Brewbound Podcast: Simply Spiked Lemonade Makes a Splash This Summer

[00:00:00] Jessica Infante: 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.

[00:00:28] Zoe Licata: Simply Spiked is on fire so far this summer. More next on the Brewbound Podcast. Hi, and welcome to the Brewbound Podcast. I am Zoe Licata, reporter at Brewbound, our designated Gen Z correspondent, and the surprise host today. I am joined, as always, by my colleagues, Justin Kendall, editor at Brewbound. Hi, Justin.

[00:01:05] Justin Kendall: Good to see you again.

[00:01:05] Zoe Licata: Yes. Welcome back.

[00:01:07] Justin Kendall: Thank you. I survived the road.

[00:01:10] Zoe Licata: I am not envious. I'm glad you made it. And we are also joined by Jessica Infante, Managing Editor at Brewbound. Hi, Jess. Hi, Zoe.

[00:01:24] Jessica Infante: How are you? Good. How's New Jersey? New Jersey is muggy as all get out. I went for a walk this morning and it's like a swamp out there, but it's nice.

[00:01:33] Zoe Licata: It's also very muggy here in the woods of Massachusetts. Glistening, but not from any sort of nice skincare. It's all sweat.

[00:01:43] Jessica Infante: You look dewy. I just look greasy.

[00:01:47] Justin Kendall: Thank you. So good to be back.

[00:01:53] Zoe Licata: Everyone's back reunited. We had a nice week, me and Jess, but we're glad you're back. We are glad you're back.

[00:02:00] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I'm glad to be back. You gave me some entertainment while I was on the road. As soon as the Brewbound Podcast popped up on my phone somewhere in Ohio, where I was trying not to die on their Audubon. I started listening to y'all. You're a calming presence. Although I feel the pain of the people of New Jersey.

[00:02:19] Jessica Infante: I don't think anybody in New Jersey is calm right now.

[00:02:22] Justin Kendall: with good reason not to be. Yeah, but I made it. I'm in Iowa in your new home, my new purchase, my new studio sands, furniture and everything that we own and recording equipment. So that's why I probably sound not so great this week. But soon enough, you know, a couple weeks, we'll we'll be I'll be back in Boston. We'll be back for Brute Talks.

[00:02:48] Jessica Infante: Yeah, we did not really plan this well, but I also don't know that we really had much control over this situation.

[00:02:54] Zoe Licata: Would it be the third flight this month?

[00:02:59] Justin Kendall: No, I took four flights on Monday. Oh, four flights. That's wrong. Tuesday was the flights, Wednesday was the drive, Thursday was the eight hours in the car, and I made it by 4.30 central time.

[00:03:13] Jessica Infante: And for everyone listening who is probably thinking like why on earth did this man take four planes and then also drive across half the country on Tuesday, you and Marcy and Sophie and the two cats. Yes. Boarded an airplane in Boston, flew somewhere. What was your layover?

[00:03:30] Justin Kendall: St. Louis, which is like the tightest airport in America.

[00:03:33] Zoe Licata: Good to know. I got to do a layover there in like two weeks.

[00:03:38] Justin Kendall: I'll be back in St. Louis next week.

[00:03:41] Jessica Infante: So then you flew to Iowa. Then Marcy and Sophie and the cats left.

[00:03:47] Justin Kendall: They stayed.

[00:03:48] Jessica Infante: Did you leave the airport?

[00:03:49] Justin Kendall: I did leave the airport. And then I got a good three hours outside of the airport and then I had to go back. But it was like oddly calming. I go back to the Des Moines airport. I am the first person in the TSA pre-check line. I may be the only person in line in the afternoon. I walk in, I literally like walk right through, and it took me longer to get my coffee than it did to go through security. I am amazed. Wow. At the ease of it all.

[00:04:25] Jessica Infante: If you had clear, it would be like this every time.

[00:04:28] Justin Kendall: I actually have signed up for clear and I'm going to get that all clear next week when I have to go through Boston where they have cleared. You'll be amazed that they don't have clear in Des Moines.

[00:04:41] Jessica Infante: I would believe this. So they actually don't have clear at Boston JetBlue, which is what I mostly fly. So I have it and I just don't really use it that much. Right. So then you, you went there and back to Iowa in one day, which is crazy. I did there and back to DC for a day for the WWA legislative conference. And I thought that was a lot. And that's like what a one hour flight. You had four flights.

[00:05:03] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And then you layovers to laid over in Chicago. Yeah.

[00:05:12] Jessica Infante: So you saw different airports.

[00:05:13] Justin Kendall: Sometimes I did get a different airport this time around. Like it wasn't all St. Louis all the time.

[00:05:19] Jessica Infante: So four flights, three airports and then you were in a car with a dog with a dog.

[00:05:25] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I only got pulled over once and didn't get a ticket so you know.

[00:05:30] Zoe Licata: I'm successful. No awful like plane delays.

[00:05:35] Jessica Infante: No tickets.

[00:05:36] Justin Kendall: No.

[00:05:37] Jessica Infante: This week sounds like a nightmare but kind of best case scenario.

[00:05:40] Justin Kendall: Yeah. I made the closing. We have the house. The flag is planted in Iowa. So hit me up Midwest Crafters and Bev Alkmakers because I guess we do more than that now.

[00:05:54] Jessica Infante: We really do. Well, we're glad you're back and on Zoom with us virtually. And this is how we normally work anyway. So the only thing that's really different here is just that you're in a different time zone.

[00:06:04] Justin Kendall: Exactly.

[00:06:05] Zoe Licata: And you'll be fine back in eight, nine days.

[00:06:09] Jessica Infante: Yeah, for brew talks in B be on Wednesday july 27 p.m. Eastern time. We w our friends at Dogfish He to be happening at the Sa And we have two really great conversations upcoming. I'm excited for this. We've got to talk with Sam Hendler, who is the co-owner of Jack's Abbey, but also the president of the Mass Brewers Guild. And he's just going to chat with us a little bit for what's happening and what's going on with the state of Massachusetts breweries. We got a fun local bent. And then we have conversation. I'm really excited about Taproom Strategy 2.0, how to build brands and expand on-premise retail. A lot of great people on this panel. We have our friend Adam Romanow, the founder of Castle Island Brewing, which started in Norwood, Mass., and recently opened their second location in South Boston. We have Ray Berry, who's the founder of White Lion Brewing, out originally in Springfield, Mass. They're about to open another location in Amherst, Mass. We also have Sarah Lee, who's the director of business operations for Medusa Brewing. Sarah has extensive hospitality experience, so she'll be able to talk a lot about that. And routing out this panel, we have Scott Hempstead, who's the Senior Director of Local Brands and Taprooms for Boston Beer. So Scott, or Hempie, is going to tell us all about Boston Beer's strategy and how this works. They've got a lot of different brands in a lot of different locations. So it'd be really interesting to talk to somebody who works at that kind of scale. They've got the two Sam Adams Taprooms in Boston. The Dogfish Head locations in Delaware, Coney Island, and Angry Orchard in New York, Dogfish Head in Miami, Truly Location, and Angel City Brewing in LA. So really great perspective that Hepi will be able to share with us. And then we've got a fourth category conversation that I'm also really excited about. This is really gonna focus more on the opportunities and challenges in the beer category's hottest growth area. What's fun about this is fourth category is kind of like in the storming phase of its growth. So it kind of is whatever you think it is a little bit, but we've got some great perspective here. We have Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, which has been distilling for more than 20 years and Dogfish's canned cocktails are really taking off. So Sam will be able to tell us all about that. They've got really different ingredients. The same kind of culinary band that Dogfish has always had, but this time it applies to canned cocktails, which my friends here in New Jersey have been drinking a lot of on the beach lately. We also have Dan Canary, he's the co-founder of Mass Bay Brewing, which is the parent company of Harpoon. And they have taken some really interesting innovation routes over the last few years. They've got Arctic Chill, which is a hard seltzer brewed in collaboration with Polar, which is like the OG New England non-alk seltzer company. So they've got that and they also do a spirits-based RTD collaboration with Whistlepig Whiskey out of Vermont. So Dan's got a lot of great perspective on this part of the world. And then we also have Suzanne Schillo from Craft Beer Cellar who's going to tell us all about what a retailer thinks about how this looks on shelf, what are customers coming in and looking for, what do customers know and understand about the products? Guys, I'm psyched. So it's going to be a lot of great conversations. You can get your tickets at Brewbound.com. And if you can't make it to Boston, we will be live streaming for the world.

[00:09:38] Justin Kendall: Yeah. So go register.

[00:09:40] Jessica Infante: Well, Justin, since you were taking almost every mode of transportation available last week and you weren't really here for the news, let me and Zoe catch you up on the news.

[00:09:48] Justin Kendall: I was just going to ask you to do that. So let me know what all I missed here.

[00:09:53] Jessica Infante: So last week was a data heavy week. I feel like we wrote a lot of data stories, but we just hit, you know, Beer Super Bowl, which is obviously the 4th of July. So IRI had sent us their findings from July 4th sales. The beer category was down 2% into all premise dollar sales track by IRI down compared to last year. However, that week this year was the third highest beer category sales week ever behind the 4th of July weeks of 2020 and 2021. So it's a weird mixed bag.

[00:10:24] Justin Kendall: Yeah, that's a much needed perspective though.

[00:10:26] Jessica Infante: Right. Total beer off-premise spending reached $1.104 billion for the week ending July 3rd. Highest sales week of the year so far. And again, you know, the only weeks that have bested that are 4th of July of last year and the year before. So that is going to be weird for years, I think. Overall Bevout dollar sales declined 1% for all of beverage alcohol compared to the same week last year. Spirits dollar sales increased 2%. Wine declined 4%. But I don't know that anybody really associates the 4th of July with a big wine holiday, no matter how much somebody wants you to enjoy red, white, and fill in the blank of whatever that third word is. Modelo recorded 19% year-over-year growth, helped to boost the import segment to 5.2% over the same week last year. The other big growth segments within beer were F&Bs up 11.5%, non-alk up 11.1%, domestic super premium up 3.2%, domestic sub-premium up 2%. This story is a little bit sadder for Kraft. We, in addition to the IRI data, Bart Watson, chief economist of the BA, also put out his mid-year review. So far, 2022, halfway through the year, kind of a mix of like, and like, yikes, this is bad. Bart's report found that off-premise dollar sales of craft beer declined 7.7% year-to-date through June 12th at multi-outlet food and convenience stores tracked by IRI. But our friends at Bump Williams put out their own mid-year report and they had data through July 2nd. So it gets a little bit better. Craft has a slight improvement to a dollar sales decline of 7.4%. But as always, worth noting with scan data, it doesn't paint a full picture for craft beer because it doesn't include the on-premise, it doesn't include at the brewery sales, but even with all these caveats, this isn't really the ideal situation.

[00:12:15] Justin Kendall: Bart early on was talking about how lower scans didn't necessarily indicate something being too bad because maybe that on-premise component was making up for it. Did he give any indication that that's the case?

[00:12:31] Jessica Infante: No, Bart actually admitted that he was being slightly contrarian when he had written that. So Bart's words were, Bart was much more eloquent than I was just now. And he says craft performance so far is hovering between expected and alarming. I mean, Bart called out that off-premise craft sales are starting to settle into like a more predictable pattern week by week. And he also noticed that, um, on-premise data is not always the easiest to get. And like, you know, we know we see it from a bunch of different places. So Bart turned to the U.S. Census Bureau, their monthly retail trade data. So he found that food service and drinking place sales increased 15% in the first half of 2022 compared to last year. And if you don't control for inflation, it's actually up 24%. But as we all know, inflation is kind of a the topic of the hour everywhere. Bart also looked at restaurant reservations booked through OpenTable, which has been mostly flat to 2019 this year and far outpaced the first half of 2021. So last year, restaurant bookings on OpenTable only reached 2019 levels on three different weeks, which was in May and June of 2021. So there's a few different things, but it's still not really It's not pretty.

[00:13:46] Zoe Licata: Yeah. And specifically in that, like comparing to his comments earlier, earlier this year for at the brewery sales, he said that they're still growing, but he's less confident. They are growing fast enough for everyone to be growing, particularly given continued brewery cap growth.

[00:14:02] Justin Kendall: Oh, boy.

[00:14:03] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and another thing to look at, like what you know, is looking at share. Dollar sales are not always going to be all that helpful when we're comparing like apples to kumquats. These years have all been so, so different. When you look at share, craft beer's share of total off-premise dollar sales declined 0.65% to 10.74% year-to-date through the middle of June. The only beer category segment to record a steeper share losses was domestic premium, which is down 0.8%. So craft is really kind of losing a foothold in those, you know, off-premise chain sales. IRI, you know, they give us monthly reports. So every month they do have a top 30 craft brands list. I counted the last month we received through IRI, which was through June 12th. Only 10 of them are from BA defined craft breweries, which is interesting.

[00:14:54] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I saw you got the call out on Vinepear.

[00:14:57] Jessica Infante: I know, I was so excited. I read, Vinepear does like a really great weekly roundup of alcohol trade news, not just beer, but wine and spirits too. And every week they pick like one good quote. And last week's one good quote was something I wrote, which is exciting for me, but the news shared it and it is not exciting for any craft brewer. But yeah, only a third of the top 30 craft brands in IRI are what the BA would call craft. So raises a lot of questions.

[00:15:26] Justin Kendall: And even those that are considered craft, they've either had some type of investment or partnership or whatever, they're operating at a much larger level.

[00:15:35] Jessica Infante: Right. The only brand in this list that really hasn't taken on any kind of investment or is publicly traded is

[00:15:42] Simply Spiked: Sierra.

[00:15:43] Jessica Infante: Yeah, mostly just Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada's got four, four SKUs in this 10 BA defined craft breweries. So everybody else is Firestone Walker, Samuel Adams, Cigar City.

[00:15:57] Simply Spiked: Yeah.

[00:15:58] Jessica Infante: Interesting times, yeah. And within those 10 BA-defined craft brewers, only four of them have gained share. Biggest share gainer here was Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing, up almost a third of a percent to 2.3% of all craft off-premise dollar sales. Sam's Seasonal is up the teeniest little bit, 0.01% to 1.4%. Cigar City's HiLi is up 0.04 up to 0.89% of all craft dollar sales. And Sierra's big little thing is up 0.28% to 0.59%. And that all of these are in the top 30 just goes to show you how fragmented craft dollar sales are. That you're a top 30 craft brand and you're still only accounting for 0.59% of dollar sales in the segment. Shows there's a lot of skews and everything is really split up between them. Yeah. I mean, all of those styles, they really kind of speak to something that our friends at Bump Williams Consulting. It sounds like I'm saying that Bump Williams himself is our friend when this is the work of several different people. We're friends with Bump. We are. We're friends with everybody. But Dave Williams emailed me this report, and I'm sure it was a team effort. IPAs continue to dominate the craft segment. They increased their share by 1.8%, which is far and away more than any other craft style, and it's not even close. The IPA styles within the style that are doing the best are hazy, imperial, double, triple, and not hazy, imperial, double, triple. So it's really all about the APV. As for Bart's mid-year report, he is still taking responses to his survey, so he will share during the BA's collab hour on Thursday, July 28th. So head over to the BA's website to help him out, because if you do that, you'll also help us out by giving us more data to play with.

[00:17:43] Justin Kendall: Day after BrewTalks, what else would you want to do?

[00:17:46] Jessica Infante: Not much.

[00:17:48] Justin Kendall: Yeah, just chill out with Bart in a webinar.

[00:17:50] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Sounds great. Zoe, you had a great story about what's up at Beatbox.

[00:17:56] Zoe Licata: Yes, even though wine may not have had a great 4th of July, Beatbox, which is a wine-based RTD, is having a wonderful time. I got to speak to the team over at Beatbox Beverages. It's a wine-based hard punch in the cartons, similar to like a Botabox wine. And they have just had insane growth over the past couple of years and are not stopping. They have had increased shipments 160% in 2021 to about just over 61,000 barrels. And they're planning to do that same amount of growth again this year. And that's a mix of both expansion into new states in the past few months, as well as just velocity increases. So people are buying more and more of these beatbox beverages. They're not doing the typical fourth category thing right now of just constantly putting out new things and innovating. They're kind of sticking to their core lineup of these high ABV, most are 11%. fruit punches and just getting them to more people in more places. A big part of that has to do with their events. They're all about music festivals, which are finally back post-ish pandemic. And like social media and talking about the brand. It's just such a big viral brand. I feel like I'm saying viral a lot in this podcast, which you'll hear more of in our conversation or interview later about Simply Spiked. But it's one of those brands that just people talk about it and take pictures with it and buy swag. And it's, reflective in sales as well. Just looking numbers wise, beatbox dollar sales increased 90.5% year over year in the last four weeks. And I ride track channels, which is significantly larger than RTD segment growth in that same amount of time, which is up 20%. So they're outpacing the segment. Last 52 weeks, dollar sales increased 86% year over year to more than $26.5 million. the only brands that have really beat them within the RTD SKUs list are Buzzballs, which they said are the one guys they haven't been able to beat yet. They're really trying to get at them. High Noon and then Atomic Brands and Monaco Cocktails, which I don't really know much about, but they're beating them in year-over-year sales. But after that, Beatbox really keeps growing.

[00:20:43] Jessica Infante: I very much admire their dedication to music festivals. I could never, just going to show my age a little bit here, but yeah, that sounds like not fun to me. I know people love them.

[00:20:55] Zoe Licata: Amy Sedman, who is one of the co-founders of Future Proof, which is the parent company. and the COO. She has a whole jar that we talked about on our Zoom with the whole team filled with wristbands from various music festivals that is quite packed. I was very impressed. She loves that. She's all about it. So bless her.

[00:21:20] Jessica Infante: Bless her. I'm just impressed she can get them off intact because I feel like that's always a struggle, especially when they're like little fabric ones with that little plastic bead with claws inside. Oh, Molson Coors announced that they're going to be the first brewer that wants in on the Super Bowl now that Anheuser-Busch Imbev has waived its exclusivity arrangement. That news broke last week. No word yet on which brand is going to be featured, but they basically announced their intentions with a graphic that includes like all the hits like Blue Moon, Topo Chico, Hard Seltzer, Coors Light, Miller Light, Vizzy, and Simply Spiked. So we'll see what happens in Super Bowl LV2.

[00:21:59] Justin Kendall: I'm with Sean, our Brewbound insider newsletter writer. I think they should bring back Taste Great Less Failing for this, like some updated version of it. Maybe not with the folks that he mentioned, because I'm pretty sure Peyton Manning's locked down with Anheuser-Busch.

[00:22:18] Zoe Licata: Also, Peyton Manning is in so many commercials already for so many different things that I think we need to move on to another phase.

[00:22:26] Justin Kendall: There are other people, yeah, but get some retired players, get some. I don't think you can have current players, not unless they're advertising your flashlight.

[00:22:35] Zoe Licata: Yes, most of course is already tried to get around that the same time that they announced this Super Bowls. By they've also said that there are released a new campaign with Patrick Mahomes. Where he is advertising of course flashlight. where you never actually see a flashlight.

[00:22:58] Jessica Infante: That was a flashlight, I watched it. The batteries fell out of it.

[00:23:02] Zoe Licata: You don't see like, I want to see like, okay, buy now a Coors flashlight. That's not a thing that they don't give you directions for how to buy this Coors flashlight. It's a very cheeky way of getting around the The current player roles, right?

[00:23:21] Justin Kendall: Yeah, well, they should get somebody like Pat McAfee to be their new John Madden and do something like that. But that's my suggestion. I love those old 80s commercials.

[00:23:33] Zoe Licata: I feel like after this year's of kind of lackluster commercials and too many NFT ads and things, I feel like the right direction to go would be like revert back to some old school Super Bowl styles.

[00:23:48] Justin Kendall: Yeah, no metaverse.

[00:23:50] Jessica Infante: Oh my God. No, no. We should ban Web 3.0 from the Super Bowl. I'm done with it. Absolutely.

[00:24:00] Zoe Licata: If I have to stand up and scan a QR code during your Super Bowl commercial, then I think you need to change your tactics.

[00:24:08] Justin Kendall: Yeah, listen up MSJ.

[00:24:12] Zoe Licata: You should trust all of our guidance because we have lots of marketing and business experience for Web3. Disclaimer, we absolutely do not, please do not.

[00:24:24] Justin Kendall: I'm sure they won't be the last though to have an ad.

[00:24:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

[00:24:31] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:24:32] Zoe Licata: What else did we talk about? Oh, we had a, we had a good amount of people moving around in the industry.

[00:24:38] Jessica Infante: Lots of people got new jobs.

[00:24:39] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Um, had a unintentional all female people moves, which was exciting. Very coincidental of it was the week of me in dress. We did not purposely make this people moves with all women. It just, they're doing cool things moving up.

[00:24:56] Jessica Infante: Yeah, yeah, that roundup was last week Diageo named a couple new executives. Deborah Crew has been named to Diageo Global Chief Operating Officer. Claudia Schubert is named the President of North America. So girl power at Diageo. outside of the people moves at AB, Alyssa Gordon Heinerschneid was promoted to VP of Bud Light. She's the first woman to lead the country's biggest beer brand. And she had noted on her LinkedIn announcement that she got the job that like, this is still important because representation matters. She mentioned how she has a daughter and it's important for her daughter to be able to see, women can have big jobs like this, even in what people think of as being male dominated fields. snaps to all of them. We also, our friend David Macon is joining Giant Hard Kombucha as chief sales officer. We'll have more about that this week. We had a nice check-in with him and the Giant team, which was great.

[00:25:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah, they are seeing themselves more as a total beverage alcohol brand, not just a hard kombucha brand. they have a hard tea out now that they're ramping up focus on and getting that out to more places but cool chat that will have some more should be out by the time you're listening to this yeah and yeah that was pretty much our news do you feel like you missed out i feel like it yeah you guys did a great job though you guys held it down thanks i expected nothing less

[00:26:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah, we did okay. We missed you. We're glad you're back. But anytime you want to take a vacation.

[00:26:34] Justin Kendall: I'm going to have to after this. This was not a restful like trip.

[00:26:39] Jessica Infante: I know. But the other thing that you're talking about is also not a vacation.

[00:26:42] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:26:42] Jessica Infante: We'll get you there at some point.

[00:26:44] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:26:44] Jessica Infante: To your credit, we didn't really hear from you very much at all.

[00:26:47] Justin Kendall: I literally could not do anything. When you're driving for 13 hours, I can't be on top of emails. I can't be on top of anything. So it was all you.

[00:27:01] Zoe Licata: I said it was the best you've done at not working, but it's because you really had no choice.

[00:27:08] Justin Kendall: I had no other choice. And by the time I got to Fremont, Ohio, I was like, yeah, I'm done. I just want to eat some buffalo wild wings and pass out. And I did.

[00:27:18] Jessica Infante: I've never been more proud of myself than when you forwarded that email the other day with like, I'm just forwarding this. Don't yell at me. I put the fear of God in him.

[00:27:29] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Well, I'm glad to be back. Glad to see you. Like I said, you guys did great.

[00:27:34] Jessica Infante: Thanks.

[00:27:36] Justin Kendall: I wouldn't expect anything less.

[00:27:37] Jessica Infante: And for the record, we don't make a habit of yelling at Justin. This is not a hostile work environment. Everybody's okay.

[00:27:44] Zoe Licata: And with that, let's get to our featured interview with Joy Ghosh, Vice President of Marketing for Above Premium Brands and Flavored Malt Beverages for Molson Coors, talking about Simply Spiked.

[00:27:56] Jessica Infante: Okay, so let's get to this week's featured interview. We are super psyched this week to have joining us Joy Ghosh, Vice President of Marketing for Above Premium Brands and Flavored Malt Beverages for Molson Coors. Joy, that's quite a title.

[00:28:08] Simply Spiked: Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful, so I gotta find a more pithy, more marketing way to summarize it, so.

[00:28:14] Jessica Infante: Let's say, I'm sorry to go like hard script on you, but I didn't want to screw it up, but we're glad you're here. Super excited to talk about Simply Spiked today, as well as a couple other things that you guys have going on. But yeah, Zoe and I have both been super curious about it. She was fortunate enough to get her hands on some.

[00:28:30] Zoe Licata: Yes, a very nice PR person representing Simply Spiked sent me some over. It was much appreciated by myself and by my friends. Excited for this chat for sure.

[00:28:42] Jessica Infante: Yeah, Zoe, as the youngest member of Team Brewbound, obviously has younger friends. So it's always great to ask her what her peers think about various Bev-Al trends, because they're all, what are you guys, like 25 to 27? Yeah, within that range, yeah. Yeah, which, I mean, I'm far older than that.

[00:29:02] Simply Spiked: As am I. And Jessica, we're happy to sell you the product as well, because I'd love for you to try it and give us some feedback.

[00:29:09] Jessica Infante: Awesome. That would be great. Let's work that out. Zoe, why don't you kind of share with Joy some of your initial findings from when you shared with friends?

[00:29:17] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I feel like simply has been very much in demand or Simply Spiked as I feel like we everyone once they they saw the news was excited and looking forward to it. Very difficult to track down at first specific. I mean, I was also looking during fourth of July weekend.

[00:29:38] SPEAKER_??: So

[00:29:38] Zoe Licata: It was always a hard time to find some Bev-Alc in general, but seems to be right in that market of people looking for something with a little bit more flavor than the hard seltzers, something that they're familiar with, like that Simply product before, that's the non-alcoholic version. It has that, and we'll talk about this a little bit more in a sec, but that virality to it, that because of that familiar simply name of going into that, just people are talking about it type of deal. It's having a moment right now.

[00:30:13] Simply Spiked: I'm glad to hear that. No, we're getting similar feedback from all our fans. And no, the launch has been phenomenal. Well, definitely ahead of our expectations. And we're really excited to see what the potential of the brand is as we continue to continue to scale it up.

[00:30:30] Zoe Licata: So how would you describe like a target consumer for Simply Spiked? Who is this made for?

[00:30:37] Simply Spiked: Obviously simply as a master brand is just so ubiquitous and well known. So as we were developing this concept, one of our key focus areas was we know that for those 21 plus consumers that are already drinking simply today, mixing it, creating cocktails is just a common behavior that happens across households all across America. So really honing in on that 21 plus fan of Simply Juices, particularly Simply Lemonades, was low-hanging fruit. Sorry, lots of fruit puns coming up today. And from our research, when we actually talked to these consumers, again, the 21-plus fans of Simply Juice, overwhelmingly were they interested in a RTD version of simply a spiked version coming to shop. I think about 87% said they would try and be excited about a spiked version of the juice they know and love. So that was definitely a key part of how we designed the product in partnership with Coca-Cola and how we're marketing and targeting consumers. But from a secondary target, and I think what's really emerged has become a key part of why we're seeing such a strong response, particularly in social, is with Black AA consumers, who've been really propelling the brand of social, become big brand advocates. Black Twitter really adopted the brand at launch and helped us, I think, create a real great groundswell. And it holds a really strong place in culture and across a lot of these households. And we've really been partnering with some content creators and people in the community to help amplify that. But that's emerged as a really important and key part of where I think the brand could be and grow within that community.

[00:32:13] Zoe Licata: That's really cool. That's something I hadn't even thought about. Something that kind of sparked our conversation with you is that one campaign that Simply Spiked is doing is they're celebrating the 21st anniversary of Simply. And doing that, you do a campaign about Simply being all grown up. And so that's why we have Simply Spiked. Simply is now a legal drinking age consumer, if Simply was a person. How does that campaign fit? Like, do you see that as specifically targeting like that younger Gen Z legal drinking age consumer? And what is the thought process around that?

[00:32:46] Simply Spiked: I think with the Simply the Brand turning 21 this year, it was like serendipitous. We couldn't ask for a better moment in time to bring a spike version of a brand that's known and loved into the alcohol aisle. It felt like it was meant to be. And then trying to create our campaign, which was really all about Simply All Grown Up manifested in this obviously lemon persona we brought to life in a fun, juicy way with a lot of swagger coming, going out in the world, really embodying that kind of insight of like, yeah, this is Simply All Grown Up. 21st birthday out in the world and kind of discovering and this kind of coming of age story of the brand in a fun and memorable way through our campaign and advertising. I mean, amplifying that all through the summer, we'll have different moments to celebrate both the actual birthday concept, but this idea of, you know, bringing a bit of juiciness to occasions and different parts of, you know, just summer moments all through the next few weeks and even into September. In terms of your question on the target, so we do not directly target, call it younger legal drinking age consumers with the campaign and the overall concept, though we think the reach of this brand is going to be really broad because the reach of Simply as a master brand of juice has such high appeal. It's founded in one of two households in America. It's Coke's number two brand, almost $2 billion in sale. We know that the actual master brand has wide reach and is beloved. But what we are seeing with, again, very early data that the Simply Spiked lemonade is having a heavy index with a younger consumer. So particularly 21 to 30-year-old, we're seeing a large portion of our early sourcing data from that consumer pool. So it does have appeal to a younger consumer, but we think that that's going to have continued reach beyond that group. But the idea of turning 21 and bringing the Simply brand into the alcohol aisle just is more of a fun moment in culture, not necessarily a particular marketing strategy, but it is turning into a good sign that we're recruiting and reaching a much younger consumer demographic, which is great for us as a company trying to bring in new drinkers and expose new consumers to this really great partnership and this new brand we're building.

[00:35:04] Jessica Infante: So Joy, you mentioned, you know, a little bit earlier that Simply is really resonating with black and AAPI communities of legally drinkers. And that's, you know, we mostly dabble in the world of craft beer and craft beers long had a really hard time breaking through with those groups. What do you think about the Simply brand makes it more attractive to these people that other parts of BevVac don't always reach?

[00:35:26] Simply Spiked: Yeah, no, no, great question and working in the in the craft space with blue and I think it's finding new ways to recruit consumers in particularly more diverse consumers is a continued challenge for us because of some of the potential barriers of the segment and the proposition but. What I think has enabled Simply Spiked Lemonade to have a real groundswell with people of color, particularly Black gay consumers, I think is the connection that that group and community has to Simply as a master brand. It's a key part of their community. It's a key part of family get-togethers, cookouts, barbecues, celebrations. And again, it's a common behavior that we've saw in our research that consumers are already mixing with spirits and taking the Simply brand and mixing with different spirits as well. So we know that it was a part of how consumers were already thinking of the role that Simply plays, partly because of the great juice, taste, and a great equity that comes with that. So tapping into that insight really enabled us to not only just launch the brand, but create, I think, a real strong social momentum. And it was a big part of our overall marketing strategy as we not just spoke to those consumers in the community, but actually worked with them to co-create content help us amplify the brand and even gauge them with feedback as we were trying to figure out future innovations and future evolutions in the brand. But I think it all comes back down to just how strong Simply as a Master Brand is and the role that it played in that community and finding ways to make, I guess, that behavior that already existed a little easier by having it as a ready-to-drink RTD that that community can pick up and grab has really made it a key part of our early trial that we're seeing.

[00:37:14] Jessica Infante: That's awesome. I'm so glad to hear that, that you guys have really found like a meaningful relationship there and a connection. So if 2019 and 2020 were like the summers of hard seltzer, this summer is kind of shaping up to be the summer of spirits-based RTDs. And this is not that, this is brewed and fermented. Was there a reason why the company specifically wanted to go the brewed and fermented route instead of going spirits?

[00:37:42] Simply Spiked: Great question, and it was definitely something we explored deeply, but I think it came down to the fact that one of the key decisions as we were developing the product pipeline and the actual liquid is keeping it as close to the simply lemonade that consumers know and love because of the fact that we were tapping into this key insight that out in the world of most RTDs currently today, whether it's spirit-based or fermented malt-based, is there's a lack of real juice and a connection to real fruit in the segment that simply is known and famous for. Taking that fresh from the grove taste and finding the way to bring it to life in the F&B, FAB aisle was a key priority for us. Moving into a fermented brewed base, a lot is the best emulate that flavor as close as possible and keep a very clean profile and help us maximize what the appeal and reach of the brand would be. That being said, I think we're definitely keeping an eye to the future and continue to keep exploring and pushing the innovation envelope with this relationship. But yeah, our goal was trying to match the flavors best we can and this was the best way we were able to do it.

[00:38:53] Zoe Licata: One thing that is different with the Simply Spiked rather than the non-alcoholic is simply other than the ABV is that it's carbonated. Non-alcoholic, simply lemonade is not bubbly. What was the decision there and why put it with this carbonated seltzer?

[00:39:10] Simply Spiked: Yeah, this is another hotly contested discussion as we're developing the concept. But yeah, one thing to reinforce is it is a very light carbonation. So it's not the same level of carbonation you would find in a typical seltzer. Because as you kind of alluded to the kickoff of our conversation, this is, we almost consider this like a next generation type of RTD. It kind of sits in this like spectrum of like the more big established brands that have been kind of dominating the F&B, FAB space. But I'm not the same extreme as a seltzer where we bring in much more full flavor, but in a way that still has the right balance of both the level of sugar, the level of bringing in real fruit juice, but also the level of carbonation. We felt it helped amplify the consumer experience. And that slight effervescence really helped bring forward some of the fruit flavors and some of the expectations consumers have for this segment of this category. That being said, again, we're continuing to get feedback and exploring different areas in the future, but the light level of carbonation, what we've learned is more consumers wanted it that didn't, and were expecting some level of effervescence, and it only helped make the product experience better, amplifying some of those bold, fruit forward flavors, which again, Simply is so famous for.

[00:40:23] Jessica Infante: So we all know that there is a rather well-known and existing and established hard lemonade, but this to me is very different. What was the white space that you guys were looking to fill with Simply? Is the juice like the number one biggest meaningful point of differentiation?

[00:40:39] Simply Spiked: Yes, there's obviously a hard limited is not a new concept by any means that there's big established brands out there and have been out there for decades. What we wanted to bring in is a much more aspirational, a more premium version of what a hard lemonade would be for today's modern drinker consumers that are are looking for that full flavor. but don't necessarily get that from a seltzer, but want real juice flavor, real fruit notes coming forward. And that wasn't really in the category today. There's lots of food for brands in the FAB out today, but we're a few of them actually use real juice and real fruit in their products. So we felt this was a great opportunity to again, partner with such a known brand that has great real fruit and juice credentials and bring them into the alcohol aisle. In terms of the white space, yeah, we do believe that there's going to be opportunity to obviously take share from these more established hard lemonade brands. However, we actually think this is going to be really incremental for our distributors and our customers. And we're seeing some early data that signals that already as consumers are coming into the aisle for the first time, maybe sourcing from spirits, but definitely creating some new occasions that may have not existed before in the hard lemonade space by bringing in those millions of Simply, 21 plus Simply drinkers into the RTD aisle that may not have walked or looked at that before because of the power of that non-alcoholic brand. So there's definitely a mix of both, call it modernizing the current established hard lemonades and hard malt-based and sugar-based beverages today, but also I think a really strong category growth story of bringing in new drinkers that no one loves simply into this space. And we're seeing that in our early data that is actually bringing in more than we expected, though we'll continue to validate that when we get more IRI and panel data in the next few weeks.

[00:42:31] Zoe Licata: So this is all possible because it's of a collaboration with Coca-Cola. Simply Lemonade is a Coca-Cola brand, and it's not the first time that Molson Coors and Coca-Cola have partnered up. You guys did the Topo Chico Heart Seltzer as well. What was the conversation about why Simply was the best fit for the next collaboration project?

[00:42:52] Simply Spiked: Yeah, we have a very great relationship with the Coca-Cola companies, starting with, obviously, Topo Chico, which is one of the, if not the fastest growing hearts elsewhere, but it's definitely one of the fastest sharegainers happening in the segment right now. When it came to figuring out what's next in the relationship, we obviously looked at the breadth of their portfolio and partnered together to figure out what's the best common business opportunities for both of our companies, and simply rose to the top very quickly as we identify that the flavor space is continuing to grow, particularly the full flavor space, if you're seeing that segment continue to grow. Obviously, there's been lots of press in terms of the slowdown in seltzers, but we know consumers will always want flavor and want different ways to bring flavor forward in an interesting, compelling occasion. So bringing the powerhouse that is Simply into the alcohol aisle was high on our selection criteria of different concepts, and it performed really well when we put it in front of consumers, tapping into the great latent equity that Simply has, and that doesn't really exist as well today in the alcohol aisle. The second reason is, this is obviously, we're starting with lemonade, but I think it's no surprise that we're going to be continuing to bring a pipeline forward of innovation, tapping into the great variety of products that's within the Simply Master brand. And that's something, when we're ready to share, we'll come back, obviously, give some news on that. but we definitely feel that there's potential to grow this brand in the spiked segment over time, because there's such a breadth of simply juices and simply equity that could tap into different parts of their portfolio. Though starting with Spike Lemonade was definitely top of mind, given the size of that brand in the non-ALK segment, but also the market potential in hard lemonades today, as we talked about that there's big established players and kind of seltzer lemonades. But we felt there was a way to create a much more modern, progressive, future-facing version of a hard lemonade with badge value, with more appeal to younger consumers, people of color and Black audiences. And that's what really Simply Spiked Lemonade has been done for us. And one of the key parts to why we picked the Sprite as the next part of our relationship

[00:45:02] Jessica Infante: What was the innovation pipeline like here in terms of the teams working on Simply Spiked, but then also Topo Chico? Was there any overlap or did you guys wait for Topo to get into the world and be like, okay, this works, this is effective, let's do it again?

[00:45:16] Simply Spiked: fortunate that our R&D and innovation teams are very interconnected across both the Molson Coors side but the Coca-Cola side. So we made sure that as we looked at launching simply developing innovations against Simply Spiked as well as the innovation pipeline under Topo Chico we're working together and collaboratively to make sure that we're learning from what worked well in the Topo Chico hard seltzer launch what's going on in the overall space of flavor, seltzers, RTDs, spirits RTDs today, and using that to come together with a kind of a joint plan and how we're bringing forward different innovations within these two great brands and equities. So yeah, as we were building Simply Spiked with them, we were collaboratively learning and looking at what's happening with Topo Chico in the market. And that was a key part of, we had a playbook that was successful leveraging the power of a non-alcoholic brand coming to the alcohol space. How do we continue to reuse that playbook as we launch Simply Spiked Lemonade? It'll be something we're going to continue to refine as we bring in, again, more innovations like we did for the Ranch Water and Topo, and we will be definitely doing down the road with Simply Spiked.

[00:46:22] Zoe Licata: So let's talk a little bit about like the marketing for Simply Spiked. And we talked about a little bit at the top, like how it has this bit of virality to it, but how important is social media marketing for a Bevel brand like Simply Spiked?

[00:46:37] Simply Spiked: Oh, it was very important. We made the choice very early in the process that we would be a social first brand. And it actually started with when we announced the relationship, we knew that this brand would have a lot of strong cultural cash in, would come in with a lot of strong equity because of the power of the Simply master brand. However, what surprised me was, I think, when we made this announcement back in January, the amount of consumer excitement for the Spike version was off the charts in terms of the reach, the feedback, and particularly, again, with BlackA consumers really embracing this concept and Black Twitter really kind of amplifying that. We felt that, hey, there's a lot of potential here with a brand that... A master brand that has great equity, but one that also has an equity that is a little more wholesome and a little more family oriented. So how do we translate that into the world of alcohol, again, in a way that's responsible, but also playing up the key points of differences that we wanted to convey around real fruit juice? So as we launched in the market, we actually decided to launch social first. We created what we call the community of our most passionate brand advocates that we developed over time since our announcement. We call them our day ones and kind of use them as a or leverage and work with them as a sounding board for both giving them product to try, give them early reviews, give them some swag to help convey and partner with us and kind of making a wide pool of like micro influencers. these consumers that are just so passionate about Simply Spiked and wanting to share that passion with the world, and as well as helping us co-create really great content, both visually and the right aesthetic, as well as helping define how we continue to shape the strategy and shape the brand of the future. So it was, I think, a really successful launch, as even our early data shows that most consumers have found Simply Spiked through social media, have found it through what they see from their friends, the reviews. Though we don't actively, we can't actively advertise on TikTok now because of lack of proper age getting, we've seen all these great reviews kind of come up on that platform or people that are excited to share their product point of view on the product world. And then as we work with consumers on Twitter, particularly as a platform where a lot of this conversation has been happening around the launch of the brand. And again, helping not just leveraging the content, but trying to find ways to amplify and co-create with a lot of these advocates and consumers that are just so passionate about the brand. So yeah, social, particularly on Twitter, has been a big part of the focus. And I think what's helped the brand get off to a really quick start before we now launched a broader campaign, which obviously will be on TV and has wider reach. But the first, you know, call it eight or so weeks, even before launch, was very driven through social influencers sampling on getting products into our biggest fans' hands.

[00:49:29] Zoe Licata: We recently had a conversation with a bunch of people within the marketing for craft beer space. And we talked about social media and the different platforms and what works best. Is there a specific platform that you think is the most helpful when launching this type of product or you saw had the best responses?

[00:49:50] Simply Spiked: Yeah, for this launch specifically, I think Twitter was definitely the platform that helped us the most in terms of building that initial excitement and engaging in that community that was really excited and helping us amplify the brand. What we found is, obviously, we have content across all various different social platforms. Instagram tends to be much more visually led, and we help curate and amplify some of the great social content we're seeing on that channel. But Twitter is all about real-time engagement, real conversations, helping answer questions that we often get in terms of things like, you know, level of sugar content, level of carbonation. Where can I find Simply Spiked? That's the number one question that we're getting right now. But having active one-to-one engagement, there's no better platform than Twitter is to help bring your brand voice to life in an authentic and meaningful way. And especially because there's such a wide established community and groups within Twitter. So I referenced Black Twitter a lot as that community particularly embraced the brand at launch and have been a big part of helping create some of that excitement and building that early hype we were seeing. So one of the things that we actually did was as we worked to build a community management and consumer engagement at Twitter, we actually identified a group of very loyal and active consumers we called our Day Ones. And we picked a few of them where we actually surprised them by showing up at their doorstep with their consent with a fun over-the-top delivery. So we spiked to, again, help say a thank you for being a fan, but also create some content that helped us with that initial call of virality or that initial like, we call it often like shareable content that makes the brand feel appealing and exciting and engaging. And we put out a couple of those videos on social, which have helped again, create some of that early ground. So what we're seeing, so yeah, Twitter definitely was a key platform for us and will continue to be a key platform as the brand continues to grow.

[00:51:47] Zoe Licata: You just mentioned a lot of people asking where can they find Simply Spiked? And as you said at the top, I had to search for these things. They were out of stock in a couple of places, at least in Boston. Was this something that you anticipated for there to be a couple out of stocks at places?

[00:52:04] Simply Spiked: We were definitely, and I was definitely surprised at how much response we got from the initial launch. We knew there was going to be challenges as we launched this brand because we were launching off cycle. This is a late launch typically a lot of our big chain customers have. finish their sets earlier in the spring. But we felt that this is so much potential, we didn't want to wait for the next reset window and wanted to bring it in for the summer as we continue to grow this brand and partnership. So as we developed the initial pipeline and expectation, we built it with certain assumptions in mind. And I think we were all blown away with the amount of distributor excitement. cost for excitement, but translated to the consumer excitement of the initial trial we got right out of the gate. So it's a good problem to have when you have more demand than what you are ready for. And so what we've done is work really quickly to help keep up with that demand. So we've actually unlocked two additional production facilities, one being our own Fort Worth brewery, which allows us to bring it into our own system, which has lots of different benefits, Speed being one of them. process typically takes months. We were able to do that in weeks. So our supply chain team and Coke supply chain team have moved mountains to help unlock and meet this great and growing demand. So the initial few weeks as we're getting out in the world, we're definitely rocky as we're getting more product out and making sure we can keep up with it. We'll be in a much better supply position moving forward as we're unlocking, again, these new production capabilities. But I do anticipate demand to keep growing, because again, we're still growing our distribution. We're still getting our reach out there. And as demand continues to grow, we're going to keep up the pace on supply as much as possible. But we're definitely conscious that we're facing out of stocks that a lot of our distributors and customers are working as fast as we can to keep up with this really crazy amount of consumer response for staying for the brand.

[00:53:56] Jessica Infante: like you said, certainly an awesome problem to have. How penetrated into Molson Quartz's footprint is Simply Spiked so far?

[00:54:04] Simply Spiked: From a supply perspective? So yeah, right now, as we launched, we were initially launching as through contract brewing only. But now, as we've unlocked Fort Worth, which were a lot of our flavor products are made, including our busy or Topo Chico, that's going to be our major production facility moving forward. So our goal is to shift the mix away from contract brewing into our own production facilities, which helps us in many ways from agility, as well as speed to market, quality control, and obviously from a cost based there's there's definite benefits there. So right now, it's still a mix across different facilities. Again, we're trying to produce as much product as we can. But over time, we're going to be fully integrating into our system, and potentially, you know, continue to leverage contract where it makes sense to keep up with certain new innovations or skew sizes things down the road. But our core of our product will be moving forward coming out of our Fort Worth brewery, which which we're really excited about. Awesome.

[00:54:59] Jessica Infante: Now this is a very different go-to-market strategy than what you had done with Topo Chico, which was just a couple markets to start and then eventually Nationwide. But I want to say there was quite a few months in between those test markets to the Nationwide launch. So why the decision to go national with Simply Right Away?

[00:55:19] Simply Spiked: I think one of the key learnings we had from Topo Chico was that there's definitely a lot of excitement for bringing brands that have established equity in the non-alc space into alcohol, particularly, again, targeting those 21 plus consumers. And if we look at the two brands, Simpli is significantly larger than Topo Chico from a non-ALC basis, 50% household penetration, one in every two households, close to 2 billion in sales. We thought the potential would be significant right off the gate. Whereas in Topo, I think we're still learning, again, new relationship with Coca-Cola, helping figure out and navigate through bringing that brand together. But now that we built that playbook with Topo, we felt more confident being able to go national sooner, also back with the fact that simply is such a established brand with huge awareness, huge penetration, and huge reach across every state, practically across the US. Obviously, some pockets where it has more strength, which gave us confidence again that we can take it to all of our regions, all of our distributors quickly. That being said, since we were launching off cycle, we thought it would be more of a slow build versus the massive runaway hit it is today. And so I think as we're learning that, that hypothesis was proven true, but to a much bigger degree than we expected. And now we're glad we went national immediately, and now we're continuing to ramp up and scale the brand because of the, yeah, just the groundswell of excitement and demand for it today.

[00:56:52] Zoe Licata: Because of that popularity that happened so much faster than initially expected, does that shift at all? Like how it falls in Molson Coors priority list or what the focus of it is for this year or for Molson Coors' priorities in general?

[00:57:09] Simply Spiked: With our overall revitalization plan growing and above premium and above premium flavor is and has been a consistent top priority for the organization and will continue to play a key role through this year into the future. So it doesn't change our prioritization from what we set out to do a few years ago because. overall, our playbook and our strategy is working. Our recent share trends have improved significantly, especially at Simply In, which is something which has been a little tricky with IRA coding, but it's in the system now. We're seeing the revitalization deliver our commitments we made from a share basis, and then the overall prioritization of above premium flavor continue to play the key role in that. The answer is, it's been a part of our strategy, and this was one of our key actions to help win and grow in this space that we had a bigger opportunity to do as a brewer, and we're going to continue investing in this brand. Again, unlocking Fort Worth was a huge focus and investment for us, and we needed to do that quicker because of, again, the excitement for this brand. So it'll continue to be a key priority for us moving into the future, especially since we've seen such great consumer and customer distributor uptake for it so far.

[00:58:20] Jessica Infante: We've covered how well known Simply the original brand is nationally, massive household penetration. How do you make sure that Simply Spiked is reaching the appropriate legal drinking age audience and avoiding confusion?

[00:58:34] Simply Spiked: This has been a very important part of our approach building the brand from the outset. We take responsible marketing very seriously and we know that simply as a master brand has that more family wholesome equity that is built over time and obviously has a wide range of consumers that love and buy the brand today. So one of the things that was, which really helped us is when we looked at the drinker profiles for simply as an on-off brand, massive audience or consumer base that was 21 plus. So we knew that there's already a huge drinker base that is of legal drinking age that no one loved the brand. And again, we're already using the brand today to mix cocktails and beverages. So we were tapping into an existing behavior. But when it came to making sure we're getting into the right audience and the right consumers, we made a couple of key actions learning from our success with Topo Chico, but also amplifying that both from a packaging standpoint, so being really clear on how we label and demark the product, the name, making sure spike was very overt and visible, and we're continuing to actually refine our packaging as we get more feedback to help increase the visibility of the alkalized product. From a marketing standpoint, making sure we're reaching the right consumers that are of legal drinking age in the right audiences where we can age gain or the right places where we can age gain and appropriately target. And then the last thing is we have a very strict and clear non-ALC policy and how we bring our brands together. So you will never see Simply Spiked merchandise next to simply non-ALC. We have a clear delineation of keeping those brands separate because we do see this as very different brands a shopper perspective, and we want to avoid any appeal to anyone under legal drinking age. We built a lot of success on our non-ALC policy over time because we have brands like, obviously, Topo Chico, which we've learned from, but also in my portfolio, we have a partnership with Hornell and the Arizona brands with Arnold Palmer Spiked. We built years of how to make sure we're doing and building brands that have great non-ALC equity and reach in a responsible way. We're continuing to set the bar higher and higher as we get more and more brands into these types of partnerships.

[01:00:42] Zoe Licata: It's within this fourth category that has relied mainly on innovation and continue to put out new products all the time. Going forward, both with the Simply Spiked brand is also just a collaboration with Coca-Cola. What does the most important strategy look like for continuing to have innovation without maybe playing into some of that category fatigue or anything with consumers?

[01:01:04] Simply Spiked: Yeah, it's something that we're definitely conscious of, particularly as we looked at what's going on in the world of hard sellers and the role of core brands and innovation and what the right mix is overall. So fortunately, we've had obviously lots of brands that we can learn from, both in our portfolio, in the category, but even from the past as we looked at some of our other RTD or F&B brands like Reds and how we've played an innovation strategy in the past. So what we're doing is making sure as we build out the brand, it's going to be obviously a brand that has, I think, a lot of potential for innovation, but the core of this brand will always be hard lemonade. We believe that that's going to be the biggest part of the portfolio now in the future, and we're never going to lose sight of, I think, that core because of just the existing consumer behavior in the hard lemonade space today, and making sure as we bring on new innovation, that it fits within the overall strategy and the right archetype, but not losing sight of supporting what we think is going to be a massive brand even into next year and in the future, which is within Simply Spiked Lemonade. So yeah, long way of saying we have lots of portfolio and examples to learn from, and we're bringing all that learning forward and making sure that innovation will play a role for sure. And we're going to continue exploring that. But our number one priority now and into the future is going to continue to be building out the core of SimpliSpike Lemonade because we think we can be the number one hard lemonade in the market and maybe even the number one F&B or flavored alcohol beverage in the space over time.

[01:02:40] Jessica Infante: Well, we can't wait to see what happens. As I was telling Zoe on the podcast last week, I was at a family gathering recently with Simply Watermelon, and I was adding Prosecco.

[01:02:50] Simply Spiked: It was great. Wait till we try that to actual Simply, our spiked watermelon. It's funny, actually. We have this ongoing debate internally of what people's favorite flavors are of the four, and it varies all the time. So if you actually like, from our social media listening, watermelon is actually like the surprise dark horse. but internally it often bounces around between blueberry and strawberry. So once you guys went to trial for I'd love to get your your take on it, but but yeah, it's it's been a hotly contested topic of the favorite Simply Spiked flavor.

[01:03:19] Zoe Licata: So yes, I made all of my friends rank theirs and strawberry and watermelon. I think that the top two for sure.

[01:03:27] Simply Spiked: What was your top?

[01:03:29] Zoe Licata: I think I like. I think strawberry was my number one strawberry. Yep, but it's like a classic combination. You can't really go wrong.

[01:03:37] Simply Spiked: No, definitely. And that's one of the reasons why we put our strawberry lemonade in our signature into our 24-ounce as well. So that's something actually we're just rolling out now into C-stores and more single-serve type channels. But we knew strawberry is going to be really popular based on... Everyone knows and loves it, but the signature, making sure we have the OG flavor available was also important. But I'm personally a team blueberry, though I think some people find that a little too sweet. It's great when all four flavors are really loved, which is obviously the hardest things of a variety pack is, you know, having maybe one flavor that isn't quite up there, but we hear and I've heard consistently good feedback across the board. So it's always fun to see what people's favorites are.

[01:04:15] Zoe Licata: There were some heated debates in the ranking. Everyone always had it. There was a nice mix in there.

[01:04:20] Jessica Infante: So I feel like this is going to crush it at C stores. So yeah, can't wait to see some data on that when you guys have a few months in. All right, well, Joy, thank you so much for being with us. This was a great chat. Huge thank you to our one-man audio team of Joe for making this episode, you know, listenable. Thank you all for listening and tuning in. If you enjoyed what you heard, like, rate, review. If you want to drop us a note, podcast at Brewbound.com and we will be back with more next week.