Q1 Craft Scans, Platform Proliferation, BrewDog’s Identity Crisis – and What’s a Daycap?

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: More platforms, craft scans, and how about some Tilray earnings? Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:19] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante. And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:22] Justin Kendall: And we actually managed to get together this week, so I'm very excited for this recording.

[00:00:27] Jessica Infante: third time all year.

[00:00:29] Justin Kendall: It's only been three times. No, I don't know. I'm guessing. I'm guessing.

[00:00:32] Zoe Licata: I mean, it's probably not that far off.

[00:00:35] Justin Kendall: It might be single digits.

[00:00:36] Zoe Licata: So it definitely is single digits.

[00:00:39] Justin Kendall: while we're here. Very excited to be with you. And we're going to be together for about a week in Philadelphia, not too far from now. So very much looking forward to that. Very much looking forward to our networking party at Love City on Sunday, April 19th. You can RSVP for that now. Look for more information at Brewbound.com. Y'all excited to go to Love City?

[00:01:05] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I mean, I'm just excited for Craft Brewers Conference in general. It's always a busy week, but I usually enjoy it. Good time to see people that we don't get to see all year. Plus I really like Philly. Yep. I am a North Jersey person, so I might not really be allowed to say that, but I think I morphed into a shore person more than a North Jersey person. And also I live in Massachusetts, so it really doesn't matter. But Philly, great beer city. I'm pretty pumped. Excited to go.

[00:01:34] Zoe Licata: Haven't been to Philly before.

[00:01:36] Jessica Infante: Ever? Really?

[00:01:37] Zoe Licata: No.

[00:01:38] Jessica Infante: Wow, Zoey, this is exciting.

[00:01:41] Zoe Licata: I know. I don't know how I feel about being surrounded by Eagles fans, but we will survive.

[00:01:48] Justin Kendall: That's fair.

[00:01:49] Zoe Licata: They're mostly harmless.

[00:01:51] Jessica Infante: Yes. As long as you're not Santa Claus. Yeah. Have you ever been to a Wawa? No.

[00:01:58] Justin Kendall: No.

[00:01:59] Jessica Infante: Yes. Field trip.

[00:02:02] Zoe Licata: We're doing it. Our pregame for our Love City event is going to be a Wawa trip. Fuck yeah it is. Perfect. Yeah, I'm excited we're having this event on Sunday. We get to ease into things and see some friendly folks before things get really rockin' and rollin', so it's gonna be a good time.

[00:02:22] Justin Kendall: Definitely RSVP, but you can also just show up too. But we like the RSVP. We will also be recording episodes of this podcast at Booth 956 on the Brew Expo trade show floor. So come say hi.

[00:02:37] Jessica Infante: Yeah, should be fun. We will be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

[00:02:42] Justin Kendall: And we're also looking forward to seeing folks at Brewbound Live on December 9th and 10th. Tickets available now. We have a speaker too. Whoa-ho-ho we do yeah Wow It's very exciting Trevor Tyler from Eureka, which is a mostly Western based restaurant chain is gonna be joining us on an on-premise panel they have a I think a little more than around 20 locations in California, Arizona, Idaho so Big craft focus. So looking forward to the insights that we're going to get there.

[00:03:19] Jessica Infante: I love talking to on-premise buyers. We don't get to do it enough. So excited to hear that. The past two weeks, Beer Board has really put out some pretty robust reporting about on-premise data coming from the NCAA basketball tournament, which has finally ended, which feels like maybe I'll get my husband or my TV back. I mean, call me a hater, but I'm just glad that UConn did not win.

[00:03:46] Justin Kendall: Oh, you're going to make some enemies.

[00:03:48] Jessica Infante: I don't really care.

[00:03:52] Justin Kendall: See, I would say the same thing, though, if another team from my state made the Final Four or the national title.

[00:03:58] Jessica Infante: You have made many such comments. Yeah. Look, I have, you know, Big East brain, even though the Big East is... The Big East in the way that it was that I knew it has been dead for a long time. But, you know, some of us don't forget.

[00:04:12] Justin Kendall: Blood runs cold. Well, we should also plug the job board. What a segue that is.

[00:04:22] Zoe Licata: Any basketball players that are looking to not continue their basketball career and want to join beer, we have a job board.

[00:04:29] Jessica Infante: Athletes usually end up being really great sales reps. Yeah.

[00:04:32] Justin Kendall: So if you were just playing in the national championship game and you happen to be listening to this podcast,

[00:04:39] Jessica Infante: And guess what? This summer's hot new segment is hard sports drinks. So get in the game.

[00:04:48] Justin Kendall: And we're going to Philadelphia, home of super light.

[00:04:51] Jessica Infante: Yes. All connected.

[00:04:54] Justin Kendall: Yeah. We brought it back home.

[00:04:56] Jessica Infante: There we are. Full circle.

[00:04:57] Justin Kendall: All right. Let's get into the news. And since we've got the latest Circona monthly report, let's dive into some of the craft trends. And we started off pretty good, but things have kind of leveled off.

[00:05:10] Jessica Infante: Yeah, the first two months of Cercana reporting for Kraft were seemingly pretty good. You know, January was a significant lift, but that's because January 2025 was historically bad. So this is one of those things where it's, you can't really read all the numbers at face value. Then, you know, overall Kraft sales dipped to, I think they were up 0.3% in February, and we're now at down 0.3% in March. So, Not too much of a decline, but those nice positive warm fuzzies are gone. Craft is still positive in the convenience channel. And one thing to note here is that all of this data is coming from Cercana, which doesn't have as big a presence and reporting structure throughout the independent liquor channel. So this isn't giving you a full, full picture. There's a lot of states that have pretty much purely independent markets and we're not quite getting everything from them. But Cercana every month ranks the top 30 craft brands. And something that I had noticed was that we were evenly split 15 and 15 between who was up year to date through March 22nd and who was down. All of last year, it was really not like that. You definitely had way more brands on the decline than positive. So maybe that's a good sign. The other thing I noticed, I always like to break down all of the top 30 craft brands between whose trends are accelerating or decelerating between the year to date period and the last four weeks, just to kind of see where momentum is and is not. And in both the 15 up and the 15 down, we had six brands moving in the right direction and nine brands moving in the wrong direction. So we'll see.

[00:06:44] Justin Kendall: And Zoe, you've been tracking the NIQ scans too, which have shown the liquor store trends, which has been historically a pretty strong channel for craft and liquor's taken a beating.

[00:06:59] Zoe Licata: Yeah, we now can have two weekly check-ins with scans and one of those is NIQ and you can kind of get that direct side-by-side of how much liquor is really affecting scans by how different those two reports are because they're pretty similar time periods. that channel is really dragging down all alcohol, not just one specific category. And so it's making those NIQ numbers be more negative. There hasn't been as much positivity from those reports as we've seen from some of these Sarcona ones. Looking at one of our most recent reports, they had total off-premise scans up about 3%, but that was also including St. Patrick's Day. So it's not as cheery of a place over in those, those scans as it is in some of these Cercana ones, unfortunately.

[00:07:49] Jessica Infante: But it really shows that impact. Craft can be a tough nut to crack because these channels where craft over-indexes relative to the rest of the industry are hard to track, like the on-premise, like at the brewery sales. So we will get a look at those numbers, particularly at the brewery sales when breweries association releases all of their reporting for the year which should be coming out over the next couple of weeks and that is helpful to see you know when taproom breweries specifically report their volume but right now we we know what we know because we have what we have.

[00:08:23] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I know a lot of folks get a little frustrated with the scan data. It's kind of like gas prices. It's like the one indicator that we sort of get at a regular interval each week. You can see those numbers, but there's so much more to the puzzle that we don't know. Totally. Any surprises in there that jumped out at you?

[00:08:46] Jessica Infante: Back to the Circana monthly numbers, I know we mentioned how, you know, half were positive, half were negative, and among the half that were positive, only six of them have their numbers going in the right direction, meaning their trends improved between the year to date and the last four weeks. The brands in that collection, some of them aren't surprising, you know, Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, Voodoo Ranger Juice Force, but Sierra Nevada Hazy little thing had a pretty nice jump. as did Cigar City, Highline, and a line in Kugel's Shandy. But I did a little bit more looking into what was contributing to that, because we are, you know, Shandy is a year-round beer now, but we are approaching, you know, Shandy's time to shine as it's allegedly getting warmer. I drove through snow to get here today, so certainly not here. But yeah, Line and Google Shandy did some crazy stuff. In the last four weeks, dollar sales are up just about 8%, volume is up 17.3%, which is bonkers when you look at year-to-date numbers, dollars up four, volume up a little over seven. Something that might be driving that is that the brand's average case price has dropped $3.12 in the last four weeks and $1.21 year-to-date. So that might be encouraging those volumes to go up, but it was, You know, nice to see for, I guess, a legacy brand to be doing well in this time of relative despair.

[00:10:09] Justin Kendall: Yeah, Molson Coors is really playing the price game with its craft brands because you've also got in here the average case price of Blue Moon Belgian White has increased $1.86 year to date.

[00:10:21] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I think it's helpful to look at those dollar trends in this report because, you know, whenever like volume and dollar sales, like their trends are out of whack, I always look to see what has been happening. So yeah, it's interesting to see that Molson Course is doing a lot of different stuff on that front, but you know, that's one of the tools they have in their toolkit, so they're using it. You can read all of this and way more in a probably too long story on Brewbound.com.

[00:10:51] Justin Kendall: Let's talk a little bit about platforms and we found out about another one that just emerged and that was the Frontier Beverage Collective not to Be confused with Great Frontier Holdings out west, but this is between Oklahoma City's Coop Works and Dallas's Four Corners Brewing Company. And if you've been a longtime craft watcher, you probably know the Four Corners name as one of Constellation Brand's former craft breweries, but it was purchased back by its former creators. So now they have created this collective and They're starting with these brands, but they are very intentionally calling this Abita Beverage collective because they're looking outside of craft as well. But we're starting with two craft breweries.

[00:11:44] Jessica Infante: Justin, is this an equity situation or are they just partnering to share services and costs?

[00:11:50] Justin Kendall: They were very specific that this was not a sale of Four Corners to Coop or to its parent company, the Fisher Companies, which is a, I would call it like a private equity firm in Oklahoma City, former owners of the Dippin' Dots. They bought it out of bankruptcy and flipped it for hundreds of millions of dollars and Seems like they have spent some of those dollars on acquiring Coop and they did not acquire Four Corners. But my understanding is that both breweries have equity in the collective and they sit on the board, senior leaders from both.

[00:12:31] Jessica Infante: These situations get so confusing because there are so many different variables of what could be happening.

[00:12:38] Justin Kendall: It's never cut and dry, whether it's complete ownership or whether it's just pooling and backend resources and that sort of thing. It's incredibly confusing.

[00:12:50] Jessica Infante: And they have joined forces. I know we talked about this last week, and I know nobody loves to hear journalists complain about press releases, but goddamn, the use of joined forces means nothing, means nothing. It doesn't mean anything at all anymore. Yeah. I don't know. Like we've seen a few of these, a few is a gross understatement. There have been so many of these combinations coming together over the years, and they all look a little different. You know, sometimes there's equity, sometimes there's not. The first, not first, but you know, outside of the world of ABV and k-anarchy was, you guys remember Indie Brew in like, I don't know, late 21 maybe? Was the combination of scofflaw and bearded iris. And I talked to them back then and they were very upfront about it being an equity deal because they wanted everybody involved to have skin in the game.

[00:13:39] Justin Kendall: But then bearded Iris left, right?

[00:13:42] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I guess if you're not changing like hands of your company when it's not working, it's easier to eject. Yeah. Which we've started to see some of these also fall apart.

[00:13:53] Zoe Licata: I think we've learned too in some of these conversations that the reason why some of these are so complicated is because of either distribution or because of licensing. Like if you are doing some of this more complicated, like equity exchanges, that could impact what you're allowed to do as a company based on some of the state by state requirements. So you have to also navigate that, navigate what your distribution agreements are. There are so many factors going into these that sometimes Maybe everything except for what's actually on paper is a sort of exchange of things, but it just gets super complicated.

[00:14:32] Jessica Infante: And Justin, I know that Coop was responsible for such famed hard crossover bevs as Sonic Heart Seltzer. Is that included here?

[00:14:40] Justin Kendall: No, and in fact, that's something I found out from New Coop CEO Matt Nunez. He told me both Sonic Hard Seltzer and Tampico Hard Punch have been discontinued. Those licensing deals ended and they are not working on those brands anymore. And you and I both went down the digital rabbit hole and found that their websites are gone and they haven't been posting to social media, I think since last summer.

[00:15:07] Jessica Infante: Whatever 33 weeks ago was.

[00:15:09] Justin Kendall: I think it was last July then. End of July.

[00:15:12] Jessica Infante: One of my beefs with Instagram is that it can't tell you like this posted on this date, unless there's a way that you can do that. And my old ass hasn't figured it out.

[00:15:21] Justin Kendall: No. We didn't talk about Abita, but they started their own collective as well. And so they're on the hunt possibly for new brands, but nothing is imminent there. At least that's what they told us when we last spoke.

[00:15:34] Jessica Infante: And a huge part of that that you reported was that they're really looking to ramp up their contract production, right?

[00:15:39] Justin Kendall: Yep. They claim that they're going to hit around 170,000 barrels. And I think their most recent barrelage was in the 89,000, 95,000 range, and that includes contract in there. Contracts is going to be probably half of what they do, at least. So they must have something big coming.

[00:16:05] Jessica Infante: Good for them.

[00:16:05] Justin Kendall: People are weird about contract brewing, which is weird too now. I get it back in like the mid 2010s. The whole notion of like contracting your brands used to carry such a stigma. And now it's like, we got beverage hubs. You know, people are just trying to fill that capacity. The consumer doesn't care for the most part.

[00:16:27] Zoe Licata: I don't think they're even aware that 90% of this stuff is happening.

[00:16:31] Justin Kendall: Yeah. You'd have to be like a hardcore craft fan slash being able to decode the language on the cans like, oh, this was brewed in Wanaki, Wisconsin.

[00:16:45] Zoe Licata: Yeah. I think also what's helped with that is look at the amount of brands that they're not coming out of a specific brewery. They're coming as an independent brand-ish now that are really popular. Look at a garage beer or something, things that there's not necessarily, at least with some consumers, as much concern about where Abita Beverage was coming from as much as just its general vibe and the beverage itself.

[00:17:14] Justin Kendall: I mean, the consumer at this point probably doesn't even remember that garage beer was born out of Braxton.

[00:17:20] Zoe Licata: No, no idea. They probably think it just started a couple of years ago. I mean, the same thing happens with Marg, that RTD that was around for a really long time. It brought, I think Alex Earl on, like they brought an influencer on who kind of relaunched it and people thought it was the first time it had ever come out. They didn't think it existed before then. So it's just... they're not as in-tuned with what's happening, for better or for worse.

[00:17:47] Justin Kendall: Is she dating Tom Brady?

[00:17:51] Zoe Licata: Hanging out with might be a more accurate description, but... I'm sorry, what is that age gap? A lot. 20 years?

[00:17:58] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I think like 20. When Ryan and I first started dating, he had this poster with, like, Tom Brady's, like, stats on it, so I know that his birthday is August 3rd, 1977.

[00:18:07] Justin Kendall: He's reverse aging. He's 48.

[00:18:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and she's, what, her mid-20s, so.

[00:18:15] Zoe Licata: Tom Brady. Sir, stop this. I mean, just look at his Instagram. He's going through a big crisis. I mean, it's the most ridiculous. I highly recommend following Tom Brady on Instagram just to look at his Instagram stories. Cause it is like peak divorce dad, weird, weird stuff.

[00:18:38] Jessica Infante: Are you going to be allowed to like show your face in Boston after having said these on a public forum?

[00:18:42] Zoe Licata: Yes, yes. He's been doing it so much that now even Lawrence is saying that this is getting a little out of hand. So if he's saying it and he has a Tom Brady tattoo. I can say it on this public platform.

[00:18:55] Jessica Infante: If Lawrence says any crossword about Tom Brady, this is shocking to me. Shocking more than if Ryan were to, because I think he's made peace with it. Yeah.

[00:19:04] Justin Kendall: Is it Tom Brady's face or just a jersey?

[00:19:07] Zoe Licata: No, no. It's just a little, it's a little TB12 on his wrist. I don't know if I could date someone who had Tom Brady's face on their body. That would be a little too intense. Well, let's talk about Tillwright.

[00:19:21] Jessica Infante: Let's talk about Tillwright.

[00:19:23] Justin Kendall: We're gonna talk about till Ray.

[00:19:26] Jessica Infante: Oh, yeah, Dave really wanted to talk about till right?

[00:19:29] Justin Kendall: Yeah, how's everyone?

[00:19:32] Jessica Infante: Everyone seems psyched about everything honestly dude. I hope Irwin never changes.

[00:19:38] Justin Kendall: Yeah Honestly, we've talked about and this is off-subject and I know we need to get into the news portion but I At least there's somebody that's like adding some color and doing some interesting, sometimes what some might say crazy things in this space, like actually investing in it. And yes, they have divested of a bunch in the weirdest way possible, calling it Project 420.

[00:20:06] Zoe Licata: which seems to be technically on an end-ish based on the last earnings call. So the reason why we're talking about them is Tilray Brands their Q3 earnings released in associated call and everything at the beginning of this month. And in that they shared that they completed their Project 420 savings goal, which included cutting a bunch of SKUs and trimming some of where they were doing their production and kind of really cleaning up a lot of what they were doing. And so they have finished that goal. They said, you know, it doesn't mean we're done doing cost saving efforts, but technically we have completed Project 420. I don't think it's the last we're gonna hear about it, but it's definitely at an end.

[00:20:51] Justin Kendall: What would you call Project BrewDog? What's the code name for whatever cost-saving program they're gonna have to go through with that? That is a great, great question.

[00:21:02] Jessica Infante: There's gotta be some acronym with punk, like... Oh. Profit Unlocking Nice... I don't know, guys, give me a K. Profit Unlocking Negotiated KPIs. Wow. Incredible. Can you use a letter and an acronym with another acronym? Maybe. Sure.

[00:21:25] Justin Kendall: Why not?

[00:21:26] Jessica Infante: Sure. Do I have corporate brain rot? Probably.

[00:21:29] Justin Kendall: How can you not at this point?

[00:21:30] Jessica Infante: True. Yeah. The summer exchange program that's going on here is wild to me. I talked to Erwin and said, where are you going to sell BrewDog? And he said, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana. And then next week, news, BrewDog to be sold at the Hamptons. Like, what? That's not, that's not in any one of those states.

[00:21:53] Justin Kendall: That's so punk. So punk.

[00:21:55] Jessica Infante: The Hamptons are really punk.

[00:21:57] Justin Kendall: The Hamptons, yeah.

[00:21:58] Jessica Infante: I've been once. Punkest bachelorette party on earth.

[00:22:01] Justin Kendall: That's like the Johnny Lyden of punk.

[00:22:06] Zoe Licata: Yeah, so there was a lot of brood dog talk on this earnings call naturally. And Erwin was stoked that he got more calls than he said he'd ever gotten in his life after doing, I think in his words, hundreds of deals, congratulating him on his new grab. And he admitted in that call, this seemed to come about pretty quickly. They had been looking at BrewDog for a while. It's just like something they knew of. But when the opportunity came to buy it, they, in his words, couldn't do the due diligence they would have wanted to. before agreeing to do it, but they just decided it was worth it based on the potential that BrewDog could have and the reputation that it had. And so they added it on.

[00:22:52] Jessica Infante: I mean, it's the deal and a half.

[00:22:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah. The numbers of what they got it for versus looking back at what BrewDog was valued at, at its peak is is quite drastic. He had one interesting note that was, it was a very insightful thing from Irwin, I think, which was nice to hear, was he was talking about the BrewDog brew pubs that exist. So they don't have all of them in this deal that they've taken on, but they have a good chunk of them. A bunch of BrewDog brew pubs are franchises But he was talking about how they are reevaluating what hospitality looks like for BrewDog and what actually brings consumers into those spaces. And they're going to be adding more TVs and having more events and trying to bring folks in with not just BrewDog beers, but also potentially put like Carlsberg on top. cap, which is what they will be producing starting in 2027. Maybe add some other beers from their portfolio. So they're trying to look at it as more of an opportunity to have these hospitality spaces rather than a more traditional craft beer brew pub, which I thought was really interesting. But yeah, they got a lot to figure out. There's a lot going on with BrewDog that they have to navigate and fully integrate it. So they're not fully gonna see that in the numbers for a minute, but they had a lot going on as always. Did he talk about Vegas? Not specifically, no.

[00:24:21] Justin Kendall: But that's sort of the target market where they wanna do these things.

[00:24:25] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it makes sense.

[00:24:27] Justin Kendall: I can see Carlsberg making some sense there as being on tap at that pub. Some of the other brands, yeah, sure, why not?

[00:24:37] Zoe Licata: Yeah. He also implied that maybe not even just their own brands. He said Guinness on tap. He was suggesting that this is more of a general pub vibe. So yeah, totally different.

[00:24:50] Justin Kendall: My big question about BrewDog is, what's the identity? This is a brand that had a very specific identity, and now it's just a brand, right?

[00:25:03] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I think BrewDog and Stone have very similar bones in their exclusionary, you're not worthy, we're so punk. And I think that played well for a time, but I think as Kraft realized it needed to grow, evolve and become more inclusive, that that didn't really work anymore. And so you see Stone has certainly evolved past that for sure. And when you don't have James involved in BrewDog anymore, I think it's time to maybe become a little less self-centered once that main self is no longer here and become a little friendlier. You have dog in your name.

[00:25:45] Zoe Licata: People love dogs. So now with that deal in Carlsberg, Tilray, according to Erwin, is going to be almost 18 million cases of beer worldwide annually, which is about 1.3 million barrels. It's a good amount of beer. He's also excited because he said this is a big year for them distribution-wise because they were able to get these deals done before they started, or will get them done before they start next year's spring resets conversations. Unlike some of those other deals in the past, like with AB or Molson Coors where those were already in place when they brought those brands on, now they're going to have a lot more control over those conversations and can potentially have more influence, so it's not going to be as big of a drop-off when they first take them on as it was with some of those other brands.

[00:26:37] Jessica Infante: Cool. Well, if you have enjoyed hearing all of this Tilray conversation and you're not a Brewbound insider, which I really think you should be, we do actually make one story a week free in our newsletter. And this was last week's free story. So if you don't subscribe to the newsletter at all, we do offer a free version and you probably should.

[00:26:55] Justin Kendall: Yeah. At the very least.

[00:26:58] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Yeah. We're always adding some extra nuggets in there so you can, can see how the insiders live.

[00:27:06] Jessica Infante: Yeah. We don't actually just do this podcast. We do a whole lot of other stuff.

[00:27:11] Zoe Licata: A lot.

[00:27:12] Justin Kendall: Yeah. All right. Let's hit one more thing before we get out of here. Zoe, you recently dove into Bump Williams latest monthly report and it sounds like beer is on the chopping block.

[00:27:26] Zoe Licata: Yeah, so this latest edition, Bumpleums Consulting surveyed some distributors about what they're doing with their sets right now, and they asked them kind of what is really going to be their revenue drivers, what are they looking to add to their portfolios, and what is going to be cut. And everyone said that they are looking to expand what their lineups are. And that doesn't mean necessarily adding just suppliers, but more specifically adding different categories. So things like non-alcoholic are better for you, which is not just alcohol, but energy drinks, water, sports and hydration drinks, adding more RTDs and spirits-based products. But when you add things, you also have to take away. And so Bump also asked, what is going to get SKU reduction? And beer had a notable majority with 62% of distributors planning to cut beer malt SKUs. And number two was specifically craft beer at 54%. So it's a lot of beer that's going to be getting cut in order to bring in more RTDs, specifically spirits-based RTDs is what a lot of distributors called out. But nothing is safe, also, according to this survey. Distributors also mentioned wanting to cut down some SKUs for non-ALK, for wine, for RTDs, imports, hemp. So it seems to be that just because a segment is doing really well or category is doing really well, distributors are also making sure that they are keeping on the brands themselves that can really sustain that growth moving forward. Sorry, beer. Bummer.

[00:29:06] Justin Kendall: That's not all bad, right?

[00:29:07] Zoe Licata: It's not all bad. And Bump did share that he believes this is going to be, in his words, where a bounce back year Frontier Beverage alcohol and that there are a lot of brands within beer that are continuing to record growth that are doing well. Unfortunately, the growth of those brands like, you know, your Michelob Ultras, your Coronas, your Modellos, that isn't necessarily counteracting the losses from other brands, such as, you know, your Bud Lights, your Coors. So it hasn't quite fully shifted things yet, but there are some positive stories still happening within beer that are expected to continue.

[00:29:48] Justin Kendall: One more thing before we go this week, and we're going to ask Zoe to put back on her Gen Z consultant hat.

[00:29:56] Zoe Licata: I never know if it's going to be the Gen Z hat or the conspiracy hat, and I always get scared.

[00:30:02] Justin Kendall: So don't be scared, but have you heard of the day cap?

[00:30:07] Zoe Licata: A day cap?

[00:30:14] Justin Kendall: Which is alcohol companies targeting Gen Z for daytime sips. And I am very confused on why this isn't just called day drinking or brunch. So I didn't know if you had heard of this.

[00:30:28] Zoe Licata: I haven't heard day cap yet. That has not made its way onto any of my algorithms. I have to investigate. I guess I can understand is like you're doing something and then you have like Frontier Beverage during the day to kind of end your event and then you move on to your evening and it can be soberish. I'm confused. I don't know if this is really a thing or this is just insider trying to make it a thing.

[00:30:53] Jessica Infante: Probably that. But as an old, my takeaway from that, when you think about like what a nightcap means, is that a day cap is a way to convince the youth that it's okay to have one alcohol, you know? Yeah. It's like the, hey, you can have one drink and it's okay. Yeah. Like a day cap does not a darty make, right? That's true. Yeah. But also it's a stupid word. It is a terrible word.

[00:31:21] Zoe Licata: I'm not into it. I'll look and see how real this thing is, how big this thing is.

[00:31:26] Justin Kendall: It doesn't sound real.

[00:31:27] Zoe Licata: I feel like this time of year, there's always like a lot of moderation talk because it's just before summer kicks off where people kind of let loose and kind of forget about everything. But you want to be kind of healthy-ish ahead of summer. It's all the big city marathons are starting. So you're watching people like be healthy and exercise. And so it gets people thinking about how they could be more moderate and maybe just have one drink instead of, you know, two or three. So it's just, there's always something around this time of year.

[00:31:54] Justin Kendall: There's always desperation to break into new day parts. And this feels like that to a degree. And then, you know, somebody makes up a word like daycap.

[00:32:07] Zoe Licata: I'm also sure the state of just the expenses of things is also playing a part of, you know, a day cap is a lot cheaper than going out with everyone for a few hours.

[00:32:18] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I think this just is somebody who got spooked by the, the, the kids don't drink anymore narrative, which we know isn't really true. And just for, how do we get them to know that it's okay to just have one? Right.

[00:32:31] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:32:32] Jessica Infante: Well, I think we can all confidently declare you will not see Day Cap in the Brewbound Style Guide. No. And that's our show for this week. Thank you for listening. The Brewbound Podcast is a production of BevNET CPG. Our audio engineer for the Brewbound Podcast is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski. Our designer is Amanda Huang. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends and review us on your listening platform of choice. You can find our work at Brewbound.com. And we also welcome feedback and suggestions at podcast at Brewbound.com. On behalf of the entire Brewbound podcast team, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.