term. Is there a St. Adams one?

[00:11:57] Zoe Licata: Yeah, the new light lager from St. Adams is American Light.

[00:12:02] Jessica Infante: There you go. I mean, there used to be Sam Light, but these are different beers.

[00:12:07] Zoe Licata: Allegedly, no relation.

[00:12:09] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:12:10] Zoe Licata: In recipe.

[00:12:11] Jessica Infante: Well, Sam Light was like diet Oktoberfest.

[00:12:14] Justin Kendall: Diet Oktoberfest.

[00:12:16] Jessica Infante: Yeah. It's like the same, it was the same malt combination, just scaled down. So you think you've got, you know, regular Coke and diet Coke.

[00:12:24] Justin Kendall: I like that comparison.

[00:12:26] Jessica Infante: Yeah. But like diet Oktoberfest, you could have had it all year and now you can have it never because it's gone.

[00:12:30] Justin Kendall: If only they could name it that. If only. Well, last story before we get to our featured interview, and that's THC-infused beverage maker Climbing Kites in my backyard of Iowa. They are relaunching their portfolio to comply with a new Iowa law that went into effect July 1st. It's a murky situation where a lot of people didn't know how to proceed because there were limits placed on the dosage amount of THC, but there were questions around serving size. And the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services released its own guidance separate from what the legislature did and said it's four milligrams of THC in a 12 ounce beverage container. That's the limit. You can't go higher than four milligrams of THC in a 12 ounce beverage container. You can go below it. So this caused a lot of issues and there's a lawsuit still pending, but where we are right now with Climbing Kites is they are relaunching that portfolio with three, four milligram offerings. One is Mixed Berry, which was previously 10 milligrams, and it was Climbing Kite's bestseller. So that kind of tells you where the consumer is on these things. They want the higher potency.

[00:14:00] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Most beverages I see around are around five. So it seems like this guidance is going to really impact like anybody because most people are going to, if they're not doing the high dosage, they're already going to be over the limit of just five.

[00:14:16] Justin Kendall: And that's something Climbing Kites CEO and co-owner Dave Moore told me was the two and a half milligram orange mango that they have that is unchanged. That was their worst seller before this. So different ends of the spectrum. Sales actually picked up once that was like the only thing that they could sell. But they lost retail placements out of this. Now they're going back into fairway stores, which is a big grocery chain here. But that was temporarily paused here through the month of July. So you've got kind of this mess of a situation that was caused by this new law. And now people are trying to dig out and there's still a chance that They get this injunction that they're seeking to block the enforcement of the new law and these guidelines and allow them to still sell 5 milligram and 10 milligram products, but there's no guarantees there.

[00:15:17] Zoe Licata: I mean, we kind of knew we were going to see this kind of stuff, right? Because when we saw states starting to allow some of these beverages or there were potential loopholes for these types of beverages, I mean, already on the federal level, we know you can't have them. So that already causes the potential of your business getting shut down because federally it's not legal, but also states are going to continue to change things. It's not a totally like solidly agreed upon like regulatory area. So a lot of these businesses have kind of gone in with like, yes, there's risk here because we never really know what's going to happen, but they see the opportunity of it as worth it.

[00:15:59] Justin Kendall: Absolutely. You've got to weigh that risk reward. And then you look at a player like Tilray that is one of the largest cannabis companies in the world, and they're doing cannabis drinks in Canada, but they have yet to launch one here in the U.S. So different companies, different levels of risk, and we'll see how this sort of pans out. Anything to add, Jess?

[00:16:26] Jessica Infante: No, it's just all super confusing. And it's kind of been really interesting to me to see some brands just absolutely go for it and some brands being super cautious. So we'll just continue to watch it. And I wonder if what happens in November and how that might have any impact here. But I think the last time there was one party controlling all three branches of government, nothing really moved.

[00:16:52] Justin Kendall: It's also a thing where you've really got to be on top of what's happening in your state, your local area, because this sort of thing can go into effect very fast as we saw here in Iowa. And then you're left scrambling and things happen where, like Dave Moore told me that the warning label was created in a day and they had like zero time to get that on new product. So there are different things that are happening and you're just sort of like basically taking it all as it comes. So if you're going to play in this space, you better be on top of what's happening at your local level.

[00:17:36] Jessica Infante: You better have a good lawyer.

[00:17:38] Justin Kendall: Definitely. Doesn't hurt that, uh, one of climbing kites founders is an attorney.

[00:17:45] Jessica Infante: There you go.

[00:17:46] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Well with that, let's get to our featured interview with Jack Barrett and Will McDonough from Friday Beers. Friday Beers is a 4.2% ABV, 120 calorie light lager brand that launched in Massachusetts and is now available in New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, the Outer Banks, and at the Almost Friday Sporting Club flagship bar in Nashville. Friday Beers owner Almost Friday Media has a reach of more than 800 million accounts a month across more than 30 channels on seven different social media platforms. Here to discuss the brand today is Jack Barrett, co-founder and CEO of Almost Friday Media. Thanks for being here, Jack.

[00:18:36] Jack Barrett: Thanks for having me, guys. Really nice to be talking with you.

[00:18:38] Justin Kendall: Also joining us is Will McDonough, founder and CEO of Corestone Capital. Thanks for being here, Will. Proud to be. We're psyched to have you here. How's Rusty doing?

[00:18:51] Jack Barrett: man. I saw him yesterday. He was coming back from a July 4th trip and he looked strong and he looked happy. So it's really where I get my gauges in and rusty is happy. It means he's really traveling around the world and meeting interesting people. And that's what we, we like to work with them on is putting him in interesting situations where he's just being rusty out in the world.

[00:19:13] Jessica Infante: I feel like Rusty was, I'd call it a solid third of me and my husband's like pandemic era entertainment. We would just check in on him every once in a while and just watch like however many TikToks he had posted and we're like. Rusty's having fun.

[00:19:29] Jack Barrett: That was where he became sort of Rusty Featherstone during 2020, during the pandemic. Aaron, I don't know if you are aware, like the full story, but he was basically told by his pledge trainer that you have to get 10,000 TikTok followers as part of your pledge training. And I think he came back with like 100,000 followers because he just did this bit where he drinks a lot of beers and he gives you a ranking after four, after eight, after 12. And that way of just relating to people and sort of like being himself on camera, is captivating. It's something to watch. It's something that brings everybody in for the ride. That sort of got sent to us, and I watched these videos, and I was like, this man needs to be part of what we're building at some level. I will say this is the biggest compliment I could ever give someone. When you meet him in person, he's even more endearing, even more interesting, and even more, I'll call it, of a person than you would think he is when you see him on the screen. So he's a full package.

[00:20:30] Jessica Infante: amazing. He's super charming online so I can only imagine.

[00:20:33] Will McDonough: That way a person for sure.

[00:20:35] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:20:36] Will McDonough: This is very hard to get a life insurance policy against.

[00:20:40] Justin Kendall: I bet. It's one hell of a social experiment. I mean just taking place like right on your screen and you're following it in real time.

[00:20:48] Jack Barrett: That's what Friday Beers has really become or sort of what it really is like Friday Beers people think about and obviously we're here to talk about I think the beer today but like Friday Beers what the media company that my brothers and I started is a feeling it's one of the things that we look forward to all week every week. And when we were kind of. just sort of kicking around ideas. I can get into a little bit of background, but we really just want to celebrate what it was like to be a dude, frankly, growing up in a city around the United States in your twenties and the things that you go through every single week. And we're thinking about those little things that pull you through. And those are the moments you celebrate with friends and what isn't a great moment. Friday Beers holy crap like getting to the end of the week being able to get together and celebrate so is being you know a little bit hungover on sunday and wondering what chinese food to order and so is not wanting to go to work on monday or not knowing how to pay your taxes or all these little ups and downs of life that we kind of congregate and celebrate together and that's what became this media company is like can we make a community of people who are trying to figure out life, trying to enjoy the good times, trying to get through the times that we don't understand, being very sort of involving and also self-deprecating, making fun of yourself for being in these situations. And I think that's really what our company stands for more than anything. It's like we are the situations and social situations, especially that you go through in the early part of growing up. And that's what Friday Beers has, how Friday Beers really emerged as this media company.

[00:22:18] Jessica Infante: Amazing. Well, you've built quite, I don't even think platform is the right word. It's, it's bigger than that, but you know, you get so many interactions on social media, you've built a real community. And that's really translating into getting people to put down their, their actual money to buy your physical product in the form of, of this beer. So what really gave you the confidence here that Almost Friday fans would be along for the ride as you got off their screens and went into coolers?

[00:22:44] Jack Barrett: It's a great question. And honestly, it's something that wasn't ever really the top of our minds when we started making content and making what like you sort of described this sort of like ecosystem. But it sort of became something we realized we might be able to do because the people, the brands that really wanted to work with us as we made content, different forms that reach people were beer brands. And we were doing a ton of deals with Bud Light, Sam Adams, Voodoo Ranger, Natty Light, all these massive beer brands that wanted to reach a young audience and reached a young audience really well through the content that we made. And we were sort of looking around me like, you know, we're doing, you know, millions of dollars in these brand deals. And we're reaching the core consumer, which is this like younger kind of drinkers, not really loyal to a brand, but really just wants to have fun with their friends better than a lot of other advertisers or I'll call it just like media entities were reaching the brand. And so, you know, we were just kind of we had a little brainstorm, we're like, if we're an effective brand to reach these people, and we have a voice that really resonates, can we be a beer brand? And by the way, our company had a very good name, Beer Brands, at that point. I met Will a long time ago, Will McDonough. He was the boss of one of my best friends, Matt Berdoff, for, I think, how long, Will? Four or five years in your 20s? And so I got connected to Will through Matt, and I've been in Nantucket and met Will during the summers, and we've had a lot of run-ins, and we've stayed close, and I think I've even had a couple calls with you, Will, like in the early Friday Beers era, talking to people. But we met at Matt Berdoff's wedding, and I think it was 2022, and Will basically said to me, we had had this big party in Nantucket, big Friday Beers party in Nantucket at Cisco Brewery. It was a massively successful party. And Will's like, I heard what happened at Cisco. It's a great thing you guys did. Just so you know, I could put together a group of people for you that can make this beer, if you want to make a beer in a way that would resonate at the level I think you're seeing your brand hit for bigger brands, but sort of doing it in the Friday Beers way and having the culture of Friday Beers lead and the voice of Friday Beers lead. And I said, that's sort of an interesting idea. And I don't know, a few months later, I called Will and I was like, see what you can do about that group. And what Will did was put together the, I'll call it, amazingly selected players to form a new company to make what and the will and the team has the most credit for like what the brand represents like the brand should lead the voice should lead what he brought us together with Fred map. who runs Saranac Brewery with Jay Harmon, who runs Cisco Brewery and himself. And he said, this is the team that we should be able to make this beer with. And I'll stop there and kind of talk, we can talk a little bit more, but that was the origination of you have this amazing brand and media entity that touches kids. in the way that they want to be reached about comedy and growing up and all these things. This is the company to make your beers and get it out to them. So that's how it really came together and a very pretty quick process. I would say like six months, we got the company up and running and we can talk about the taste testing and stuff later, but that's the that's how it all came to be.

[00:26:21] Justin Kendall: Will, it sounds like you're the architect of just pulling this all together. And we've seen investment into single Brandt Gehrs companies, most recently Gallo invested in Montucky Cold Snacks. What made this segment so intriguing to an investor like yourself? Because it is a space that has been largely dominated by multinational companies, and it's been a harder place to play for up and coming brands.

[00:26:49] Will McDonough: Yeah, there's definitely an opportunity in the sector. And the opportunity wasn't because I think the world needs another beer brand. The opportunity was because Jack and his brothers and the Almost Friday Media Group have this 20 million social media followers and have this brand awareness and affinity and have this engagement that all of the big beer brands seek to be relevant with. When you look at the demographic information of who they reach, it's 99% 18 to 34 year old males. I mean, is that a dream for any beer company to be able to market to? So our ability to put a beer in the hands of those consumers, now anyone will try something once, right? I've done a lot of celebrity and backed businesses. And having an endorsement from a celebrity or from a brand will get somebody to sample something. But if it's not an excellent product, they won't try it again. They won't reach for it again. They won't go and seek it. And so the alignment of being able to bring Fred, you know, who's an industry legend in to make the beer so that when you do taste the beer, you realize, wait a minute, this isn't a gimmick. This is actually one of the best light beers that I've ever tried. And I really feel like I could have eight or 10 of them. You know, it's not just something that's like a sipper or an IPA. And so I think when you look at the landscape as you allude to, all these multinational beer companies or alcohol brands are trying to reach this demographic and be relevant to them and the opportunity created itself for us to just, you know, deliver our own product to them and, you know, own and control that demographic.

[00:28:28] Jack Barrett: The thing I would add to what Will said is that the beer tastes incredible. That's a credit to Fred and Matt, FX Matt Brewery who made this beer. They did a blind taste test with us and they sent us a bunch of their beers and we got a bunch of other light beers. We were like, we're making a light beer. We're making a 4.2% ABV beer. In this taste test, we had big hitters in that lineup. And everybody who did that taste test, what was on the phone with Fred, with Jay, was me, my brother, my partner, Andrew Kenward. And we all selected this beer that was kind of called, I've never had Utica Club before, but it's called Utica Club. And it was a 4.5% ABV beer that Fred makes. And we all rank that as the top performing beer in this class. And we were like, this beer has personality, it has like a reason to be, it has this like punch that can be drank with quantity, it can be enjoyed like a day at the beach, a day at the park, a day hanging out in the backyard. That type of beer is really, really important for us to have. And if we didn't have this really, really quality beer, I don't think we would get behind it and get involved in marketing and pushing out in the way that we are. And I just wanted to credit Fred for making that. He makes an incredible, incredible beer. So that's where it comes from.

[00:29:55] Justin Kendall: It sounds like a case study, though, in reverse engineering, because you already have a built-in audience, and now you're trying to reach them and appeal to them with a product that is new to the world, but is connected in some way.

[00:30:10] Will McDonough: Well, Justin, you know, when I look at that, what speaks to me is that all these beer brands were using Almost Friday media to stay relevant. Almost Friday Beers and the beer, you know, the physical beer itself had that opportunity to, I like the term reverse engineer, but when you have the hardest thing and I've invested in consumer products for 20 years, the hardest thing for any new brand is to establish brand identity and to build a community. So the reverse engineering of, wait a minute, If I could take someone that already has an existing brand awareness and existing social footprint and engagement, Rusty, all the guys that we all know and love, and put a product in people's hands that is as high quality as that, I mean, that's that's the Holy Grail. Right. And you don't have to look any further than go to any liquor store or, you know, a beer shelf. And you look at all these esoteric names. And I just look at the shelves and I just wonder, how are they going to make it when they're just saying, hey, you know, I'm I'm coming up with the Justin and Jessica brew. OK. how are you going to build a social media following, let alone 20 million? How are you going to get brand awareness? So that's a household name. And then when people see it, you know, they recognize it and it resonates with them. I just think that that those days may be behind us because that is way too hard to accomplish. And that's why you see in the industry people Spending money and giving big swaths of equity to influencers and athletes and entertainers because they're trying to get that Validation that Friday Beers just has inherently and authentically

[00:31:52] Jessica Infante: You guys can tell me if I'm crazy, but I see a lot of similarities here with what Kyle Cook is doing with Loverboy. You know, Kyle, he's on the Bravo hit show, Summer House, and he was drinking other hard teas while he was on the show. And then all of a sudden he said, what am I doing? I have an audience. I could make a product for the audience. And Loverboy is so part of that show now. It just, you know, it makes sense. You've built the audience. They're vast, they're enthusiastic. And then you find a product that fits for them.

[00:32:22] Will McDonough: Well, I'll tell you, if I may, I was a seed investor in Avion Tequila, and we went to Entourage, and this was a long time ago, but some of your listeners probably remember this, and did a partnership with Entourage and with the creator, Doug Ellen, to get that product to be in that show. This was before product placement was a thing. And that authenticity and that brand awareness that came from it to that target demographic became tremendously valuable and we exited that business not long after that validation occurred. And so I understand why Bravo and why some of these niche players do it. And you know, when you look at the total landscape of all those players, they combined don't have the reach the Friday Beers test.

[00:33:04] Jessica Infante: I just, you mentioned Entourage, which is, I'm at my family's house at the Jersey shore. And for years, you know, we, I've, you know, we've had this house forever. My grandpa built it after World War II, but we were the only family on the block with HBO. So my friends would all just come like at their leisure to watch Entourage on demand. Like, Hey, can I, can I watch last week's? Can I watch, you know, the other day? I think I've seen every episode like five times, like, I'm almost entirely against my own will, but that was such an early example of the power of product placement. It was huge.

[00:33:35] Jack Barrett: Yeah, I think you're seeing it a lot more, like, especially with the types of like loverboy products. Happy Dad is a great example of really, really powerful influencers getting behind a product in the RTD space. Obviously, the Barstool-Heineen relationship probably isn't the exact same, but Dave Portnoy has really boosted that brand. He's a mega celebrity. We're zagging a little bit or zigging, however you want to say it. I think there's a lot of pushing of those types of products on the market. There's a few people who are doing what we're doing. Garage beers with the Kelsey brothers is a pretty recent announcement. They're mega celebrities. There's a brand called Easy Rider out here in California that's done by the same people that make Juneshine. offered the same thing we promised, which is like a good, like American made light beer, but appealing to it with the power of celebrity in a little bit of a different way. Friday Beers's brand is enormously big in its reach, but it's sort of not a celebrity driven brand. It was born with the celebrity of all of us. It's like everybody's brand. It's the people's brand. Friday Beers is a feeling that everybody relates to. And we have amazing people who make our content, but none of them are like the overarching, I think, kind of influencer or celebrity that drives it. It really is something that we always believe. It's different. It's for the people. And that's what we want to keep building the brand on. It's like it is not really just driven by one person or a couple of people. It's the spirit of the brand is everybody's spirit. So that's what we want to try to keep it.

[00:35:09] Justin Kendall: You mentioned the partnerships that you've had in the past, whether it's Voodoo Ranger or Natty Lights, Sam Adams, LaVat. What did you take from those brands and those partnerships that you sort of incorporated with the Friday Beers?

[00:35:25] Jack Barrett: I think Voodoo Ranger is the best brand I think I work with from a marketing perspective, because they have a brand that's very authentic to what they believe it is, and they don't really stray from that. And they also, when they do partnerships, they listen to the brand they wanna work with and co-opt the content so it becomes more meaningful, but they're not ever telling the brand, you can't do this. Well, obviously there's ground rules and things like that, but they're not ever telling the brand, you have to change your comedy or change your humor. to be a part of these, you know, ground rules that we have. They really, really are embracing of the different types of comedy and jokes that come from a community like Friday Beers. So when you come into us, you're not just getting meme content, you're gonna get sketch content, you're gonna get podcast ad reads, you're gonna get post rolls of YouTube videos that are some of the best YouTube videos I believe are on the internet. And they're so good at leaning into every one of those jokes. Like just last year, they did a product placement and an ad read in this certain, it was called like Nightmare House Party video, Nightmare Post Game, where it was like a post game gone wrong, and there was Voodoo Ranger in it, and then they had an ad read at the end. They did that perfectly. And they just said, as long as everything is kind of done in the right or legally the right way, we want your voice to carry it through. And so I wanted our brand to kind of be that way and sort of have the Friday Beers voice and cut through. And I didn't really want to modify our voice to hit it in any way that we have to. Well, obviously within the beer industry, you're a little bit confined, but not really. Like you can be, you should be what made your brand popular. And that's what I really took from working with a few brands, especially Voodoo Ranger.

[00:37:10] Will McDonough: Yeah. And as we roll out, you know, state by state, as you alluded to, think about how valuable it is for us as a business to have that roadmap and to see what has worked and not worked for the larger beer brands with the biggest budgets in the world and see what they've done and why they keep coming back to Almost Friday media for their ad spend and for their activations. And so when we get out into the marketplace, and meet with distributors and meet with, you know, people in the trade. We're not, you know, a startup, if you will. We're not starting from scratch and making mistakes because we've seen the mistakes made by, you know, the Friday media partners. And I think that's why this brand has taken off so fast. and why we're seeing so much interest. We're actually turning down markets right now just because we need to be able to execute in the places that we are and keep our volumes. As part of the gift of partnering with Fred on this is we're able to be kind of institutional scale immediately. It's not like we're in a garage thinking, how are we going to make the next batch? We're not limited by that, but we're also recognizing that we need to be really targeted in the markets that we're operating in and hit our bogeys and just grow in a smart way because it's growing way faster. Jack and I haven't had this conversation, but it's growing way faster than I ever would have imagined. Now, it's about just keeping the train on the rails.

[00:38:37] Jessica Infante: So Jack, one thing you mentioned was the proliferate proliferance that we're seeing right now of American light loggers, which is great. But, you know, well, you also mentioned the broader beer industry of late, and I don't think we can really have a conversation about light loggers without exploring a little bit of what happened last year. So in 2023, through a lot of stuff that we've covered extensively on this podcast, Bud Light lost, oh, a whole lot of market share after a conservative-led boycott, which I think has really kind of left a vacuum in the light lager space. So what I'm curious about here is how long the creation of the Friday Beers beer was in the works and did anything that happened last year affect this at all? Did this make you think like, yeah, here's our opening?

[00:39:19] Will McDonough: Well, I'll tell you one of my favorite quotes is luck is when preparation meets opportunity. We were prepared. We had beers and cans. We had product approval. We just got really lucky with that timing. Now, the people at Budweiser are close friends of ours all the way up the chain, and our relationship with them is strong. We actually feel bad for them about what happened because I think there was a lot of misinformation and they didn't deserve a lot of that. However, it is what it is, and that vacuum does exist. You guys cover the beer industry so well. What I don't think is covered as well as it should be is that, forget about how that harmed Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch, that harmed the distributors. The distributors who were used to making their numbers and moving X cases, the guys that were out with windshield time trying to make case numbers so that they get their Christmas bonus, and all of a sudden that fell off the shelf. And so if you were an ABI distributor, I know personally very, very good friends of mine that lost over $10 million last year because of that. And that doesn't get, that's not going to be rebuilt overnight. And so we did get lucky that that vacuum existed, but really what that has empowered us to do is embrace and engage with the distributor network and help them fill that void more so than are we going after Budweiser. It's more so that we have to fill that void for the distributors and for the liquor stores and for the beer sellers who are used to making those bogeys. And, you know, we want them to get their Christmas bonuses this year. And Friday Beers is actually, you know, helping them do that.

[00:40:58] Jessica Infante: For sure. So what's your distributor network like?

[00:41:01] Will McDonough: Well, we, uh, just recently launched in New York with union beer, which has been gangbusters. Uh, the growth there is staggering. We had a call yesterday and the numbers are way higher than we would have predicted. Um, so we're, we're having to make more beer sooner than we thought for them. Uh, so tons of kudos to them and Jack spent a lot of time in the market with those guys. They really, from the jump just got the brand, you know, they, um, They really embraced the brand and understood where it was going to fit, and that's shown. We also have a relationship with Atlantic and Burke in the Northeast, who's done well. Knife in Cape Cod and Islands is just launching. You referenced New Hampshire and Rhode Island and the Outer Banks. And we probably have, I don't know, a dozen markets right now that we're kind of holding off. We are accessible in Nashville, Tennessee, because there's an Almost Friday sporting club there, which is popular. And we intend to launch in the ancillary markets there. But that's really the The goal is to take these big cities where we have existing footprint and boots on the ground and then grow ancillary markets to that. We also are going to launch imminently a DTC option, which we're excited about, mostly to satisfy all the demand from You know, the 50 U.S. states, we get DMs and people in our inbox daily saying, I want this for my party, I want this for, you know, for my Friday. So we're going to have a solution for them, you know, to kind of satiate that audience in the short term as we, you know, build a longer term plan for having true distribution in 50 states.

[00:42:38] Justin Kendall: Do you have a read yet on the consumer breakdown as far as male, female drinker goes on the brand? Because from just my read on it, I would say that it's probably primarily male, but like, do you reach a female demographic as well?

[00:42:56] Jack Barrett: I would say that I have two perspectives on this. I can't actually speak a lot to the male versus female breakdown that's over my head of the sales, but I do notice that it sells in to our consumer, which is the 21 to 35 year old in a very highly I'll call it like volume building way. Like they know the brand, they see it, they recognize it. They don't even need to try the beer. They're like, it's going to be good. I like it. And then when they get drinking it, they're like, Oh, it tastes amazing. This is something that I'm going to have in my rotation. And most importantly, this is something that is at a price point. That's great. And I can have when I want to hang out with friends, which is like the big thing we want to hit. Then I think we have, and this is what I've seen in spending time with sales reps in these cities, is people who want a good tasting light beer who are older, who are in their 40s or in their 50s, who want to sit down at a bar. I see a lot of this in Manhattan at Midtown bars, basically. They're looking for a good on tap light beer. they'll try this beer and they'll say—they've never heard of Friday Beers, they probably don't pick up their phone to access Instagram or YouTube or podcasts at all—they'll try the beer and they'll say, this is actually legitimately good tasting light beer, and I would order this when I want to have a beer on my way home to the train or on my way home to the apartment or whatever. And I get personally really excited when I see that because I know if it can hit those two audiences and the taste and the quality is getting them to reorder it, then you have, I don't know what the right term is, but this sort of ecosystem where it's catching fire from the people who are identifying the brand and it's resonating with people who haven't heard of the brand before, but the quality of the product is legitimate. So that's where I get pretty pumped and I see that bar I see that selling through in places where I never thought the beer would be. There's a bar called Rudy's in Hell's Kitchen in New York. It's like one of the best dive bars I've ever been to. And I sat down in the corner of the bar with guys from Union Beer and they said, just sit here. The guys, he may not talk to you, but come in and have a beer. And so Rusty and I, we had that Maine lunch, which is a great beer, a great, great tasting beer for Maine. He's like, we got Maine lunches, we ordered two of those. And Nils who runs the bar came down and he started talking to us. Four days later, I get a message on my Instagram saying, we're going to put Friday Beers on the menu at Rudy's. And that is a place where there's not a lot of people. There are people who recognize Friday Beers, but there's not a ton. And they have continued to sell through Friday Beers. Nils is saying that it's one of his favorite light beers on the menu. They've started to put it on tap, now cans and tap. And they're DMing me and DMing our account to build this thing. And that's sort of where I get really excited because that is a place where people come together and drink with friends. It's not a Friday Beers bar in the terms of the audience, but it's a place where beer is loved. And if it can succeed at places like that, then I think it can really succeed in a lot of different places around the United States.

[00:46:10] Will McDonough: Yeah, what I've seen from it personally, you know, I was a Boston College guy who drank Bush Light almost exclusively. It was cheap, it was easy, but that's like the taste of college to me. When I try Friday Beers, it's like a bit more mature of a volume beer than I remember from college, right? So it's almost like the 20-something, 30-something version of, man, this tastes like a tailgate. Man, this tastes like I'm sitting in my dorm room with buddies. And my wife, who just turned 40, is not a big beer drinker. All she wants is Friday Beers because she doesn't like the IPA. She doesn't like the heavy. She doesn't want to feel full when she drinks beers. And she also feels like maybe it's a little bit It's just a little bit too old at this point to be sipping on a Busch light. It's just not the vibe. I think we fit that middle. As you alluded to, the vacuum that was created by Bud Light was somewhere between volume cheap and IPA. That's what we're seeing the brand really resonate to.

[00:47:16] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I mean, I think the core of all of it is refreshment, right? You know, whether that comes from a Bush Light. Interesting that BC was a Bush Light campus. Syracuse was very much a Keystone Light campus. I don't really know how these things happen.

[00:47:27] Jack Barrett: I only drank Keystone Light for a long time.

[00:47:30] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:47:33] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:47:33] Jessica Infante: potentially incriminate myself here. But one of me and my husband's first dates was his fraternity didn't have a formal they had like basically like the Keystone games. And it was just like a whole day and our team won. And you know, 17 years later, now we're married with a baby. I don't know if that's we have Keystone to thank. But I do want to get back to Rudy's and not just Rudy's, but the on-premise in general. So you've got the connection in Nashville with the Almost Friday Sporting Club. One of my questions was, do you even do draft at all? But yes, you've got both. What's the breakdown here and what's your strategy for getting into the on-premise? Because the conventional beer industry wisdom is that's where brands get born when they're not born on the internet.

[00:48:13] Jack Barrett: On-premise takes more sales work to crack into, and seeing really positive results from off-premise, the volume is crazy, and it's moving fast. The volumes are obviously super high, but it's not something where we have to be doing basically routine sales work, because it's easier to sell into these places. The on-premise, and this is something that I'm learning, because I don't know anything about the alcoholic beverage industry.

[00:48:40] Jessica Infante: It's a wild time. Welcome aboard, Jack.

[00:48:42] Jack Barrett: Yeah, it's incredibly complex, and you need to be surrounded by the right people in your company. And that's what Will brought together. Fred Matt's huge. Jay Harmon's huge. Will is huge. And having someone from the production side to the distributor side to the retail side is massive. On premise, you need a really tight sales pitch to get people who may have never heard of your brand before to understand what Friday Beers is. So we created these basically one sheets that are like, if you don't know Friday Beers, these are three things you need to know. The first is the social media presence, 25 million people. No brands have access to that many people. It's all summarized in a probably more concise way than I'll say right now. The second is our audience, our prime beer drinkers. 21 through 45 year olds, mainly male. They're not necessarily loyal to a brand. They're looking for something they can enjoy quantity with people, and they're kind of ready to try something new. And then the third thing is we promote and we market you, the bar. Anytime you want to tag Drink Friday Beers, Almost Friday, Friday Beers, we will re-promote you. We will repost you on our stories, we'll repost you in story posts, we'll repost you across our network. It sounds dumb, but it's not something a lot of other beer brands get because they don't control access to this social media ecosystem like we control. The biggest push that I've been trying to do with these sales guys is ride-alongs on-premise in New York and Brooklyn. in Queens, in Long Island. I've done them in Massachusetts. I've done them in Rhode Island. And when you're with sales guys, and you just give them the quick brief, they see how it's done, and they're able to repeat it and do it. It just takes reps. And like, that's the whole thing. It's like, you can create a great beer brand, but it's going to take a repetition and commitment to process. And I think if we can get that repeated, as we've already started to do, and we're seeing great results after we've gone on these trips, like the places are buying it. That's what it takes to succeed. That's what we're determined to do. That's what we're built in Massachusetts, that we're built in New York right now. And that's sort of the key. It's like you just have a tight story and you repeat the visits and you show your face, people start to drink it, people continue to drink it and continue to buy it.

[00:51:01] Jessica Infante: One thing that's been on our minds a lot lately, especially with the news earlier this month that TikTok was now gonna start accepting alcohol ads, is the balance that you need to strike of how you create the content and how you depict responsible consumption, especially when it can be very easy to cross the line. So how do you balance the culture of the brand of Friday Beers with the beer industry's pretty tight regulations and guidelines?

[00:51:28] Jack Barrett: That's something that Friday Beers has always done pretty well, despite the fact that our name is Friday Beers. And when someone random hears that, they're like, oh, Friday Beers, this must be a bunch of idiot drunk, you know, ex-college guys partying. It's like, no, that's not what it's about. Friday Beers is about opportunity, moments in your life, things that you celebrate. Things that are often, you know, toasted around, like with alcohol involved, but we're never focusing on that. There's certain jokes that we make, I think, that probably toe the line. But as a brand, Almost Friday Media and Friday Beers. We, you know, it's in our handbook, we preach this, like you never make fun of overconsumption, ever. There's words that you never can use. There's things that you should never get into joking about. We know this. This is what we say to the people who are making content on our channels multiple times a day. It's really internalized and preached by us. And that's something that we abide by even more carefully when it comes to the beer content. We have content meeting every single week with our beer content team. and we go over the types of jokes they're making on the feed, and we've had these discussions like, I don't want this joke to be made. It's too close to what's an irresponsible drinking joke. Let's not do that. Let's joke about, you know, Fourth of July was massive and you don't know how you're going to be able to work on Monday. Like that's the sort of in between area that can kind of be made a joke about. Let's talk about how excited you are that the Celtics are playing in games five tonight and they're going to win the world championship. That's a Friday Beers joke about sports and coming together. Those are the moments that we want to promote as part of this like idea and culture. There is a great ad series that Bud Light made. They may make them again, but they're called Bud Light Real Men Are Genius, and they made jokes about the inventor of the foot-long hot dog, stuff like that. It's some of the best beer advertising I've ever seen in my life. Is it about beer? No, it's about this outrageously big hot dog that people are proud of having. It's not the direct connection, but it's things that are relevant culturally that are in this space that alcohol is somewhat connected to. That's what we want to celebrate. That's what we want to promote. And I think Friday Beers, you know, we obviously are, you know, just getting started, but that's sort of what we kind of post on the pedestals. Like we can make content that hits like this and you remember like this, then you're doing a great job as an advertiser of these products. And it's, you know, obviously we don't, I haven't figured everything out, but that's how we try to hold ourselves to. Will, Jack, thanks for doing this.

[00:54:03] Justin Kendall: Really appreciate the time. Thank you guys for having us.

[00:54:08] Will McDonough: Thanks. Check us out drink.Friday Beers. Post your stuff and we'll repost you. Come and suck that. Thank you guys.

[00:54:15] Justin Kendall: Thank you. And that's our show for this week. Thanks to Will and Jack for joining us. Thanks to Jess and Zoe for all they do. Thanks to our audio team and thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.