Brewbound Podcast: Non-Alc Beer Has a Record Dry January in Grocery Stores

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before The 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 The Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch The Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. How did Dry January go? Find out next on The Brewbound podcast. Hello and welcome to The Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:47] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante. And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:50] Justin Kendall: And you both are in the office for a change, in person, together, recording a podcast.

[00:00:56] Zoe Licata: How amazing. It's so exciting. It's pretty great. This office is pretty pimped out. We really should be over here more. We need to learn how to snap our fingers and show up here, and then we'll be here all the time.

[00:01:08] Justin Kendall: People still say pimped out?

[00:01:11] Zoe Licata: I say pimped out.

[00:01:13] Justin Kendall: That makes one of us.

[00:01:14] Zoe Licata: We're not going to get canceled, I can tell you that, I don't think.

[00:01:18] Justin Kendall: Good to know. How are you both doing?

[00:01:20] Jessica Infante: Good. Well, it's school vacation week here in Massachusetts. So several reasons why I came here. One, the roads weren't too bad, so it didn't take me like an hour and a half to get here. And my husband and daughter are both home, which makes my home office slightly undesirable right now. Very, very cute. Very cute, but not where you want to be if you're trying to record podcasts and write data stories.

[00:01:42] Zoe Licata: Yeah, we're good. We're trying not to freeze over here. This is probably the better place to be with potential wind Tabbing Out my power. So that is why I'm in the office today. Love New England winters. What a time. What a time.

[00:02:00] Justin Kendall: Well, if you enjoy this weather talk, you can like rate and review this podcast as we actually get to talk about beer at some point. And Babal in general, we should also tease that next week you both have an interview. It's it's next week is the Jess and Zoe show altogether. I will not be here, but you have a Justin in my place.

[00:02:22] Jessica Infante: We do, we will have a different Justin. We will have Justin Kissinger of the World Brewing Alliance. Great chat with him. Always love getting the really, really high level view on the global brewing industry, which is exactly what the World Brewing Alliance does.

[00:02:36] Zoe Licata: Not just another Justin, another Justin K. Oh yeah. We got as close as possible.

[00:02:42] Justin Kendall: I might not come back.

[00:02:44] Jessica Infante: Look, if I were going where you're going, I wouldn't come back either. Yeah, you should tell people where you're going.

[00:02:49] Justin Kendall: I'm going to visit the Michigan Beer Wholesalers.

[00:02:52] Jessica Infante: Are you? Yeah.

[00:02:52] Zoe Licata: Where are they going to be? Is that in Michigan?

[00:02:55] Justin Kendall: That surprisingly is not in Michigan. It is in Turks and Caicos.

[00:03:00] Jessica Infante: That you thought at first was Turks, Michigan.

[00:03:02] Justin Kendall: I did think it was Turks, Michigan. This is, I mean, let's look at me. The sun is not my friend. The sun is my enemy. And yeah, I don't often get to go to tropical paradises.

[00:03:17] Zoe Licata: I'm very jealous. Who would have thought that the Michigan folks would be the ones that would bring you to Turks and Caicos? Would not be my first guess.

[00:03:25] Justin Kendall: I wouldn't think that anybody would bring me to Turks and Caicos.

[00:03:29] Jessica Infante: Jess is so upset about this. No, it's okay. I mean, I can't really, well, who knows? I could fly off to Turks and Caicos. You could.

[00:03:38] Justin Kendall: Join me.

[00:03:39] Jessica Infante: Don't tempt me with a beach. So yeah, just, you know, put it out there into the universe. If you're having a beer industry event in the tropics. Any tropical place. All three of us are available, but Zoey and I really like the beach.

[00:03:54] Justin Kendall: You two are probably better choices for beach locations than me. Let's get into some of the news of the week. And we just wrapped up Dry January and we finally have a recap on what happened from our friends at Bump Williams consulting. They dove into the NIQ data and they found that non-alcoholic beer grabbed a 4.2% share of beer grocery sales in January. And that's a record. So big growth there for non-alcoholic beer. in the month of January, even when it is a little less dry than it's been in the past.

[00:04:34] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I mean, that's huge news for non-ALK. And Justin, you had the story. What else stuck out to you about what happened for non-ALK this year?

[00:04:42] Justin Kendall: I think some of it is the winners. So your top player athletic, they grab some share Michelob ultra, which is new to the market grab, I think it was like a 3.7 share. Sierra Nevada was growing best day constellation Guinness. So you have some new names there that are getting on the share board. And you have a lot of established players who are also declining. So I thought it was a pretty interesting recap of what's happening in the market. And what really strikes me is that non ALC is so top heavy. Anyway, it's like the top brand families, they're the ones that are moving the most.

[00:05:24] Zoe Licata: That I think is partly because I assume of what's happening at retailers where we've heard for a couple of years already at this point that they're not looking to add too many things. So they're going to be focusing on those brands that already had a presence there and continuing to grow those brands rather than bringing on too many other folks. And so I think it's benefiting a lot of these people that were in there early, like athletic or like some of these bigger domestic beer folks that are putting out non-alcoholic versions of their things to be like, okay, we're going to continue to focus on these and grow these. It just makes a lot of sense, I think.

[00:05:59] Justin Kendall: Another thing that jumped out at me is how far we've come in four years. Four years ago, it was $14.4 million. That's where non-alcoholic beer was. Now it's up to 34, more than $34 million. That's a $6.5 million gain year over year. And while the percentages are slowing down, the last couple of years have been in the high 30s. This year was 23.5% growth. And of course, that's off a much bigger base than it was before, but still, it's all impressive, I think, for what's happening in the beer category with this segment. And I think that it's not a negative. It's a total positive for the category because it's creating occasions.

[00:06:48] Zoe Licata: Well, you see that when you look at the data through the rest of the year, right? Like some of these double-digit growth numbers are coming during some of the major beer holidays. It's not just a Dry January thing. So this growth is coming into the category throughout the year. It's not just because folks aren't drinking or participating in Dry January. So you're seeing a benefit for the full category throughout the calendar year.

[00:07:10] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I mean, we talked about it on the pod a couple of weeks ago. I was out at Lagunitas' annual Dogpile Wholesaler Summit the end of last month, and they have a pretty robust NA portfolio. They've got IPNA, they've recently added Hazy IPNA, and they've also got Hoppy Refresher, which is their line of hop waters. And they shared that their NA portfolio, January only accounts for 13% of its volume. So it's really balanced throughout the year.

[00:07:36] Justin Kendall: It's one of the most positive stories within the category at the moment. It's nice to have one of those positive stories, super premiums, one of them, imports is one of them, and non-alcoholic beer. And I guess we should also say high ABV products.

[00:07:52] Zoe Licata: Right, there's still that weird dichotomy happening of the low and no is growing and the super high ABV stuff is growing. So it continues to be a weird mix out there.

[00:08:04] Justin Kendall: Love to see more low though, please pretty please for our six just for the beer journalist stakes Well, let's get into more of cider con and you had a recap story up on the site last week Insiders can go read that now, but take us through what's going on?

[00:08:23] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I teased it a little bit in our last podcast episode, but there was a lot of discussion about, you know, what is the next chapter for Cider? Why is this Cider's time? And one of the most interesting sessions that I sat in on during this full CiderCon event was a discussion with some retailers and distributors. The conversation was focused on National Cider Month, but kind of morphed into just what is going on with cider at their respective companies. And there were some really great comments from Andy Mitchell, who's president at Hayden Beverage, and their territory includes Montana, Idaho, and parts of eastern Washington. But he said, you know, Hayden doubled down on the hard side almost a decade ago, so they've been really excited about this segment for a long time and now it's showing up in the numbers. And he pointed out distributors, at the end of the day, we don't really care about the brands themselves. I think he was saying this just a little bit of a reality check for folks, but distributors care about dollar sales growth at the end of the day. And CIDR is providing that for folks, at least providing it for Hayden. In the last four years, CIDR grew 68% for Hayden. The Bevel category overall for them only grew 17%. Still great, still up 17%, but that difference is huge for Hayden. So they're going to continue to invest in segments like that, which are going to provide additional growth. It drove the majority of growth for them. Andy is so confident in Cider, he made it in his contract basically that his bonus for next year relies on getting, I believe the number is 12% growth next year. So he is putting himself out there and putting his own personal finances out there to be like, hey, I believe that this segment is going to continue to grow. I bet my literal money on it. Wow.

[00:10:14] Justin Kendall: Yeah, that's impressive.

[00:10:17] Zoe Licata: And how many cider brands do they have? He didn't give a number, but he said they distribute about 75% of the hard cider that is sold in the markets that they're in. Wow. Yeah. It's a lot. Mary Guyver from Whole Foods was also on that panel discussion. We've talked about in the past that she's really bullish on cider and she mentioned that Whole Foods is continuing to invest in the segment. They don't see it as having super quick growth like we've seen with maybe some other segments like hard seltzer a few years ago or with RTDs right now. It's not something where you know all these people are saying yes it's cider's time we're not going to see it right away we're not going to see it in these huge exponential numbers but it's going to accumulate slowly over time and you're going to see it continue to chip away at other segments share of the total beer category or of total bevelk There's a bunch of other tidbits in that story, but it was really cool to see some actual numbers that back up what these people are saying. Because it's not the first time that folks have said, yeah, now is CIDR's time. We've heard that with other things too. But people are saying, okay, here's why we're saying it. Here's the data to actually back it up.

[00:11:30] Justin Kendall: And it's a regional CIDR story.

[00:11:33] Zoe Licata: Right. That's one of the pieces that really brings excitement to a lot of folks within the industry that this isn't necessarily about a bunch of huge national players that just happen to be providing growth. This is mainly regional cideries that are providing the majority of the growth. I mean, it used to be, sure, like Angry Orchard was dominating everything. And then when Angry Orchard declined, that affected the entire segment. Now, regional cideries make up more than half of the total dollar sales for hard cider, and so you're seeing more of an impact from those brands. It means so many cideries are super tiny. Christine Walter, who is the board president for the American Cider Association, shared this stat during her opening speech during the general session, but 80% of U.S. cideries produce less than 25,000 gallons annually, which is about 8,000 barrels. So they're all super tiny, mostly relying on their own taproom at the Cider eSales. So that's Another Round why we've seen a hard time of Cider really grasping too much share of scan data, because they're really only doing it in their small little pockets. But in those pockets, they're doing really well. So, if you put all of that together, then you can start to form this story of, oh, these regional cideries are actually having a pretty big impact and providing a pretty positive story to BevElk at this bit of tumultuous time.

[00:12:51] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I mean, cider always kind of seems to get like short shrift in things like scan data and also in the beer purchasers index. Ciders usually has one of the lower readings in, you know, this monthly report that the National Beer Wholesalers Association puts out. And it's just because, like you said, so many of them are selling right there at home. You know, they're not really of concern to many wholesalers.

[00:13:16] Zoe Licata: And I asked Lester Jones about this because he gave a presentation that we talked about last week. And he was super excited about Cider saying Cider is really doing great things. But then he also brought up the Beer Purchaser's Index and I asked him, okay you're telling us that cider is doing great but how come every time we see this it looks like it's contracting a whole bunch? And he said that's really just because that measurement as we know is how much wholesalers say they're going to add or take away from their buying habits of certain segments. And he said it would take a lot of wholesalers, distributors saying, yes, we're adding a ton of cider for that to really shift at all. So yes, cider is always in that contraction stage or phase, but it doesn't necessarily mean much is really happening movement-wise there. It's just that it's such a small part of those shelves. You would have to do a whole bunch to really make that move a lot.

[00:14:15] Bump Williams: This episode is brought to you by the Craft Brewers Conference, where big ideas, bold beers, and brutally honest shop talk collide. Join thousands of industry pros leveling up their game. Don't miss it. Register now at CraftBrewersConference.com.

[00:14:35] Justin Kendall: For our next story, I want to connect the dots because it's one story that you did, Zoe, and it's one story that you did, Jess. And Jess, you're the one that sort of put the pieces together here.

[00:14:46] Jessica Infante: Oh, look at me.

[00:14:47] Justin Kendall: It's in the Consumer Price Index story, which I know, sexy story and all. You had a line in here. The CPI for beer at home outpaced overall inflation for four straight months in 2024, and that's June through September. And those months accounted for 87% of 2024's year-over-year losses in volume. That's according to the Beer Institute, and that's a story that Zoe did on the total beer supply declining 1.8% last year. I thought that this was just Wow. It's right there.

[00:15:25] Jessica Infante: Yeah. The CPI is funny. It's one of those things that we write about it every month. Usually one of the three of us tackles it whenever the data comes in from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but we don't really ever talk about it on the pod. So if you listen to the- There's probably a good reason. Oh, yeah. But like, look, it does matter. So beer is one of those things that people always kind of say is recession resilient. But people also like to say that beer keeps pace with inflation. Which is good news for some people and bad news for other people. It's great news if you're a retailer. That means if you're stocking your shelves with beer and your coolers with beer, the price of beer will go up, which means people have to pay more money for it, which means you are getting more money from your shoppers. But if you're one of those shoppers, that's not great. You know, we've been writing these CPI reports for years now. And the way that the BLS breaks everything down is they'll give you the inflation overall for all of total beverage alcohol. Then they will also do alcohol at home, alcohol away from home, which means, you know, basically off premise and on premise. And then they do beer, wine, and spirits for both at home and away from home. And beer is almost always the leader by a large margin. Beer, the price of beer goes up more than the price of wine or spirits does either at home or away from home most of the time. So I looked at all of our last stories, I wrote everything out on paper, because that's the way that my crazy brain works. And I realized that for the whole key beer selling season, June through September, the rate at which beer was increasing in price was actually more than the rest of the entire economy.

[00:17:01] Zoe Licata: Not just other bed bags, like the entire.

[00:17:03] Jessica Infante: All of regular inflation. So maybe last summer people were looking at their wallets and saying, I don't need that 12 pack this week.

[00:17:12] Zoe Licata: Right. And we don't have to remind anybody what last summer looked like. It was really tough for people last summer. It was not the summer selling season everyone had hoped for. So it makes a lot of sense to connect these dots here and be like, hey, these two things happened at the same time. Maybe price is having an impact on beer.

[00:17:30] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and that beer keeps pace with inflation is really important for some audiences, but it's not always a good thing for the end user. And really like what's good for the end user really affects what's good for everybody else in this entire ecosystem. I don't know. I mean, we will have a story up by the time you're listening to this podcast about top 25 vendors in Cercana off-premise data. And I kind of dug into price increases there. Notably, I saw that Tilray's average price per case sold to off-premise retailers tracked by Cercana for the first four months of the year went down by over a dollar, which is kind of wild. I don't really think you see that. And you'll see it out when you look at the Tilray data where circling their year over year numbers, they were in decline in both dollars and volume. But when you look at the last four weeks, their volume decline actually improved a lot more than their dollar decline. So when you cut price, you're able to move more liquid. You might not be making more dollars. Similarly, if you take price up, you're going to make more dollars and your volume number is not going to move with the same velocity. This is kind of a rabbit hole and I've now I think I've bored everybody.

[00:18:38] Zoe Licata: That same Sargana data also pointed out that every single beer segment except for domestic super premiums increased their average case price for the start of the year versus the first four weeks of January 2024. So everyone is continuing, it seems, to increase price. I know, again, and just to set it to, a lot of folks in this industry have said that beer is recession resistant. We've seen historically, yes, the impact generally ends up leveling out, but consumers change, right? There could always be a shift there. So it's worth paying attention to.

[00:19:17] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And you called that domestic super premiums. And I think it's just one important thing to know is that the domestic super premium segment is a little bit like the hard cider segment in scan data in that it's all kind of, it's got one really, really big brand in it. That kind of is it's, it's Bellwether and you know, for cider it's Angry Orchard, for domestic super premiums it's Michelob Ultra.

[00:19:37] Justin Kendall: That's right. And I think this gets into another story that we have up at Brevin.com, and that's on Bank of America's analysis of what's going on in the on-premise market and what they're seeing from credit card, what is it, receipts?

[00:19:54] Zoe Licata: yeah this is the transactions from their users so take that with what you will this data is only for people who are going through Bank of America but yeah they noted that Dry January the consumer spending at what they just categorize as bars so you know on-premise places that sell alcohol Spending went up 1% year-over-year, which doesn't sound like very much, but then you look at that versus the off-premise spending or what they look at as quote-unquote alcohol stores. That went down 5% year-over-year. So the on-premise is growing a little bit and it's on a trajectory to continue to grow and has been growing while that off-premise spending is going down. Again, we talked about this really recently with Lester Jones saying, hey, Scan data isn't everything that you can fall into this rabbit hole of, oh my gosh, what is happening? Everything's so negative. On-premise is providing this positive growth story for people who are actually putting their dollars out there. They're looking for these on-premise experiences to spend their money. And that had a lot of interesting hypotheses in it of what could be causing this shift. One of them was, you know, maybe people stocked up a bit too much during the pandemic and now they're finally starting to get rid of their stocks that are in their homes and so they don't need to buy anything. They're not looking to add to that at all. Another really interesting part from this report was that baby boomers are the one that are driving a big part of this shift. They looked at all the different generations and baby boomers were one of only two generations to actually increase their total spending at bars in January year over year, but they also have been the ones that are doing it the most for the past two years. They are consistently growing that spending, which It's kind of fun to see because we don't really talk about baby boomers at all. We brought it up a couple times being like, hey, these are the folks that actually have the money to spend on this stuff, but they're actually having a pretty, it looks like a significant impact on the trends. Again, this is Bank of America data. I don't know if they skew more with any certain generations or not, but It's pretty cool.

[00:22:07] Jessica Infante: So while you were talking, I apologize to both of you. I did pull out my phone as you saw, but I was doing some research and my favorite baby boomer, my mother, has visited the on-premise six times in the past week.

[00:22:19] Zoe Licata: Love that.

[00:22:21] Jessica Infante: Two of those visits were to Craft Brewers. See? They and Breweries are going out. They're going out. They are out and about. And that's just what was posted on Facebook. There may have been some days in her life which were not recorded on Facebook, but we'll never really know.

[00:22:37] Justin Kendall: The heroes that the on-premise deserves, but not the ones that it needs? The elders. I don't know.

[00:22:45] Zoe Licata: Yeah. They probably, I guess in the end, do need the Gen Z and millennials to sustain any sort of growth, but they're just not going out as much. I will say there was a little bit of context here where the report pointed out that Gen Z millennials do have a higher share of bar spend. So they are making up a greater share of what is being spent in those establishments. So it is, dare I say, they have more importance to the overall trend. They're preferring to spend their money, according to this report, with other things like experiences that we've talked about a lot or potentially budgeting their on-premise spending a bit more than baby boomers are.

[00:23:28] Justin Kendall: And then we found out the keynote speakers of the Craft Brewers Conference, and we just learned that before we set up the record here. And it's JC and Esther Tetreault from Trillium Brewing.

[00:23:41] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I guess it's nice to see a little hometown representation on the CBC stage. I don't think that happens too often, but interesting choice. Trillium is, gosh, over a decade old now, but not by much. They've taken a very, very concentrated on-premise tack. They were doing pop-up beer gardens before anybody else, really, in Boston. And now they've got what, like a handful of their own locations.

[00:24:13] Zoe Licata: The title for their keynote address is maybe you're not doing it wrong, finding your path to success with your in all caps. And what you can pretty much infer from this and some of the press releases, they're really emphasizing you don't necessarily have to follow this strict set of ways of how you should operate your business or what's best for you. You know what's best for your brewery and how it connects with consumers. they have done this by focusing a bit more on their taprooms or not necessarily getting into super trendy bevelk segments. They're really focused on their beer itself, their Craft Brewers. So, it's going to be an interesting conversation, I think, for sure. I think they're almost a bit more old-school crafty in that they're totally focused on Craft Brewers, right? So, It's an interesting time to hear this conversation when we're seeing a lot of folks try to go into other areas and get creative with their businesses. It also comes a year after we had a spirits person be the keynote at CBC. We had Vaughn Weaver on stage. We, like I'm the Brewers Association. So we personally invited Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. Yeah. The Brewers Association had Fawn Weaver on stage and it was a great conversation about she gave a reality check to a lot of folks about your business and what it takes to actually survive.

[00:25:38] Jessica Infante: I do remember Fawn saying things like people are so intensely dedicated to staying small that they basically small themselves out of business.

[00:25:45] Zoe Licata: Right. So I think this is going to be a really interesting switch, almost. And it feels like two very different conversations are happening here. And so I'm curious to see how what they say compares to what Fawn was saying on stage last year. Because I don't know if they would totally agree.

[00:26:01] Justin Kendall: I don't know that I would either, given that there are 9600 plus Craft Brewers, and you kind of have to find your own lane.

[00:26:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah, well, I mean, Trillium, they do spirits. They do do spirits. They do do spirits. I feel like they did a dabble in hard seltzer in like 2019, but like not in any meaningful way.

[00:26:22] Justin Kendall: I feel like it was beer slushies too or something.

[00:26:24] Jessica Infante: Yeah, they've done like smoothie sours. They've done that stuff for sure.

[00:26:29] Zoe Licata: And they have a huge cult following, as we all know, both within the industry and with consumers. So there's something there about a brewery continuing to exist that has that sort of classic craft connection with folks. We'll see. I don't know. I'm going to admit, I'm going to expose myself on the podcast and say I've never been to Trillium. And part of that is because of this, I don't know what you would call it, this air about them, this, the idea that it's almost like an elite thing to know about Trillium and like actually know what you want from Trillium. So they speak to a very specific type of Consumer Price think. So I'm also curious to hear what they're going to say on stage about, you know, reaching consumers, growing craft consumers when they exist in the space that I think is a bit more of that classic craft consumer.

[00:27:18] Jessica Infante: You've never been to like the beer garden on the Greenway?

[00:27:22] Zoe Licata: I've walked past it many, many, many times.

[00:27:24] Jessica Infante: Yeah. So the Greenway is like- We will reimburse you. Yeah.

[00:27:28] Zoe Licata: I mean- Well, I need to warm up a bit first.

[00:27:30] Jessica Infante: Right. It's not open right now. But the Greenway in Boston is like this like linear park that runs along downtown. And this was really like the thing. Like when I, before I moved to the suburbs and became an old boring mom, it was like the place to go. And like the line to get in would be so long. I remember walking home from work one day and it was probably July, Trillium Beer Garden was popping and I was walking by these probably boomer age women who I could just hear them talking to each other being like, so what, they all just stand around in there and drink beer? Because it doesn't look like much. It's like a split rail fence around an area and it's just people and a metric crap ton of dogs standing around drinking beer.

[00:28:07] Zoe Licata: And it's still pretty busy. Every time I've walked past it, it's pretty busy. I haven't seen any lines for it. And they just, just a couple of years ago, added a new one with Emerson. Yes. Our alma mater. Our alma mater. Which I also haven't been to, but I've walked past many times. You can't avoid it if you get off the train right there.

[00:28:24] Jessica Infante: Right on Boston Common. Yeah. I think that rebranded this year.

[00:28:26] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Maybe to Harpoon.

[00:28:28] Justin Kendall: Possibly see that's the thing. There's so many options now.

[00:28:32] Jessica Infante: Well, right night shift has a million beer gardens over there now So it's kind of hard to keep track of who's who unless you're going for it's very funny because Boston I think is a pretty like I'm just founded by Puritans. It's a pretty conservative city in many ways not in the political sense, but there's like a bazillion different places you can go buy a beer outside Yeah

[00:28:53] Justin Kendall: When I moved to Massachusetts in 2016, they were one of the hype breweries out there. Are we post-hype? I think so.

[00:29:02] Zoe Licata: I think it depends on who you ask and the age of the person you ask. I don't think the elder college kids or recent grads are super hyped up about Trillium. I mean, some of my friends sure, but you still are seeing tourists come into town all the time wearing their Trillium merch. That is still very much a thing.

[00:29:21] Jessica Infante: I mean, when they first opened, they didn't even have a license to sell pints. Like you could just go to this tiny little shop and get a pour. Basically the move was you had to go there and buy a growler and then take your growler somewhere else with you.

[00:29:36] Justin Kendall: By the time I moved there, it was go to this little shop or storefront in an alley.

[00:29:43] Jessica Infante: Yeah, same thing.

[00:29:43] Justin Kendall: You would buy, you know, your four pack or multiple four packs for that matter.

[00:29:49] SPEAKER_??: Yep.

[00:29:50] Justin Kendall: Well, let's play Another Round or Tabbing Out before we get out of here. And my Another Round that I'm buying Another Round on is surprise brewery collectives. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is one that is formed in Colorado with Denver Beer Company just joining. Stem Ciders, you have other Denver beer offshoots like Cerveza Syria, Colorado. There's Funkworks joining, which was in that Brooklyn sales and marketing group, but now they're part of this thing. And then there's a new brewery in Phoenix that's joining Formation Brewing, Howdy Beers, and this thing. And then you have Acreage, which is the cider, Ghost Box Pizza, which is a pizza place, and then Easy Living Sparkling Hot Water. There's a lot going on here.

[00:30:46] Jessica Infante: Yeah. This is a lot of brands.

[00:30:49] Justin Kendall: Excuse me. Acreage is not a cider. It's a restaurant.

[00:30:53] Zoe Licata: Yeah, there's a lot, a lot, a lot. And if you go to their webpage and scroll down a little bit, you can also see the amount of retail operations that are all under this umbrella. So there's a lot of spots included when you branch off of all those brands. You're tabbing in, Justin?

[00:31:11] Justin Kendall: I'm tabbing in. It's sea otters forever here.

[00:31:16] Jessica Infante: a big raft of sea otters.

[00:31:18] Zoe Licata: Yeah. I'm tentatively tabbing in or getting Another Round. I think we have all talked extensively about how it's been pretty vital to a lot of craft folks to join forces like this, join resources like this, to help them survive and really take full advantage of what they have or what they need. I'm curious to see what Wild Ink Brands does as an entity if they really emphasize themselves as a name and how they decide to market themselves because I had no idea that all of these brands were a part of this. I know like Howdy Beer from seeing them at like JABF with the bull ride. I think that is something that a lot of these portfolio brands are going to start thinking about is, okay, do we need to start marketing ourselves as our own thing too? I've talked to Pilot Project about this a few months ago and they're going to start really marketing themselves as Pilot Project now too instead of just their individual brands. So, I think now that we're a couple years removed from some of these formations, how are they going to continue to remain strong and continue to add on and grow as a total entity?

[00:32:31] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I might have to be contrarian here and think, this is just a lot. This is like a whole lot to manage. So, I mean, without knowing their inner workings, like I assume they have it well under control that they're beginning to come out of the shadows now and announce themselves, this acreage website, this looks like, this looks cool. They offer sunset yoga and free stargazing. I don't know the last time they updated this, but it looks like their Instagram feed from over the summer. But my one concern here is, is like, look at Tilray. you know, how many brands and that obviously very, very different business formats where Tilray seems to be mostly concerned with selling beer into distribution, international accounts, and this is more of an on-premise experiential organization. But Tilray amassed a ton of craft brands and seems to not even know what to do with all of them right now, as evidenced by last week's news.

[00:33:27] Justin Kendall: Yeah, and we didn't really get into that last week, I don't think. And that is that Tilray is, for the better part, shutting down large scale operations at Revolver in Texas. And they're keeping it open as a tap room and a pilot brewery.

[00:33:43] Jessica Infante: Well, they say they're moving production to other facilities, but we'll see what that really means. Like, does that keep Revolver products on shelves in its footprint? We don't know. And they didn't tell us, right?

[00:33:57] Justin Kendall: They said that they were going to be cutting back during that earnings call. I think that you covered Zoe and I won't be surprised if they take a page out of the canarchy book or the monster canarchy book of pairing things down to. Dales or, you know, highlight or whatever.

[00:34:18] Jessica Infante: Yeah, they have. God, what like? Close to 20 craft brands now. Yeah. And you can't keep 20 craft portfolios alive.

[00:34:28] Zoe Licata: No. And they're going to continue to launch new brands as well.

[00:34:31] Justin Kendall: Exactly. Runner's High, Non-Alc Beer, Liquid Love, whatever. This turned into a Tilray conversation.

[00:34:39] Jessica Infante: They all turn into Tilray conversations.

[00:34:42] Justin Kendall: So the other thing that I'll bring up as something I'm buying Another Round on, and that's the We Love LA collaboration beer effort that's going on. They've raised $200,000 so far for the victims of the wildfires there. And this was started by Common Space Brewery and Hawthorne, and then after they announced this project, Creature Comforts and Firestone Walker came in and said, hey, can we help you manage and expand this campaign? And they've done so, and now they have more than 150 breweries on board. I think it's just a cool thing that they're doing.

[00:35:17] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Craft Brewers know this playbook pretty intimately. Always nice to see some money being raised for a good cause.

[00:35:24] Zoe Licata: Yeah. And we've seen a couple other fundraisers pop up as well from some of these breweries and BevElk brands in the industry. Some have done like special merch releases and things. I know Giant just has a hat that they're selling where the proceeds are going to some of these as well. So there's a lot of folks coming to try to raise money for Los Angeles.

[00:35:44] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it looks like they're directing everybody to share a portion of sales with the United Way of Greater Los Angeles' wildfire response. This shakes out in different ways. Sometimes it's one brewery leading the charge and trying to collect money, as Sierra Nevada did close to a decade ago, and that didn't really work out too well. I remember them having to kind of shake people down for the money that was promised. Then you see other causes like Black is Beautiful, where organizers ask participating breweries to donate to a cause of their choice, which is always kind of interesting because you don't really know exactly how much gets raised. But here, I think they've figured out a way to really streamline things.

[00:36:23] Justin Kendall: So kind of a feel good story, at least in a very bad situation, to sort of wrap us up this week.

[00:36:31] Zoe Licata: It's not all negative around here, we've mixed in some good news.

[00:36:35] Justin Kendall: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap it up. That's our show for this week. Thanks to Jess and Zoe for all they do. I'm glad that they got to record with each other in person. Thanks to our extended AV team for making this happen. Thank you, Nate. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. We will be back next week, or at least Jess and Zoe will. I'll be somewhere on an island. They will have Justin Kissinger from the World Brewing Alliance with them for an interview. So check that out. They will be back then.