Brewbound Podcast: How to Rebrand Without Upsetting Your Drinkers

[00:00:00] Bruce Springsteen: How do you refresh your brand without alienating your drinkers? Stay tuned to Check Brewbound Podcast. Welcome back to Check Brewbound Podcast. My name is Justin Kendall and I am the editor of Brewbound and I am joined by the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan I know, Jessica Infante. How's it going, Jess?

[00:00:31] Jessica Infante: Oh my God, it's so much better now. That again is a great compliment, just like last week.

[00:00:36] Bruce Springsteen: I'm just full of great compliments this week.

[00:00:39] Jessica Infante: You really are. I really honestly I've been having a rough couple of days and that definitely turned it around a little bit. I love Bruce.

[00:00:46] Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, flat tire. What else? One bagel.

[00:00:50] Jessica Infante: I screwed up me and my husband's bagel order, only had one bagel, but on the way to get the bagel order, I got a flat tire, had to get my car towed away. Screwed up making a pizza on Saturday night, couldn't work the peel, ended up turning it into a calzone. Friday night to kick off the weekend, we turned on a movie and who is playing an extra but the boyfriend who dumped me the week before the senior prom. So it's been rough, man. I mean, I know other people have it much, much worse than that, but like, It's been a sad few days.

[00:01:21] Bruce Springsteen: Which Netflix program is that that we should all avoid?

[00:01:27] Jessica Infante: You shouldn't avoid it. You know, its lead actress just won a Golden Globe, but it is called I Care A Lot with Rosamund Pike. I fell asleep halfway through, but that's normal. So I wouldn't take anything from that. I'm not sure how much everybody else liked it, but.

[00:01:41] Bruce Springsteen: I feel your pain with the constant falling asleep during shows and I wish I had fallen asleep through behind her eyes or whatever it was. It was garbage. Don't bother. Anyway, before we get started, we got a lot of things going on at Brewbound.com. If you're a subscriber, you can head over there and watch some of the things that we've already done, such as Data Club with Bump Williams Consulting, talking about beyond beer offerings. Or you could watch our Frontline series. We recently spoke with Stone Brewing CEO Maria Stipp on the changes that she's making to the business. Lots of conversations there. But what do we got going on in March, Jess?

[00:02:22] Jessica Infante: Great question, Justin. So on March 11th, we have a new episode of Data Club featuring the crew from Three Tier Beverages Consulting. led by a friend of the pod, Don Bixel Jr., Joe Sepka, and they are also joined by Danny Breger of longtime Nielsen fame now on his own consulting. So we're going to talk to those guys all about what's going on in craft. We've done a lot of talking about seltzers and other things and beyond beer, but we're going to do a deep dive into the craft beer segment. So that'll be really interesting. We have a dear friend of the pod, Mr. Jason Murphy, the beverage innovation manager for none other than Buffalo Wild Wings. And we'll talk to Jason about, you know, what he's seeing, what he's looking to put on tap, what everything at B-dubs is going to look like in the next couple of months.

[00:03:12] Bruce Springsteen: And maybe we'll settle the dispute that you have with Jason on whether boneless wings are wings.

[00:03:18] Jessica Infante: No, I'm Italian. I don't give up grudges. Boneless wings are not wings. I will take this to my grave.

[00:03:25] Bruce Springsteen: Alright, well, let's get to the topic at hand. And the reason we're here this week, we're going to be diving into how to refresh your brand without upsetting all of your drinkers or the people who used to drink your beer 15 years ago. And we're doing it because Anchor Brewing's brand refresh was met with a chilly reception. Anchor's reply was that it became that friend you think of fondly but haven't called in months or even years, which is very self-aware for a brand and tells you about all you need to know about how the business was going for the 125-year-old craft brewery. After years of struggling to turn the tide, we were faced with a very challenging decision, make a bold stand to preserve our recipes and legacy, or allow anchor to be forgotten. Our history is our foundation, but it will be lost if no one sees us. We don't expect to change everyone's mind, but we hope this helps you better understand why we are forging ahead in this direction to keep going. So let's keep going here. While this was going on at the same time, we saw several other brand refreshes. None really met with the same amount of animosity as Anchors. I think Ballast Point was among them. Bluepoint. We've recently seen an MGD rebrand. And so we're going to talk about all of this now. And here to join us are a couple of experts. We have Oceania Eagan, the founder and creative director of Blind Tiger Design in Seattle. What's up, Oce?

[00:05:08] Danny Breger: Hey, what's up, guys? Good to be here.

[00:05:10] Bruce Springsteen: Well, we're super happy to have you here. And we've also got Isaac Arthur, the co-founder and partner of Kodo Design in Indianapolis. What's up, Isaac? Hey, how are you guys doing? Doing all right. So let's get going here. Before I go too far down the rabbit hole on this, maybe we should get a little terminology out there. So what's the difference between a brand refresh, which I believe it would be considered anchor and ballast in some of these and a rebrand?

[00:05:43] Danny Breger: Depends on who you're talking to. I think everyone wants to interpret it depending on what their emotional attachment is of the brand. So some get very scared at the word rebrand. So sometimes it's nicer to soften it by saying refresh or evolve or update. But really it's all just any sort of change people fear.

[00:06:06] Three Tier: Yeah, we've always defined it as assuming your core values, your positioning, your messaging, that sort of stuff is staying the same. Then you're going to maybe call it more of a refresh, whereas a rebrand might reach behind the scenes and tackle some of that broad positioning, messaging, portfolio strategy. It can be semantic to your point, Osh. We've heard people, like we've been in meetings where there's the owner or founder that doesn't want to call it a rebrand. So everyone just calls it a refresh, but it really does kind of fall into a semantic area. But yeah, the larger, deeper the change, I think the more it would be a rebrand versus a refresh.

[00:06:44] Jessica Infante: So we don't want to ask you guys to tear into another firm's work. That would not be cool of us, but we're going to go this way. So what do you think works for Anchor's new design and what constructive criticism might you have? Osh, let's start with you.

[00:06:56] Danny Breger: I think it is bold, it got noticed, it is getting talked about. So it's in people's conversations more than it has been to their own press releases point in maybe decades. So I suppose in many ways, all good press is good press because there's good conversation happening around it. The critique I would say is that it just feels like it missed the mark on the soul that it had for over a century. Taking all those years of depth and story and soul and having that turn into a splash of yellow just really diluted all of that story that it was built off of.

[00:07:38] Three Tier: One of the most positive things I saw was just releasing more current styles. I mean, we can argue that that should have happened several years ago, but I think that when you look at legacy breweries that are launching hazies that kind of explode and crisp pills or whatever the thing is today, I think that was a good move. And to build on what Osh said, I think that the major misstep here, the reason that even non-beer people are getting upset about this, is that you look at that and go, that was iconic, that was special, that's something that essentially hundreds or thousands of breweries have tried to fake, you know, that provenance and that story through their branding when they come to market over the last 10 years, and you have a brewery that's been doing it for, you know, the same branding essentially for 30 or 40 years, been open for 125, just throw it all away, is confusing and disappointing.

[00:08:25] Jessica Infante: Definitely. I mean, what advice would you guys have for older craft brands that want to modernize? Because, I mean, Anker has been around forever and ever, 125 years in the modern sense of craft beer. I think we could generously say 40 years, but it's even less than that. So when you've been around that long and the industry grows up around you and you haven't really moved with the way things have been changing, how can you catch up? Is there a way to do that?

[00:08:52] Three Tier: I don't think the immediate solution is to jump to a rebrand. I know it behooves us to say that that's what you should do, but I think there are a lot of things that have to happen before you start looking at your branding and packaging itself. To go back to the portfolio, I mean, you need to give people a reason to care. In their case, we have this whole cohort, I'm sure we're all kind of in there, of elder millennials that have maybe drank them early on, like I did, but then haven't really for a while. So you have us have kind of forgotten and moved on, then you have, Gen Z, who's never heard of them. So you need to do stuff that actually gets out there and cuts the noise. And that starts with beer styles. It starts the portfolio that starts with sales and field marketing and all that stuff. And we can get into branding and other things later, but I would start there if you're that behind the curve.

[00:09:35] Danny Breger: Yeah, I'd add on the communication side, not just in terms of the liquid itself, but just literally having people get on board with what you're going to do, or even be aware of it. When you get rid of the story, and then on top of that, you don't even give a story for why you got rid of it. It's just so disruptive to what people were expecting. And so yes, there might be some negative press that can create conversation around that, but people want to know why. And if it's that abrupt, And it's not coupled with some sort of communication to explain why it's so abrupt. And then on top of that, you're, you know, you're changing the liquid. So people are trying to get, are you, is it the same great beer? Is it new beer? Now it looks different. Is it basically just brand new? So you just literally ditched everything in the past. There's no explanation that goes along with that to pull people into the new updated story. It just feels like you're abandoning everything that people had to grab onto. And they just, they have nothing to grab onto anymore.

[00:10:31] Bruce Springsteen: So it sounds like there's a bit of a communication problem here where they didn't do a good job really explaining why they needed to do this. And then on the backend, they're left to post on Instagram and say, wait, here's why we did this. You know, we might be, we need a new cohort of drinkers to come in. And if we just don't do anything, then we might not be around anymore.

[00:11:00] Danny Breger: Well, that just feels like backpedaling, but I mean, I guess it's an attempt. I think in my experience, you can change the liquid and if you don't change the look, then people are, they're not even going to know about it. You can change the look, but if you didn't change the liquid, they're just going to be disappointed and then they're not, they're going to give it up right away again. So you really have to do both. To Isaac's point, you have to do the liquid and you have to do the brand, but you have to communicate why and how you're doing both of those things. So you can't just do one thing and then expect the other to follow. You really have to come at it from both sides. And part of that isn't just communicating with a press release, it's thinking about consumers. Consumers don't give a shit about press releases. They want to know what's going on on the shelf. They want to see the poster. They want to see new updated taste, but same great look or whatever that that messaging is. There's ways to bring them into the changes that are happening so they feel like they're part of it. And especially when you have loyal consumers, I mean, we've got decades that they have people that love that brand, whether they're still drinking it or not. There's still decades of brand loyalists that basically got abandoned because they were so disrupted by, what's this? You didn't tell me about this. So bring them along and now you've got the loyalists speaking the praises and you've got new people getting excited about something that they might not have otherwise experienced.

[00:12:21] Bruce Springsteen: So Isaac, when you're sort of behind the eight ball already with a refresh or rebrand like this, how do you rally folks around it after the fact?

[00:12:34] Three Tier: In Anchor's case, I'll start there and then we'll talk about brand launch in case I forget that thought. I think a big misstep here and where this kind of started, the thing we're all talking about, we haven't really defined it yet, but they really just did not, it seems, they did not focus on any other current brand equity. So you think about that beautiful tan color, the cool like Sailor Jerry type illustration work, really iconic stuff. And they just ditched that to make something that just looks like a startup, essentially. It has no callback to that. So I think that it starts with there, from a process standpoint, really making sure that you measure the total amount of goodwill and mindshare your brand has with customers, particularly defining things like the visual and reputational brand equity, the lore, the story, the visual cues, getting that stuff right first. And then to Osh's point and to what we've talked about a little bit up till now, it's a shame to watch them kind of defend it on social media. I actually feel bad for everyone involved, but I think that that would have really helped with a brand launch campaign or just figuring out how you're going to stair-step or hold people's hands through this. Because number one, you need to get people excited that a change is coming. And the older you are, the more established you are, the more important this is. But I think it's also important because People now, there's still this interesting, we found this when we were writing our last book, like there's still this interesting negative connotation with rebranding. People think that, oh, they're running away from a PR issue or an HR issue or some disaster. But in beer, it's almost always a good thing when someone rebrands, unless it's like the old friend that you think about and never call anymore. It's generally more of, you know, our current packaging doesn't represent who we are anymore, or we're getting lost in the shuffle, you know, stuff like that. And it's helping to tell a more current story. So I think that a more considered campaign leading up to how they actually created it, it's tough in COVID because generally you would have like events and stuff too, but I think that that would have helped smooth it over a little bit if the work itself would have been worthy of what their brewery is, I think.

[00:14:32] Jessica Infante: So one thing that's interesting about Anchor is that they are one of the few craft breweries that are unionized in the country. And their union actually came out with a statement about two weeks ago saying that they didn't love the Reed brand either. And I think if you're losing your own employees, I'm not really sure how much success you can hope to have. But in their statement, they said, quote, as union workers who are proud of the heritage of Anchor Brewing Company, many of us are not thrilled with this decision to change the original iconic label. However, this was a move made by Anchor Management. Bargaining unit workers were not involved in this decision. So they're very much coming out and saying, hey, this was not our call, and we don't agree with it. They did go on to say, we still brew the same beer with the same classic recipes of the same product you all love. Our work and labor represents that. And regardless of the new look, we are happy that every Anchor beer we pick up has Union Made in San Francisco on the label. So in going through these large rebrands, how soon should you bring in your staff? Do you need to get internal buy-in before you make any decisions to move forward?

[00:15:32] Danny Breger: Buy-in's a tricky question. I think no matter whether you call it refresh, rebrand, expand, no matter what, you're always gonna have someone that's hesitant about it or doesn't like it. Rebrands really can't be about personal preference, no matter what scale you're at and no matter what kind of company you're at and no matter what kind of legacy you have. But I do think that communication is not just about external, it's about internal. It's getting people on board and early, not just in terms of what, but why. And the why part seems like was figured out, but just wasn't shared internally, and then also wasn't shared externally. So I think that that communication line, explaining the implications, but also explaining the how we're going to get there and how it's going to be inclusive to the entire community, both the internal workers, The loyal consumers, the external sales groups, like it really needs to hit on every single spoke rather than just thinking about it as here it is and how's everyone going to react. It feels very off-putting to anyone when it gets shoved on you rather than bringing people in. regardless of the scale of a brie brand or a refresh, the reality is the market's changing over and over and over again. So there's a reality that I think all breweries need to be embracing of that change is going to happen. That's the inevitable. It's the how are you going to change? If you're going to evolve every year, then stay on it. But now you've got to stay on that path. If you're going to wait for three decades to make a change, you better have some really good reasons as to why you're making such a drastic change. If anything, I think when you wait three decades, it's almost like you just got yourself cool again by staying old. You know, I think there's so many breweries now that are starting day one and they're trying to look like they're the 30-year-old, been there, done that legacy brewery. So they didn't have to recreate that. They already were that, but they abandoned those big things. And so I think that off-putting, the fact that it was pushed on everyone, both internally and externally, is a big part of what was missing.

[00:17:32] Bruce Springsteen: We can't ignore the fact that one of the reasons companies do this is about the only reason that really matters to sell more beer. They want to sell more beer. That's why you make these changes. And so how much does retailer or even wholesaler input lead to changes like this? Is that a major factor in making these changes that, you know, we need to see something pop on the shelf, we need that billboard, we need whatever it is, you know, to keep you on our shelf to keep you fresh? Is that a major factor in these moves?

[00:18:08] Three Tier: We've seen it a lot. We've seen breweries come to us that have had distributors in their ear for several years saying, hey, you need to make changes. This isn't really working. And then we've also, when getting into work, sat down with distributors and then had them tell us that, yeah, this should have changed years ago. So it's always curious, like, why didn't you tell the brewery that? Those are the folks that are selling the beer. I mean, they're a very important part of this process, and you should listen to them when they bring that sort of feedback to the table.

[00:18:37] Danny Breger: Our approach towards really thinking about that from a sales perspective is really thinking of it as three different people that you're selling to. You're selling to the wholesaler, the distributor needs to be part of that conversation and needs to be brought in. But you're also selling to the retailer, how people are shelving their beer. it continues to evolve. I mean, they're getting rid of the 22s. They're making room for cans. Now they're making room for seltzer. There's so much shuffling that happens with every reset that a lot of times it kind of goes backstream. So if everyone switched to cans, well, I've got to figure out how to get a canning line. And all of a sudden, everyone's moving away from bottles. And then COVID hits, oh, shit, why did I get rid of my bottling line? I should have kept that so that I can, but then maybe you can't get it back on shelf because your SKUs aren't placed for bottles, they're placed for cans. So there's so much logistics that ends up needing to impact how and what you're actually packaging, let alone draft versus packaged beer. I mean, the pandemic has been a huge shift in where people are shifting their sales focus and things like that, because just out of necessity, they needed to get beer out the door. And then you add on top of that can shortages. So there's so many logistics like that that actually end up making decisions for you whether you like it or not. So yes, you need to care about the consumer. Yes, you need to care about the owner and everyone who's caring about their beer and thinking about all those things. But there's a lot of other just X's and O's that end up kind of giving you your lane that you need to answer to. Add on top of that, liquid's changing. So everyone wants a hazy. No one wants a hazy. Everyone wants a session. No, don't put session on the can. There's so many changes like that that happen on a regular basis that to some extent, rebrand or refresh needs to happen just to stay current with literally what words you're using to describe your beer itself. I mean, there's brand change, but then there's also just stay current and communicating what your actual liquid is.

[00:20:32] Bruce Springsteen: Is there any salvaging something that is panned so widely? How do you sort of come back from that?

[00:20:40] Three Tier: You could ignore it and just carry on. I'm curious to see what they're going to do. I mean, there have been, I don't know that it's happened in beer, but there, there have been corporate examples where a rebrand was met with a sort of backlash and they went back and they redid it, or they went to the old stuff. I'm curious to see what they do here myself. I actually don't have an answer either. I don't know how you come back from this. This is really a rough spot.

[00:21:03] Danny Breger: Because I don't know the data, I'm wondering how rough it actually is from a sales perspective. So a lot of times what I've seen is that there might be an emotional response, whether it's from staff or from consumers. But sometimes that doesn't correlate with the actual sales. So if their sales are actually increasing and they're selling more beer, and the rebrand is actually working in terms of being able to reach new consumers who don't even know that they're a legacy brand. maybe they're not going to need to make any changes at all because it's just a PR issue. And they can just ignore it and keep moving. And if the old loyalists were not the ones who are buying their beer anymore, then they do have the potential of actually having a sales increase because of this.

[00:21:44] Jessica Infante: And it's really interesting that you bring up the difference between what's actually being said and what's being sold. I know, you know, we talked a little bit before we started recording about my old life working for a company that makes an Oktoberfest that everybody really loves and cherishes. And people always would flood the Facebook page being like, why can't you make Oktoberfest all year? And it's like, well, we see that when Oktoberfest is out longer than mid-October, sales fall off precipitously. So you guys aren't freaking drinking it. So no, we're not going to keep making it because this is just a waste for everybody. So all of that said, is there a chance that, that anchor just did this huge rebrand to trick us all into talking about them again? Are they going to go back to their old packaging? Is this, is this a psyops as we all have just said?

[00:22:27] Danny Breger: You know, what's tricky is that I think all of us that talk about this kind of stuff every day all day long are not the ones who are driving all these volume sales. So you think about, you know, the 24 packs flying out the door at the big box stores. Those are not the ones hanging out on a podcast talking about what's going on in the world of beer. So they're also not the ones who are hanging out on Facebook complaining and hating on stuff. So I'm very curious about what the sales data will actually show because it is definitely not a surprise when I think about previous rebrands that have happened where sales go through the roof, even though everyone's complaining about it.

[00:23:06] Three Tier: I think I'd agree. You know, whenever we launch a rebrand, we like to look at six months, a year, two, three years out to see if it was successful. It is kind of a long-term wait and see thing. And we very well could, I hope we're wrong, frankly, but we could all be wrong about this. And that's a very good point. The people that are up our own ass talking about this sort of issue aren't the ones out there that are going to be buying the beer. That's a good point.

[00:23:29] Danny Breger: I mean, on a really small scale, I'd say it's similar to, you know, if a Brandt Gehrs out and they've got top sales in all the tiny little bottle shops, well, that's like 0.00% of all the sales in the country. So if the beer dorks are talking about you, it really doesn't make a blip on the sales stats.

[00:23:47] Jessica Infante: No, generally just a very loud, very loud, very, very tiny group. Yeah. So for craft brewers out there thinking that their branding might be a little dated, feel a little stale, and they might want to revamp, how should they take stock of things? Like how should they be assessing their own situations? What do you look for to tell you like, yes, now is the time? What do you think, Isaac?

[00:24:10] Three Tier: It's different for every brewery, but we typically see people that they deal with just pain points on a regular basis. When we release new packaging, it always takes a long time to get it out to market. It costs a lot because all of our stuff is printed differently. We want to, we're moving to this format or to that format, COVID notwithstanding. So people just kind of know for a few years, it seems that they want to go through this change. And then there's this other one of, We brought on new staff. We don't know how to really tell them what our story is because we don't really know what it is ourselves. And so there's this internal component and external component. People needing to figure all that out before they begin this process, I think, is a big part before even just kind of figuring out whether they need to do this or not, or if there are other changes that need to happen before investing in actually updating branding.

[00:24:55] Bruce Springsteen: Are we just at a unique time where during this pandemic, it's really difficult to gain some traction with a rebrand or a refresh? Is it something where folks should maybe hold off, especially since there are so many supply chain constraints at the moment with can shortages and all of that? What do you think, Osh?

[00:25:17] Danny Breger: I'd certainly say there's some logistics that will not be a choice. It's just the reality. You might not be able to get a new SKU in. You might not be able to get a new vendor. So you might be stuck with what you currently have. I think that the brands that already have shelf placement, the brands that already have vendor relationships are in a unique position where they actually can leverage those relationships and make some updates that better answer to what people are looking for. They're looking for 12 packs, 24 packs. They're looking for high volume beverages. They want something that they can down several of, not just a couple of. So there's a lot of liquid changes and a lot of brand updates that could happen for existing SKUs out there that really could give them a sales lift if they can have those logistics in their back pocket and figure it out. This also is an opportunity for brands to really use this pandemic time to really reflect on where do I want my sales focus? What is my brand story? Do I want to focus on packaged beer? Do I want to focus on draft? When everyone opens back up, everyone's going to be so excited to have that pint in their hand. So I see it more as an opportunity to really think about those decisions that you can make internally, and really have some time to think through that and make mindful choices around why you're making an update rather than on your heels. One other thing I'd add though, is that every single rebrand, refresh, evolve, whatever we're calling it, there's always a problem that you're solving. And it's rarely the problem on the surface. You know, maybe there's sales slipping in one area. Well, you could dismiss that as COVID or you could dismiss that as something on the surface, but there's usually something else going on. Like maybe you haven't taken a hard look at whether your liquid is actually current. Maybe you haven't really thought about who your competitors are. Maybe you're dismissing seltzer because you don't think it should be a thing, but it's a thing. So you should be thinking about your beer isn't just up against other breweries anymore. It's up against other liquids. It's up against health and wellness. And not everyone wants to drink alcohol. So there's so many things that are current right now that I think the pandemic has actually really accelerated some of those trends that if you're sitting back thinking, what should I do so I can expand and grow my brand? you really should be thinking about those current sales trends that are happening that are very relevant that I think maybe we wouldn't have seen for another couple years. And this is the time to be making changes in your own brand to be able to answer to that.

[00:27:43] Three Tier: I think maybe back to the original point and back to anchor and back to this whole conversation. If you are thinking about a rebrand, and let's say you're I mean, especially if you're older, but even if you're five or six years old, you don't have to be really super old. You need to understand your brand equity and what visual cues you have right now that if lost would I mean, number one, draw ire in worst case, but just number two would, would confuse people. Like what do people go on shelf and look for? Is there a certain color or brand name or typography or color palette or any sort of iconography that you are known for just in a real quick snap decision. And you need to understand that you do that through a brand audit and Morya was talking about how to do that, but you need to understand it takes stock of just, at least on the surface level, what sort of thing that we need to keep or what do we need to jettison as we move through this process after we make the important decision that Osh just walked through about all the before that stuff of strategy, portfolio management, what beer we're making, all that sort of stuff.

[00:28:39] Bruce Springsteen: Do you anticipate a lot of rebrands coming out of the pandemic?

[00:28:43] Three Tier: Yeah. I'm sure Osh is saying it as well. I mean, since 2017, the bulk of our work, and I'm sure Osh as well, has shifted to refreshes and rebrands. And we're seeing people come to us, as Osh said, because we're going to use this next couple of years. We don't know what the competitive landscape's going to look like. We don't know what we're going to look like. We don't know what the draft market's going to look like. People do realize that whether they've wanted to do it for a while or whether they think they need to do it now because of what's happening, there is going to be a lot more of this happening as we move forward.

[00:29:14] Danny Breger: I'd add on top of that, that it's not just about updating their brand, but it's product extensions. So adding new lines, whether that's a new line of their beer portfolio or even other products. So adding seltzer, adding spirits, adding cocktails in a can, whatever that may be, there's a lot of reflection that's happening to realize that it's no longer just beer out there.

[00:29:39] Jessica Infante: So a lot of the brands that we've discussed like Anchor and Ballast Point and Sam Adams all have these steady portfolios that are on shelves that are somewhat reliable. There's like a flagship, another couple of year round things, a reliable stable of seasonals, but that's not really how the vast majority of the more than 8,000 breweries in our country work. So smaller breweries like to rotate styles in and out. How important would you guys say it is for them to keep a consistent look and feel from release to release? Osh, what do you say to smaller breweries who are looking to change up their occasional release packaging?

[00:30:13] Danny Breger: I'd say with smaller all the way up to the regional breweries, it's becoming a lot more necessary for them to be more consolidated with their portfolio offerings at all, especially in the package space. It's just not realistic for Danny Breger to expect sales from 30 different beers out there. You might be able to do that out of your taproom, but it's just really hard to get retailers to commit to that kind of shelf space. So what I'm seeing a lot of is a rotating SKU, one SKU that is shared by multiple beers that get released throughout the year. That means they have one SKU placement, but they can rotate what that is, whether it's always an IPA or always a hazy, but maybe it changes up a little bit throughout the year. And then as far as the core offerings, maybe there's three, maybe there's four, but you're just not seeing 12 core year round offerings anymore. It's just not realistic. As far as consistency across the brand portfolio, I'd say a lot of that also comes down to where are you selling. You're selling in the bottle shops, a lot of them are being shelved by style. You can't get that billboard effect when you're living in that bottle shop space. So you have to make sure that there's consistency where one cooler is all the way across the room from another cooler. So you've got to make sure that someone knows it's both coming from the same place. And then when you do have that grocery space, you've got a great billboard effect because of that consistency as well. I'd also say that, you know, in terms of the difference between year round to seasonals or limited releases, because you can't rely on how much shelf placement you're going to get, it's that much more critical to have there be a continuity between what you're putting out year round and what you're putting out only on a limited basis.

[00:31:49] Jessica Infante: So Isaac, for smaller breweries who are living the at the brewery release life, counting on, you know, lines out the door and whatever, how important is it for those guys to consider consistent look and feel from beer to beer?

[00:32:01] Three Tier: That is a conversation we've been having a lot over the last year. I think traditionally you'd have your flagship line and then you'd have your specialty seasonal line, whatever that looked like. And to Osh's point, it really has started to blur to where it needs to be more consistent because you need to have, you have a shot at maybe just putting your brand forward depending on where it's shelved. For folks that are really going heavy on DTC or even right now going, well, maybe we're not going to go big into drafts ever again. Maybe we're just going to always package our beer and carry out. do you have to be consistent? Are all the things that we know as need to haves on shelf, when you think about, you know, like large chain retail or bottle shop or whatever, do those actually matter if people are coming to you and buy the beer? And I want to say, yes, they do, of course, but I don't know that they have to be completely the same. I mean, I think as we switch more to e-com and people see beer online, I think that will be a different shelving environment, you know, quotes around shelving there. as people are looking at the art, but I don't know. It's interesting and we don't have an answer yet. It's something that we're talking a lot about and thinking a lot about, but I have no clear answer for you.

[00:33:02] Danny Breger: The kind of old rule attached to that for us was that if someone's already come in your door to buy your beer, then have some fun with it. That's your opportunity because they've already committed to you. But I think to Isaac's point, those rules are changing right now with the fact that pandemic has really put this whole new DTC, it's a new world out there. I don't think we have enough data to really be able to make hard answers off of that. But I do think that the commitment for a brewery to do something crazy and new every single time they release a beer. That's a commitment no matter what, and it's hard to keep up with that. So not just on the liquid side, but on the branding side, it's very challenging to constantly be reinventing yourself with every single release. So just on a functional level, having some continuity around a template or some sort of framework, it really does make it more feasible for breweries to be able to put beers out on a regular basis and keep things fresh, but still have a sandbox that they're working within.

[00:33:57] Jessica Infante: Having been a person who used to have to write creative briefs for beers that it was exhausting and I love what you are suggesting. So excellent work. There's realities at bay there. So what other industries do you guys look to outside of beer for inspiration? Where can breweries seek examples of successful design that's not in beer? Isaac, where do you look for inspiration?

[00:34:20] Three Tier: I think beer is actually inspiring more outward than it is. I mean, we have so many folks from kombucha or cannabis or CPG food that come to us and say, you know, we love how craft beer's done X. And so we always have to kind of push back and kind of figure out what that means. But Osh mentioned it earlier, health and wellness is just, it's been huge forever, but it's now kind of coming in full bore into beer, kind of got in there with seltzers. And we could argue how big non-alc is, but with lower alc beers and stuff, that's a big one. I think just CPG food, including interestingly, like store brand, like the elevation of store brands themselves, this thing that no one ever thinks about has become this, there's this arms race now in CPG food and snacks in particular of standing out and selling like crazy. And so that we look there a lot at Kodo. It's a lot of fun, but I don't know. I'm curious to hear Osh's answer. Where do you look?

[00:35:10] Danny Breger: I look to what it was before computers. I look to, you know, old canned fish and who knows what else. It's like literally looking 100 plus years ago when people with real pencils and paint were having to reinvent themselves and communicate themselves on a shelf. So I find the most inspiration from that because it just was so much more raw with the decisions around how to communicate a brand and differentiate within each brand line. As far as current references, I think that there's a lot that I look as far as signage, as far as like cars, more on the product design side of things, just looking at different ways that people can take that same form and change it up just enough to where it can be, you know, its own brand and its own thought. Fashion is also a really great reference for us. thinking about how a t-shirt's a t-shirt, but yet there's so many brands that really... What really makes a $150 t-shirt valued at that? So I like looking at fashion because it is probably the most similar to beverage in that it has to reinvent himself every single year. And the look books that are coming out are coming out a year before they're even hitting any of the stores. So I think there's a lot of that seeing the trend before the trend even happens, that I'm sure Isaac can relate to where we're making these design changes long before any of the actual product will be sitting on a shelf. And so when we start hearing everyone want a white can, well, we were hearing that a year before everyone actually had a white can. So it's just listening to our own portfolio, our own conversations with our brands and commonalities between all these conversations that start coming up, start showing us where some of those trends are going to end up being from a visual and communication standpoint, and then seeing if those same trends are happening in the outside world, whether it's fashion or automobiles or whatever else.

[00:37:03] Bruce Springsteen: We'll ask you guys one last question before we let you guys go. Other than packaging, what are some of your favorite things you've seen breweries put out recently? And I'll start with you, Isaac.

[00:37:15] Three Tier: I know it's not a new trend. It's been happening since like 1516, but I I just I'm very happy and spitting with loggers being a normal thing that you find everywhere. I just like that that style is being done really well. I'm seeing more breweries with with loggering tanks and really investing to do it properly and that's. That makes me happy. I like that.

[00:37:37] Bruce Springsteen: OSH will give you the last word.

[00:37:40] Danny Breger: I'm on board the seltzer train. I'm excited about all these clean, non-syrupy, very drinkable, crafty takes on what the big guys are doing. So I'm glad to see that breweries are coming around to realizing that there's ways to not make fun of it and to actually do it right.

[00:37:59] Bruce Springsteen: And you can make some money with it too, which is why we're here. Yep. Selling more of it. Well, Isaac, Osh, thanks for doing this. We appreciate it. This has been awesome. All right, let's get into some headlines that you all can read at Brewbound.com if you're a subscriber. If not, subscribe, join us. We have monthly subscriptions now.

[00:38:22] Jessica Infante: So exciting.

[00:38:23] Bruce Springsteen: You can't see our jazz hands, but yes.

[00:38:26] Jessica Infante: If you weren't sure you wanted us for a whole year, you can just get us for a month and see how you feel about it.

[00:38:32] Bruce Springsteen: We're very low commitment around here. So yeah, if you'd like to try out a Brewbound subscription, head on over to Brewbound.com and I'm sure you can find out how to do that there. So let's hit some of these headlines that you can read now. Deschutes has made its first acquisition in its history. It's buying neighbor Boneyard Beer Company. And there's a lot of history here. Tony Lawrence, he actually worked at Deschutes before. He goes back about 30 years with Gary Fish, the founder of Deschutes. And this is a pretty good deal, I think, for Boneyard. Deschutes is going to be producing their beer. They're going to be selling it. They're going to be marketing it. So head on over to Brewbound.com and read that story.

[00:39:18] Jessica Infante: Definitely what friends are for. So congratulations to Boneyard. Next up, Reyes struck again, this time in Northern California. They've acquired Redding Distributing, which is in Redding, California, about 160 miles north of Sacramento, so way the heck up there, almost to Oregon. Redding will add 2 million cases to Reyes's Golden Brands business, which is the distributor that they use to service a huge territory in Northern California. They've been adding to that pretty steadily, at least since I joined the team in October 2019. I feel like we don't go more than a couple months without a Reyes acquisition. So they're definitely building a behemoth out there.

[00:39:57] Bruce Springsteen: Yep, they've really built up that golden brands business. And another story that you wrote earlier this week was the issues at platform beer companies, Columbus Taproom.

[00:40:08] Jessica Infante: Yeah, so Platform is, they're based in Ohio. They're part of Anheuser-Busch InBev's Brewers Collective. They were acquired in 2019. They have locations in Cleveland and Columbus, but the staff at the Columbus Taproom all walked off the job last Saturday. They posted a note to the taproom door saying they quit and the taproom would be closed. They also posted a typed two-page letter citing some safety concerns. So first, they were most concerned about the fact that their has been little communication about COVID-19 cases among them. Three people have gotten the virus, staff were only told about two. They called out some pretty gnarly black mold in their back cooler that was spreading to cases of beer that were stored there. They were also rather upset that they've repeatedly asked for them to not be staffed to close alone and they keep being staffed to close alone so that they're not having to to have that many employees on at one time. Closing a brewery is stressful. It used to really stress me out. You count all the cash in the registers, deposit it in the safe. I was always worried about screwing up the math, but there's also the idea that that's a precarious situation. You're alone in a building late at night with a lot of money. If somebody were to know about the ongoings of your business and they had ill intent, I don't know, I wouldn't really want to be alone doing that. So totally understand their concerns.

[00:41:31] Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, that's not a great situation. And speaking of Anheuser-Busch, last week they reported their full year earnings, their global revenues declined 3.7% to just $46.8 billion, with a B, billion dollars. I think they'll be all right though.

[00:41:51] Jessica Infante: I think they are gonna be okay. But yeah, that call was really interesting. We did a lot of talk about global business, not a lot of talk of U.S. business. Carlos Brito, their CEO, said the U.S. had an amazing year. If you look at STRs, which are sales to retailers, which we call depletions, he said, quote, we're almost flat at down 0.2% in an industry that was flat. They lost share, but their net revenue in the U.S. grew by 2.6%.

[00:42:20] Bruce Springsteen: And speaking of Brito, we might know his replacement. Michelle Dukaris, who is running AV's US business currently, he could be in line to replace Brito as CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev. That's according to Bloomberg News last week. And so I guess we're going to have to wait and find out, but supposedly this could go down in the coming weeks before the company's annual general meeting in April. Wow, yeah, we're on Brito watch Brito watch.

[00:42:56] Jessica Infante: I think this means he gets to retire. I would hope so.

[00:42:59] Bruce Springsteen: I mean, I don't know, but that man loves chocolate. I do remember a meeting that I was at with Brito and he talked about how he loves quality chocolate and he talked about how he used to have, I think a chocolate problem. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but this is the only like interaction I've ever had with Brito and I remember this and he talked about how much he loves good chocolate. Wow. Yeah, maybe he's a chocoholic like myself.

[00:43:28] Jessica Infante: We all have our vices. I can't believe you've met Burrito. You're a big deal.

[00:43:34] Bruce Springsteen: In Madrid, Iowa, I am, yes. Big deal. In a town with one stoplight, they probably don't remember me slinging VHS videos, so that's all right.

[00:43:46] Jessica Infante: They don't celebrate Justin Kendall Day?

[00:43:48] Bruce Springsteen: I don't think anybody celebrates Justin Kendall day, other than Dusty Rhodes, the American dream, which every day is apparently that day.

[00:43:57] Jessica Infante: Well, I mean, every day is Dusty's day.

[00:43:59] Bruce Springsteen: Yes. And also one last headline for y'all, Brett Williams, who sold Vermont Cider Company, which makes Woodchuck for $305 million back in, I believe it was 2012. He has acquired a stake in Wachusett Brewing Company here in Westminster, Massachusetts. He's leading a group called Blueberry Ale, Inc. Very clever. That's a Wachusett beer. And they've invested in Wachusett. They're looking to build a platform of breweries that would produce out of there. That story is up on Brewbound.com. Also, we've got a people moves out of Wachusett. Former President Christian McMahon has started his own consulting firm, The Hooch Lab. Again, all those headlines at Brewbound.com. We do a lot of things. So head on over there and read all about it. And that's our show.

[00:45:04] Jessica Infante: That is our show.

[00:45:06] Bruce Springsteen: Yes. Thanks to Osh and Isaac for joining us. Thanks to our one man audio team, Joe. Please like, subscribe and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Drop us a note via email at podcast at Brewbound.com to share your thoughts. We'll be back in a few weeks and I think we'll say goodbye for now. Thanks for listening.