Inside Rhinegeist’s Merch Strategy – Emotional Hooks, Limited Drops and Loyal Fans

[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, Rhinegeist leaders discuss their merch strategy. Hello and welcome to The Brewbound Podcast. I'm Justin Kendall. I'm Jessica Infante.

[00:00:48] Zoe Licata: And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:50] Justin Kendall: How's everybody doing? You recovering from birthday number two?

[00:00:54] Jessica Infante: I think so. Yeah, my daughter turned two over the weekend. And the theme for her party, I had the idea for like a year and a half ago because I'm a crazy person. And for her first birthday, we did a little prince theme and called it the purple one because her dad's a big prince fan. I'm obnoxious about this and I am a big Bruce Springsteen fan. So Cora's second birthday was born to run and it was great. Adorable. She dressed up as Bruce. I dressed up as Steve Van Zandt. It was family only. I didn't think I could say to the other daycare parents, hey, come on over and dress up as your favorite East Street band member. So we kept it tight to the people who know and I think still like me. I feel like they all appreciate the reference. I think so. Cora had a great time.

[00:01:45] Justin Kendall: Anybody bring a saxophone?

[00:01:47] Jessica Infante: I had an inflatable saxophone that Cora tried to play and bit and poked a hole through, so we have to keep it. Next year's contenders, I'm not really sure. I assume by next year she'll have her own feelings, but I've thought about both 3Me and Rhapsody, a celebration of Queen. Margaret Thredeville. And then my brother has pitched Threed, a Creed-themed party. Then we went down a rabbit hole of Cothreed and Cambria, or just General Thremo. So I'm not really sure.

[00:02:24] Justin Kendall: I have reworked the words to a certain part of Margaritaville, which now includes a duck named Ronald. And, you know, we do the whole, where's the salt, where's the salt, where's the goddamn salt part too. She really likes that.

[00:02:40] Jessica Infante: God, it's stardom young.

[00:02:41] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:02:42] Jessica Infante: I forget that Jimmy Buffett's no longer with us a lot.

[00:02:45] Justin Kendall: You know, we watch a lot of Wheel of Fortune. That's Sophie's favorite show. And that's very funny. Often the prize is a trip to Margaritaville.

[00:02:55] Jessica Infante: Which one?

[00:02:55] Justin Kendall: I think the one in Florida, but I'm not positive. So like it keeps popping up and then they'll show Jimmy Buffett and she sort of has the connection with, you know, her duck and, you know, it's always nurse daddy's fault. Anyway, we got a lot going on to talk about this week, but first we should plug our friends at BevNET. BevNET Live in New York City is about a week away. It's June 11th and 12th. You can find out more information at BevNET.com. Tickets available still while they last. It sounds like tickets are going pretty fast though.

[00:03:32] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and if you can't make it to New York, though you really should, the conference will be live streamed on BevNET.com as we do with all of our live events.

[00:03:40] Zoe Licata: But benefit of being there in person, they're going to be doing some of those retail one-to-one meetings. Again, we did that and BevNET did that in the wintertime. They have a bunch of retailers set up there, Whole Foods, H-E-B, Stop and Shop, a bunch of others. So real perk of being there in person, you can have some of those one-to-one meetings with retailers. We know how important those are.

[00:04:01] Justin Kendall: Yeah, a lot goes on outside of the stage content, so check that out. If you like this podcast, please like, rate, and review, and subscribe. And stick around after we get through the news. We've got an interview with Rheingeis VP of Marketing, Tracey Ireland, and Retail Merchandise Director, Jenny Morrissey. We're gonna talk about their merch strategy, including they're doing some limited time drops. We'll talk about things that don't work, things they've learned along the way. So really cool strategy session that you should all look forward to. Let's get into some of the news, and it's a lot of RNDC all the time around here. Our spirits editor at BevNET, Ferron Salniker, has been on this. She's been covering it really well. Dave Infante from Fingers and VinePair has done some great work on this, but RNDC has essentially collapsed in California following the supplier exits, and they are shutting up shop on September 1st. and exiting the state.

[00:05:05] Jessica Infante: Yeah, which is, I mean, the country's biggest spirits market. So this is, if you know you can't make it and you've got to get out, you've got to get out. But losing that, I'm sure will be very painful to the company at large.

[00:05:17] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it seemed like it happened kind of fast, but not at the same time where we've been getting, it feels like, updates every week or so at the end there, but it was consistently getting updates of another supplier being like, all right, we're going to pull out here. It wasn't entirely a surprise out of all that when we heard this news announced this week, but it also was like, oh, wow, this really is the end for them in California.

[00:05:43] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and this has been a long time coming, the first departure from RNDC in California, but maybe even in more states than that. Justin, I feel like you wrote about this years ago, 2022 with Sazerac was leaving. And then we just had like a really steady drum beat basically from the beginning of the year on with Brown Forman leaving in California. And then recently Brown Forman left in many other markets beyond just California. Tito's announced that they were leaving with an exit date of April 1st, which I think is cruel, given the date. Then AB announced that they were moving Cutwater Spirits out of RNDC. And most of these suppliers are going to the Reyes Beverage Group, who in basically probably beginning around 2022 as well, started positioning themselves as a total beverage distributor, which was attractive to many of these other houses like Tito's and Brown Foreman. AB did not send their products there for many reasons. And I was trying to explain this to my husband last night. We took a little walk to the park after work and he just asked what was going on. And it kind of struck me how strange all of this is if you don't know the business really well. And I was like, yeah, well, they're all just leaving all these brands. And he was like, well, why would they walk away from California? They just don't want to sell their products there because they don't like the distributor. I was like, no, dude, they're going to a different distributor. And then it clicked for him.

[00:07:05] Justin Kendall: And we should mention too, Gallo with High Noon was Another Round of those departures. Yes, that's the other. So one of the things that came out earlier this week was Dave Infante obtained. It's a 67 second video of CEO Bob Hendrickson. making this announcement, and what he says in the—he says a lot in those 67 seconds, but he said, we had no path to profitability. And he added that RNDC, quote, tried everything in their means to either do a merger, an acquisition, attract suppliers, and do what we could to remain solvent in California, and we couldn't find a path. And that's really something, because you laid it out, Jess. This is the largest spirits market in the country. And RNDC is the second biggest player in the middle tier in Babauk. you would think that they would be too big to fail in that market, but that is not the case. And I can't remember the year that they acquired Young's Market, but- I think it was also 2022. I think it was too, now that you say it out loud. And we were getting information at the time that Young's Market was struggling in the market prior to that acquisition. And We've seen a lot of comments too that basically were saying or intimating that RNDC were handed a Ferrari or something like that, you know. And it's funny how in hindsight, three years ago, we were hearing, no, Young's Market is a shit show. And now we've got this other, essentially a shit show going on with RNDC.

[00:08:48] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I mean, California is the country's biggest spirits market, but California is also I don't want to say easy, but there's much more market access than many other places. It's not a control state. It's heavily a chain state, but they don't really segregate by category of alcohol. I wonder how much it's because the spirits category has evolved with the rise of RTDs? That's got to be a factor here.

[00:09:17] Zoe Licata: I think that's really the main driver here is because RTDs are basically the only place spirits are finding any sort of growth right now. So many major spirits companies are now putting a lot of their eggs in that spirits-based RTD marketplace. And the distributors that are really handling that and tackling that are the beer distributors, because those are products that are typically being sold in similar places, marketed in a similar way as beer products. So I don't think if we had this current RTD marketplace and the way that spirits are having to operate right now, if that wasn't happening, I don't necessarily think this would be happening at least as necessarily quickly as it did.

[00:10:00] Jessica Infante: Yeah, that's such a great point, Zoe. I mean, the way that you succeed in selling RTDs is you've got to treat them like beer. And that's why so many of these brands want to go to Reyes.

[00:10:10] Justin Kendall: The turns are so much faster.

[00:10:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah. The turns are faster. You're servicing the cold box and C-stores. You're doing so much more stuff that you wouldn't normally be doing with big bottle spirits and wine. Like the way that you distribute wine, I know next to nothing about, but I assume it is way different than the way that you distribute beer.

[00:10:26] Zoe Licata: Even something as simple as like just the contacts that you have to have with the retailers are different, right? Like you're working with different people than necessarily working with like their spirits buyer or whatever. So it's just, it's a different sort of business that you have to be operating in.

[00:10:40] Justin Kendall: This is going to play out over the next 90 days. is this is happening at the same time that Sunset Distributing is really coming together, and that's the merger of Classic Beverage and Stone Distributing. Obviously, when you take over a company like that, they're going to be what they call synergies, which means they're cutting jobs. And I think we reported on the Warren report that they issued for Classic a while back. I can't remember the actual number of jobs, but this is going to put a lot of people in the middle tier. looking for jobs in California at the same time. I mean, that market, it's gonna be flooded with people looking for a landing place. And this is something that we've talked about before, too, is what does this do to the tail? Because I can't imagine a scenario where Sunset Distributing is going to take all of these brands. They may try, but I just don't see it as viable. And there are fewer options. in the middle tier in California already. These brands are going to be taking a lot of and are getting a lot of mind share from these wholesalers that are on the move to traditional beer distributors. So I wonder if there's an opportunity for somebody else to come in there because there seems to be a crack in the door, but time, money and resources. And it's a hard time to start a business in California of all places.

[00:12:20] Jessica Infante: For sure. And we've seen in recent years, like craft focus distributors, that's a hard game. And I think we see a lot of people, we've seen a lot of businesses go out, you know, Beer Shepherd in Vermont. And there are still some that are, that are out there, but if you're a small craft brand and you really want to get that boutique experience, I think it's, probably important to find someone like that if you can. I'd assume there are businesses like that that focus on craft spirits too. And if not, maybe now is a great time to start.

[00:12:53] Justin Kendall: Right. The other question that's probably going to come out of this is what happens to RNDC? And we have this quote here of the CEO saying they tried a merger, they tried an acquisition, they tried to attract suppliers. They couldn't pull these things off. but somebody's gonna pick up that infrastructure, right? There's gotta be some type of deal, although he's either laying in the weeds here with these comments, or he's given up a lot of leverage.

[00:13:22] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it was kind of shocking to hear just like how frank he was being. And to clarify earlier, because it came up at CBC a lot, no, Dave Infante and I are not married or related. So if you heard me say, I should have explained this to my husband like he was five, it was not Dave.

[00:13:41] Justin Kendall: If this were video, we'd have a crawl on the screen that just says, Jessica Infante and Dave Infante are not related. Stop asking.

[00:13:49] Jessica Infante: Yeah. We are just buddies. We're probably distant cousins, but nobody wants to do the 23andMe to figure it out.

[00:13:55] Justin Kendall: And he looks shockingly like your dad, right?

[00:13:57] Jessica Infante: Yeah, Dave and my dad look like they could be related. So we probably are. What are the odds? But we did not find each other until we both took up this very strange line of work.

[00:14:13] Justin Kendall: Anything else that we should cover on RNDC?

[00:14:15] Jessica Infante: I assume there's going to be more, you know, I assume California is just the first domino. Yeah, but Farron's doing a great job on this and so is Dave. So follow along with both of their reporting.

[00:14:29] Zoe Licata: Yeah, Farron should also be coming out with some future reports that are just diving into like the impact on some of the suppliers as well. So that's a whole nother conversation. So it's definitely, there's definitely not the end of any of these conversations.

[00:14:45] Justin Kendall: That's a tough place to be too for those brands. Yeah. Because we talk about leverage and They don't got a lot of leverage.

[00:14:52] Jessica Infante: Now, if you're a tiny part of the book and high noon shows up and you're competing for time and attention and resources with a brand like that, sounds rough.

[00:15:03] Justin Kendall: Yeah. I can only imagine. Look for more coverage of that at Brewbound.com. Insiders can also read all of our coverage of the Brewers Association's data dump for 2024. Zoe did a great job of breaking down a lot of the numbers, analyzing things, and organizing things. I was just going to ask Zoe how her eyes are feeling after all that.

[00:15:26] Zoe Licata: I had to break out the blue light glasses the other day. I'm starting to feel a lot of really squinting at tiny little data things. I'm glad it happened. I'm also glad it's over.

[00:15:38] Justin Kendall: Hey, you weren't alone this time.

[00:15:40] Zoe Licata: It's true. I was not alone for the drop this time, which was much better. But yeah, there's a lot of nuggets. We could honestly go on for like weeks and weeks in the just amount of things you can find in that data. So it's really what's out there that we shared is kind of just an overview of what's going on in each kind of little subset of breweries. But there's a lot.

[00:16:03] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Well, next up, we dig into some of those breweries and some of the good stories that are coming out of those. Look out for all of that. Look out for more coverage of all the news at Brewbound.com this week. Before we get to our featured interview, let's play Another Round or Tabbing Out. And this is a story that hit the San Francisco Chronicle. last week, I believe. And it is, Almanac is essentially divorcing itself from any of the terminology of craft, beer, tap rooms, anything like that, and rebranding itself as a family-friendly gathering space called Almanac Adventureland. And this is a pretty big change, but it seems to be working for them. Some very notable quotes from CEO Damian Fagan, who told the Chronicle, quote, I hate the word taproom because it's such a narrow concept. And he also later added, we don't view Almanac as a crap brewery anymore. Those days have gone. So we talk a lot about experiences and sort of recreating that consumer touchpoint, and we've heard a lot about that from Brewers Association CEO Bart Watson, and we've talked about how that industrial environment isn't as welcoming or appealing to consumers as it once was. And so here is a new take on that, and I believe they're in their Alameda space. You go from being a sour and barrel-aged brewery to this community space with pinball machines and slushies for kids and a sandbox, and they say that they're profitable, which is something I find hard to argue with. I mean, they're still making beer, and their hazy IPA love is 40% of their business. But, you know, they've completely flipped the script on what they were doing. And, you know, they argue that they probably wouldn't be here if they hadn't have made those changes. So, you know, we're playing Another Round or Tabbing Out on this. I have a hard time saying anything negative about this, you know, like to what you got to do to survive at this point.

[00:18:23] Jessica Infante: Well, I mean, when you're not doing barrel-aged sours anymore and you take out the barrel, she's got a lot of space left, right? And a lot of your profitability, I assume, goes up when you're not trying to sell, you know, corked and caged 750 milliliter bottles anymore. I got to say, I think I'm here for it. As the parent of a small child, we don't go to breweries anymore because I don't know, the online conversation about people griping about kids in tap rooms and I'm here to drink beer and it's not a playground and blah, blah, blah. Like, look, kids have a right to exist in public and families in Europe have been doing this for centuries. Do I want to bring Cory to a place where she's not welcome? No, absolutely not. And, you know, a new brewery just opened their own space up in my neck of the woods in a town that we like to visit. And I haven't been yet because they were open, I don't know, maybe two weeks and they already started posting like, families, we need some rules. The kids have to sit by your table. And I assume that they probably had some problems and I would not be a parent who contributes to those problems because I'm kind of a helicopter when we're out in public. But that kind of language just makes me not want to go at all, which is too bad. I'm sorry that a few bad apples have ruined the bunch for everybody, but I don't want to be a part of this. So with Almanac being like, Hey, bring the kids. I'm on their website right now. They've got an arcade, a sandbox, a turf patio. They've turned their Barrah Hall into an arcade, ball pit and private bar. They are welcoming the small people and If I lived in the Bay Area, I think we'd be there every weekend.

[00:20:03] Justin Kendall: You know, those small people are attached to the big people with money.

[00:20:06] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Yeah, they are. And those big people like beer. So I think it's a win-win. Calling this Adventureland, I think, is slightly grandiose, but I also haven't seen it. Zoe, what do you think?

[00:20:21] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I could go either way. I'll refrain on talking about kids and places because I'm not a parent, but I think taprooms are in this weird position right now where I want to say, don't like talk bad about the word taproom. We should be explaining to consumers that taprooms are spaces that have these options. Tap rooms are things now where some of them have evolved where it's not just what you think a tap room was in the past. But it also comes to a point of like, all right, we can't just work on educating consumers anymore. We have to make changes in the brewery side first before they can learn that. So it's kind of like a chicken and the egg situation. If we have to change how we're communicating what these spaces are so that consumers will come because they're looking for those other options, then maybe that's what you have to do. There are certainly times where I'm talking to friends, I'm like, oh, do you want to go to like this tap room or something? And those friends who don't drink beer are like, well, no, I don't drink beer. Why would I go there? Those places, more often than not now, have so many more things on their menu. They have other activations going on, they have events going on, but it hasn't gotten to the point yet where consumers realize that. So I don't know what you have to do there. I guess eventually you have to rephrase it until that connection is made with the consumer. Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like I have a very strong opinion either way. I think it's important that breweries are providing other things for consumers now. We've talked about it at Nauseum about how the importance of experiences and the importance of giving consumers something other than just the product because that's not going to bring people in anymore. How you do that is really going to be dependent on what your consumer base is, what your community is.

[00:22:10] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And Almanac's website has in giant cap letters, we offer more than just beer. goes on to explain they have guest wines, ciders, and Alameda Point Soda Company drinks. And they even have house-made slushies, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. So Zoe, being a person who is free and unencumbered and not bogged down by parenthood, would you, on like a nice Saturday afternoon, would you want to go to a place that was positing itself as a family-friendly destination? You can be honest. I'm not going to get mad.

[00:22:44] Zoe Licata: Uh, probably not.

[00:22:46] SPEAKER_??: Yeah. That's fair.

[00:22:48] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Cause I'm not necessarily, that's not, I don't think I'm the target consumer for that. Like I'm not necessarily looking for places where a bunch of screaming children are going to be running around. That kind of sounds like my nightmare. But if I was like going out with friends who had kids or with like family members, sure. Totally. But just me hanging out with my friends. No, that's not where I want to be.

[00:23:12] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I think, I assume parents have come to appreciate places like this because it's pretty low stakes. You're not tied to a table. Kids don't really like sitting at tables for a long time in restaurants, as I have learned on several occasions. But having also been a waitress, you don't want free range kids in a food service environment. I don't know. I think if this is what works for your business, go for it. Where were we in the fall for... Oh, the Mass Brewer's Guild Conference at Jack's Abbey. Jack's Abbey has a whole play area outside with the Fisher Price house and sandbox and all this. That's great. We used to go to Notch all the time and Cora, when she was a tiny baby, went to Notch a lot. But now that she is walking, we really haven't been back because Notch is family friendly within certain times. You know, I don't want her to be hanging out in the beer garden throwing rocks at like God knows who, dogs, people, you know?

[00:24:15] Zoe Licata: I think that's why it's important that breweries have various options or events where your space can be a place where you can host any consumer along that spectrum and you're giving them specific times or events where that person can come and can enjoy your time. So you're having something that's like a super family-friendly area or a family-friendly event, but you're also having like quiz nights or something like things that are more catered towards that adult audience. Like having something where you know you're communicating to people, okay, if you're looking for this specific type of experience, we can give this to you and making that very clear. So then I think people feel more comfortable about knowing what they're getting into and knowing if they want to be in that environment or not.

[00:24:59] Justin Kendall: Yeah, totally. The only issue that I have, I think, is the Adventureland name, because I live in a state with Adventureland, the amusement park, and it's OK. It's not Six Flags or anything, but... There are adventures to be had. Yeah. Come on over to Adventureland. You're going to have a fun-filled day. Oh.

[00:25:22] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:25:22] Justin Kendall: Since the 80s, that has been in my head. A classic. Yeah. All right. Well, with that, let's get to our featured interview with Ryan Geist, Tracey Ireland, and Jenny Morrissey. The internal joke at Cincinnati's Rhinegeist is that Rhinegeist is really a t-shirt company that makes beer. Jokes aside, merch remains an important revenue source for the brewery. So joining us to discuss this week are Tracey Ireland, VP of Marketing. Thanks for being here, Tracy. Thank you. And Jenny Morrissey, Retail Merchandise Director. Thanks for joining us, Jenny.

[00:26:00] Rhinegeist Brewery: Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:26:02] Justin Kendall: Yeah. So I had a conversation with Adam and Tracy, I want to say earlier this year, and Tracy was so excited to talk about merch, but she was like, we got to bring Jenny into the conversation. And she mentioned that you have a background in fashion that you're bringing to the brewery. So can you sort of level set for us a little bit about your history and, and, you know, your experience coming into the brewery?

[00:26:26] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, so this is the first brewery I've ever worked for. My background, my education specifically is in fashion merchandising management. I went to school in New York City at the Fashion Institute of Technology and they have a great program there just showing you like ins and outs of how a retail business should be run and then From there, I worked for a large retailer in New York City for a couple years and then moved down to Philadelphia. Worked in production, sourcing, product development for anthropology in their footwear and accessories category. And then did a brief time at free people doing some like short lead time chase apparel development. And then, uh, moved up to Boston and worked for Adidas doing product management work for their Rockport brand and was there for a little while. And then moved to San Antonio, did more footwear product management down there. And then ultimately moved up to Cincinnati and here I am.

[00:27:34] Justin Kendall: So yeah, joining a brewery that has a screen printing shop isn't really the norm. So you know that that's a really interesting path to it. So what was it that attracted you to Rheingeis?

[00:27:52] Rhinegeist Brewery: It's a cool brand. All of the places I have worked, I've always believed in the brand and the product and the people and the company and the mission. And so when I was kind of out there searching for a position, Ryan Geist really checked a lot of boxes and the position was like right in my wheelhouse. I got to do, I get to do like everything that I've ever done in my career all in one. position here. It's very cool. It's very unique. There's really nothing else like that, especially in the greater Cincinnati area. And so I'm very fortunate to have landed here. I think the print shop is a really good point. When I found out that we had our own print shop and we were printing our own t-shirts, I was like, that is a huge asset. Like we can turn things around and do really quick projects and be really reactive to what's working in our business and trends that are happening. We can just turn it around so fast because it's it's right here. So very happy to have that flexibility.

[00:29:03] Zoe Licata: I'm curious to get Tracy your perspective on, you know, having Jenny come on. When we're thinking about brewery t-shirts and merch and stuff, you're not really thinking about it from a super, like, fashion or business-oriented point of view, right? It's like, this is just supporting breweries with some cool merch. But what has Hearn's perspective and the way that you all operate at RideGeist kind of shifted and, like, hey, we're going to do things a little bit differently here?

[00:29:32] Jenny Morrissey: So, I mean, early, I've been here for almost 10 years, so have been here long enough to see like the ups and downs of, let's call it our t-shirt business. I mean, the difference is that at the very beginning, we were focused primarily on just using it as a marketing tool, right? So I'm at least breaking even. There's my ROI and I'm driving awareness, right? People, I mean, we sold t-shirts in every state by probably 20, 16, 2017, and then looking at it over the years and looking at it more as a business unit. And so I think we, at least under my leadership, have got it to a certain place and it did start to decline a bit from a revenue perspective. And so Jenny's been able to come in and bring the retail perspective and kind of the planning perspective like assortment planning and thinking about the different types of consumers that we're bringing in and that we wanna create gear for. So she's brought in a bigger, more disciplined approach to it from a business perspective.

[00:30:41] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, I really like identifying who your consumer is and we have a lot of different consumers. So making sure we're covering them and then covering them for every wearing occasion. We're trying to get as many skull drop t-shirts on as many people as possible for every occasion.

[00:31:00] Zoe Licata: That was something that stood out when you were listing the places that you've been before is all of those companies and brands have pretty distinct brand identities and consumer bases. They're all like pretty concrete people know what they are. So at Rheingeis, what are kind of the pillars that you're holding on to for what the the Rheingeis consumer is?

[00:31:21] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, that's a great question. I think our biggest pillar is in our taproom. It's the traffic that we get in our taproom here. And it's very much out of towners, especially like in our peak season during the summer. I mean, we're getting a ton of people from out of state, out of town tourists. that come down here. They're like in awe of the space, love the beer, and they want to take something home to remember not only the brewery but the city. I think what's really special about Rhinegeist is there's such a tie to the Cincinnati roots that go hand in hand with the brewery. And so a huge amount of our consumer is that tourist consumer, that like kind of souvenir impulse buy. People just want to remember our logo and remember that they were in Cincinnati and that's probably the biggest segment of our business as it stands right now. And then the local market who participates in Rhinegeist, they're the Rhinegeist superfans, and they already have a ton of Rhinegeist in their closet, so how do we refresh them and give them something exciting and new? That's kind of another pillar that we're exploring more and more. Another pillar is like very event driven merchandise. So events or limited, we're doing a lot more limited time offer items, which are also super exciting for the local customer. But then also, you know, if you attend an event and you have a great time, you want that take home thing too.

[00:33:10] Justin Kendall: I'd like to tap into that limited time offering piece of the business because that's something that we've seen brands such as Liquid Death really lean into and do so very successfully. So what have you learned about implementing that strategy at a brewery?

[00:33:26] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, it's got to be a very interesting design that you can't find anywhere else. So we're exploring doing like a lot more illustration, a lot more nods back to Cincinnati heritage, and just like having a lot more fun with it and a lot more humor. And then, you know, driving sales with like scarcity, essentially, and keeping our assortment always fresh. It's like, it's such a good lever to pull to just keep things fresh, keep people coming back to check what we have that's new.

[00:34:03] Jenny Morrissey: But you pulled that learning from free people, right? Because they're always dropping new stuff. Oh, yeah.

[00:34:08] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, that's true. A lot of that assortment strategy is driven from the way that free people does things. I mean, they're, they're not doing seasonal drops. They're not doing like spring, summer, fall, winter drops. They're doing it by the month. So the goal was really to have new product dropping monthly.

[00:34:28] Jenny Morrissey: And that's a big change. That's it. Cause we were treating it more like core seasonal, you know, you have your spring collection and your fall collection, and then here's a few summer things. So we, we were doing that, but Jenny brought in and it's like, oh, we are always, always developing.

[00:34:45] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. Our design team is like sick of seeing me not have a lot of fun with it.

[00:34:50] Justin Kendall: And so you're working with an internal design team then?

[00:34:54] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. Yeah. Which is the fun part. There's such a good filter for what is right for the brand, especially me coming in. I haven't been here quite a year, so I'm still understanding the brand, you know? And so it's nice to be able to lean on them and say like, Hey, this is a trend that I'm seeing. Like, how do we filter this with the Rhinegeist brand? And they're such experts in it. I mean, like, I can prompt them on something and they just run with it and they have such a good eye. I mean, they're the reason why the merch looks as cool as it does. I just get on their calendars and then they make cool stuff. So

[00:35:30] Jenny Morrissey: but that trend spotting without jenny is like sure we're watching that trying to figure it out but jenny can make that happen very quickly the example of that was the camo trees yeah yes yeah the the real tree camo stuff if you have you guys heard about that or you saw that

[00:35:47] Justin Kendall: I think you told me about it, but can you go deeper into it?

[00:35:51] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. It's seeing what's working out there for other brands and understanding like that, that is a really hot trend that's selling out here. It's selling out there. Like everyone that you talk to in the industry is like, Oh yeah, that's a no brainer. It's selling out everywhere. And it's like, well, we should probably do that with our logo and try to also bring that customer into and, and feel fresh.

[00:36:15] Jenny Morrissey: It was like a camo print.

[00:36:17] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, like a hunting.

[00:36:17] Jenny Morrissey: But it was the hunting print, like with the camouflage through the trees. And so that's just an example of something that we moved really quickly on and we saw out there.

[00:36:25] Rhinegeist Brewery: I guess my product development experience also helps with that. Yes, because I can take our logo file. And like on quick projects like that, I can just put it into work. And I don't necessarily need, you know, the designers to be able to put like a skull drop logo on an item like that. So I think it goes hand in hand, like we're, we're working together, like I have the flexibility and the skill set to be able to like, move into a trend quickly. But then also, I mean, they're just like, the design team's amazing.

[00:36:56] Zoe Licata: what places are you looking at to keep up with those trends or to find inspiration for these things?

[00:37:02] Rhinegeist Brewery: We kind of have a share file here that a lot of people will just drop images into, inspo images, and then I can kind of like go through it and sift through like is there a commonality with this? I mean big retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, you know, has like a whole brewery line now. Or I do still look to Anthropologie a lot because they have great graphic teas. Sometimes I even look at Gap just to get a gut check on like what are some core ideas that we, we look to. I also look at Volcom a lot because I think they're a really cool brand. They do really fun stuff with their awesome logo too. So I guess there's, there's a few places that I look.

[00:37:50] Justin Kendall: How are you communicating that scarcity of items to consumers? Are you saying like this is a one of number or anything like that?

[00:38:00] Rhinegeist Brewery: Limited stock, limited time offer, you know, get it while you can. And it does sell out. I mean, we will send an email and stuff will sell out. And sometimes we'll do Another Round of it if we feel like it. And sometimes we're like, okay, no, you know, so that's also the tricky part is understanding when you reorder into something. We've made that mistake before, where we've pulled the trigger too quickly on a reorder, and then we're just kind of sitting on it. So it's really understanding like the cues of it. I mean, we're also doing some advertising too that helps communicate limited stock. So between social advertising on social and our newsletter, I will credit our fan base to our newsletter. I mean, they are very, very involved in our email. So that's very unique.

[00:39:00] Justin Kendall: So is this about tapping into sort of a collector community then?

[00:39:04] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, in some cases, it can be, especially in the limited items. And we're starting, you'll start to see over the summer, we're playing even more into that collector and like very Cincinnati specific language with our brands. And that's the the other cool thing is like we have all these really great beer brands that have good authenticity, like good heritage, like truth. Since he light anytime we do since he light in like a very extravagant way, like a little over the top limited type things that have like a lot of nods to Cincinnati roots. you know, because we do have a tie to UC with Cincy light. And so you get the fan base for Cincy light is just like so impressive. And it took a little while to crack that code. But I think we're we're in good stride now.

[00:40:01] Zoe Licata: You know, there's a crap ton of breweries out there. A lot of them sell merchandise. What is the key to you having that connection with folks that make them want to continue to purchase items? How are you getting them to be those sort of repeat customers?

[00:40:20] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, like how do we get them to care about our merch?

[00:40:22] Zoe Licata: Yeah.

[00:40:23] Rhinegeist Brewery: I think we do a very good job and I think we're in a very unique position because I have in-house designers that live and breathe our brand and it translates everywhere. It translates in beer, packaging, and merch. That's very unique. I know a lot of other breweries are outsourcing some of their design or they're working with suppliers that have design, you know, as a resource that they can utilize. So I think unless you have the filter that we have that feels authentically Rhinegeist, that makes a big difference. You know, we're not just like throwing out a t-shirt for t-shirt sake, you know, and hoping that people buy it. Everything is very well thought out, every little detail as to like putting it through that Rheingeis filter.

[00:41:20] Jenny Morrissey: Craft is in such a not so fun space right now. So feeding that loyalty and having something for those super fans, and bringing the fresh perspective because the biggest and the tourism thing is right. And Jenny's got a variety of items, but making sure that we have a way to reimagine the brand that pulls in somebody that already has a t-shirt. That's, I mean, that's what we've been trying to crack.

[00:41:50] Rhinegeist Brewery: It's like a saturation point, right?

[00:41:53] Jenny Morrissey: And then to her point on design, design matters. You know, I could say that all day long to any craft brewery or any founder design truly matters. So we, I mean, we have stuff that doesn't work. We've always tried to work with outside resources because, you know, we've got a lot of packaging design to do and we can never quite get the brand. They can never quite get the brand right. Yeah, we do have a few select partners where we're kind of investing in that relationship so that we have somebody outside of this building to help. But there's a lot of coaching on crafting what the design intention is for Ryan guys. So I think Jenny, I think your answer was fantastic.

[00:42:34] Justin Kendall: One of the things that you said to me, Tracy was it's about creating emotion.

[00:42:38] Jenny Morrissey: That's what Jenny said. I can't, I was gonna say, Jenny said, she said it in a different way, which was like, I want every t shirt to be a fuck. Yeah, is really what I did. Because it's an emotion like talk about that.

[00:42:52] Rhinegeist Brewery: Because it's an impulse buy. Right? Yeah. Like, Sitting having a beer or like even you just know about the brewery like our econ business is also We're putting a lot of resources behind our e-comm business, too I mean you should see something and love it You shouldn't have to second-guess like I need that in my wardrobe, you know And so that's kind of what her you know, that's the correct measure right? That's how we measure if we should put something in the line or not. And there's a lot of things that we test. I do very small quantities on like, we're still trying to figure out our women's assortment. What does that look like? Or how do we interpret new beer releases or beer brands that we're doing? How can we do that in a good way? But other thing I will say is quality matters. never sacrifice the quality of your products. Like don't cheap out on the t shirt blank that you're using because the fit, the wear and tear, people should feel comfortable coming back to you and confident that the products that you're offering are good quality. And so that's something that's like the first thing that I changed when I came was to make sure everything was a really good quality.

[00:44:16] Justin Kendall: I don't think I can wear anything that's not a soft style t-shirt at this point in my life. I just refuse to do it.

[00:44:25] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. I know margins can be tough, but just always remember you will have a repeat customer if you have good quality items.

[00:44:37] Zoe Licata: From a logistics standpoint, how are you also balancing inventory and making sure you have the right sizes of things, that you don't have too many leftovers? Just logistically, it can be a bit of a nightmare sometimes.

[00:44:52] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. I will credit my experience in footwear to this. Actually, you have to look at what sizes are selling and you have to find similar performing programs and what size is sold in the peak selling point. So like grab those first two weeks of sales, look at the size breaks and just order that or order that ratio. You know, if you want 200, you just times that size break by two or whatever it might be. So just look at what's selling. Don't just like blindly create a size break and order extra smalls of stuff if you're not selling extra smalls.

[00:45:34] Jenny Morrissey: That's something that Jenny's optimized, which is we had pars before and we were looking at sizes, but we never said, okay, no more extra smalls and no more XXL. because that's the inventory that we're sitting on. And so cutting out some of that and being okay with that.

[00:45:56] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, that's like figuring out what the sweet spot is there, you know, Is it just like a handful of three Xs? And when they sell out, they sell out. Cause I'd rather be left with 30 mediums than 33 Xs. So you just have to look at what's selling and pull from that. I mean, every single time I place an order, I'm always looking at the latest size break that was selling. I'm not even using like size breaks that worked last year. And then inventory will make or break your business. You don't want to be sitting on inventory. That's like rule number one, you you want it to move in a healthy way, you can always reorder more, you know, there's certain items like signage, like LED signs or 10, you have to hit a minimum, you just have to know like, maybe you'll sit on that for a few years or whatever. But when it comes to apparel, like just get in and out, because you don't want to be stuck.

[00:46:58] Jenny Morrissey: I'm laughing because Jenny inherited some inventory. It's like hanging out with your friend and they're cleaning their closet. And they're like, I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of it.

[00:47:08] Rhinegeist Brewery: Check out the clearance section of our website. So the team has been really gracious with me because they know I'm trying to also clean house. Yeah. There's two methods you can go like narrow and deep or wide and shallow with your assortment. And I just decided to go wide and shallow with this business, especially in this year where I have the flexibility to learn and test and figure out like what could potentially be a new core style that's moving like thousands and thousands of t-shirts a year. So. know when to mark stuff down. You know, if like stuff is just not moving, you got to mark it down and get out of it.

[00:47:51] Zoe Licata: Do you have a general like timeframe that you like to follow?

[00:47:54] Rhinegeist Brewery: If it doesn't move in like a month, sayonara, we got to mark it down. If it's really not moving, there's some stuff that just does not sell. If it sells slow, I'm willing to like work with it. But if it's just, if it's not selling at all, you got to get out of it.

[00:48:11] Jenny Morrissey: Well, and that's like looking at like, cause you'll look at your product mix and have different yeah items that are like okay this one might be like a baseball jersey might be a slow seller over five months versus a t-shirt that's going to have a wicked rate of sale for three months

[00:48:25] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah, and like every slot, like we have all of our merch hanging above our booth. And every slot is valuable real estate. And I don't want to take up a slot with an item that's just not moving. I want to get something new in there.

[00:48:42] Zoe Licata: And yeah, you mentioned the baseball jerseys, you know, we think a lot of like breweries, just like t shirts and stuff. But what are some of the other items that you have going on the merch side that really seem to work?

[00:48:54] Rhinegeist Brewery: That's a good question. It's also something I'm still trying to crack. We have some jackets that we do that actually perform decently well. The higher price points can get tricky, but again, if it's good quality, people will pay for it. So like a jacket in fall usually does really well. Jerseys surprisingly do also very well. I mean, I'm not from Cincinnati, so I'm still learning about the baseball culture here. I like attended my first opening day and I was like, oh, this is like a thing here. I did not realize. I was like, I've lived in Boston and we did not celebrate the Red Sox like this.

[00:49:37] Justin Kendall: is that true Zoe?

[00:49:38] Zoe Licata: Not in a long time. Opening day has not been as big of a thing as it used to in a while. So yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:45] Rhinegeist Brewery: Are you in Boston?

[00:49:46] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Yeah. I'm based in Boston, but yeah, Cincinnati does it. They're even more hardcore with baseball than we are sometimes.

[00:49:53] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. Oh, 100%.

[00:49:55] Jenny Morrissey: And that gear, if they're losing midway, it's a long season. So if that, cause I've been here for a while and I'm like, these jerseys aren't moving anymore once they start losing.

[00:50:05] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah. Yeah. Also the sweet spot. Cause like, I don't really want to reorder Jersey. So I have to like really get it right on my initial order. But I mean, we had some fun with the baseball stuff this year and the jerseys, especially we did like a completely different take, but. That one, that one baffles me to this day.

[00:50:25] Jenny Morrissey: It's still the same stuff, though. It's always t shirts and headwear. Yeah. And that's why it's so interesting to see Jenny's push on creative and kind of reimagining how to get in that local purchase again.

[00:50:39] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah.

[00:50:40] Jenny Morrissey: and doing kind of small batch print and looking at the work through the lens of emotion. What emotion is this creating? Because I think when Jenny's first project was here, she was working on a project that I had kicked off. And for whatever reason, the work was not, it was fine. But we were like, yeah, we're not really feeling it. But so then you have to figure out how do you translate that? Like, did I set the project up incorrectly? Oh, was this the sweater? It was the fronds.

[00:51:06] Rhinegeist Brewery: Oh, yeah.

[00:51:06] Jenny Morrissey: Remember the wiener dog? Yeah.

[00:51:09] Rhinegeist Brewery: Yeah.

[00:51:09] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah.

[00:51:09] Rhinegeist Brewery: My first project was I was like, these people are gonna think I'm crazy. I want like a wiener dog on a shirt. And then it sold like hotcakes.

[00:51:21] Jenny Morrissey: It was.

[00:51:22] Rhinegeist Brewery: Oh, yeah, that one we had to reorder like three times.

[00:51:25] Jenny Morrissey: But here's this is what's interesting is I don't know if we'll ever be able to replicate that success again. I don't know. But we were trying. I was like, yeah, give me a T-shirt like celebrate celebrates Oktoberfest because our Oktoberfest beer is Franz. It's been around. It's cute. You can play. You can play with like German heritage or Franz is a bit of has an illustrator. There's an illustration that's old that half of the team likes, half of the team doesn't like whatever. Just give me a cool Franz T-shirt. And then we got it, and it was fine. But Jenny was like, yeah, there's nothing here. I mean, that's when you started using the word about the emotion. That's when you said that. And she started pulling, I mean, this is working with a creative team, too. That in itself is a skill set, learning how to work with creatives. you pulled images. I mean, if you just go find wiener dogs in the internet, right? Like you're pulling images. And Jenny's new at Ryan guys.

[00:52:29] Rhinegeist Brewery: And they were probably like, Where is this girl?

[00:52:31] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah. I mean, I mean, it was just like ugly. So then you had I don't know how we convinced the team to do it.

[00:52:42] Rhinegeist Brewery: The designers, they were open-minded. I think once we started talking about it more, they were like, okay, I get this. It's not a Franz shirt. So the thing we also talk about is design systems. And I actually don't want my t-shirts designed within a design system. I want them designed for a trend or a consumer. if it's a Cincy light shirt, how do we make how do we push Cincy light to be outside of the typical, you know, can design? Yeah, that's a big so it's that's, that was a lot of back and forth with design. I had the pleasure of having an entire week with them where I got to talk about my vision, they got to talk about their vision, and we like hashed it out. And we came to an understanding of like how we're going to approach the merch business going forward. And also if something does not feel right, don't order it. Like you can say no, even if you're working with these suppliers and they go through a spec sample or a prototype and it's not hashing out or the fit isn't right or whatever. don't do it. Cut your losses, pay for the sample, don't order it. Follow your instinct there. That's some advice. We did also have a program that got kicked off right before I started. We got the spec sample and I was like, I don't feel comfortable with this. We didn't do it and it was fine. Just because you start a project doesn't mean you need to follow through with it.

[00:54:10] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah, so you pay $500 for one sweater and then whatever, you give it to your CEO and then... And then Adam's happy. No, we're not selling more of those, okay? I'm glad you like it.

[00:54:25] Zoe Licata: A lot of times when I'm purchasing merch, it's because it's some sort of crossover piece or collaboration piece. We were talking baseball. I don't need Another Round Sox shirt, but if the Jonas Brothers collab with Fenway like they did, I'm buying Another Round Sox shirt that has the Jonas Brothers on it. So how much are you guys doing collaborations? Are you doing any sort of work with other brands?

[00:54:49] Rhinegeist Brewery: not at the moment. I'm always looking. I'm always emailing other brands.

[00:54:55] Jenny Morrissey: I mean, we want to I mean, we like cool. I mean, we like cool shit. We like all the awesome brands. We see all the awesome work that Firestone does and that first on Walker in New Belgium. Like we see all that. Yeah, yeah, we want we want to be the right fit. We want custom sneakers. You know what I mean? Like one of the things but We're also she had Jenny as a PNL and we're like, Yeah, somebody like, where's this fit in? And is somebody really gonna pay? Yeah, they get really expensive. And then it gets down to the like, can I order 20 of these? Or do I have to order 300 of these?

[00:55:33] Rhinegeist Brewery: It can feel a little risky if it doesn't like feel right. And that's, I don't want to like rush a collaboration for collaboration sake. And so trying to find the right fit for our brand for merch, it can be a little tough, but we're always looking. We're collaborating more with local artists, you'll see, like a lot more illustrative stuff with local artists that I think feels really right. But in terms of big brand collaborations, there will be some, but yeah, we're always looking.

[00:56:14] Justin Kendall: Tracy, you mentioned you've been at Ryan Guys for a decade, and I've been at Brewbound almost as long, not quite. But you and I both remember, I'm sure, the times at GABF you would go in, and there's the giant wall of t-shirts. And now that wall is gone, but I still see people wearing brewery merch in airports all over the place, you know, or just you know, going to the grocery store every now and again.

[00:56:40] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah, you see it out.

[00:56:42] Justin Kendall: And I'm fascinated sort of by the evolution of this because it is a revenue stream that you're able to tap into. And like you said, create some emotion and pull people in. Although, you know, some people like me are wearing brewery shirts from like eight years ago.

[00:56:59] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah, there's a lot of brewery shirts out there.

[00:57:02] Justin Kendall: Right.

[00:57:03] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah.

[00:57:03] Justin Kendall: But to be able to make that connection and your approach to it, I think is a fascinating one. And the companies obviously put resources behind it to, to make it work.

[00:57:15] Jenny Morrissey: That's what I was going to say is that, I mean, of course we wanted to grow and be closer to peak. Rheingeis years, Rheingeis March years, which was, you know, probably 2018, 2019. But yeah, I mean, brewery fans love to wear brewery t-shirts. And it is a revenue driver, but you do have to resource it. I mean, we have resourced it. I was here when we didn't resource it. I was managing inventory in an Excel spreadsheet. I don't even remember how I did it, but that was forever ago. So you do have to resource it.

[00:57:50] Justin Kendall: And we've seen companies pull back from it, where they've completely ended their e-com sales. So.

[00:57:57] Jenny Morrissey: Yeah. It doesn't always move either, right? So I mean, we're watching it. We're having P&L meetings every month on it. And given the state of craft right now too, I mean, I get it. I still think it's a good marketing strategy to get your brand out there. You know what I mean? So at a minimum, we're thinking about it that way.

[00:58:18] Justin Kendall: Absolutely. Well, great to meet you, Jenny. Thanks for doing this, Tracy. Thanks, Jenny. And thanks to Zoe for being my tag team partner on the interview. Thanks to Jess for all she does. Thanks to our one man audio team, Joe. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.