Brewbound Podcast

Dino Funari may be Vitamin Sea Brewing Company’s harshest critic. Funari — who co-founded the brewery in February 2019 with Peter Kiley, Joshua Sherman, and Richard DiBona in Weymouth, Massachusetts — knows there’s always room to improve, and he’s still searching for that batch of beer that he loves. The search for better has helped Vitamin Sea stay humble even as accolades have been heaped on the 1-year-old business. “To us, we’re just doing the same thing that we were doing before — we’re still homebrewing even though we’re not,” Funari told Brewbound editor Justin Kendall during the latest installment of the Brewbound Podcast. “Instead of being in a small basement, we’re in a much larger basement. And instead of 20 to 30 to 50 coming by to try our beer, now there’s 1,000 or 1,500 coming by. It’s still people, it’s the same general concept. And they’re paying for it now.” Funari likened the lines of people every Saturday — now formed with social distance in mind — to the movie 50 First Dates. “Every Saturday, it’s a repeat of opening day for us,” he said during the mid-February interview. “It’s just madness. There’s so many people showing up, and there’s a line before we open, and we go through the same process.” Now, those people are lining up at a social distance in mind due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19. Selling beer-to-go has allowed Vitamin Sea to avoid laying off any of its employees. In Episode 8 of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season, Funari shares how Vitamin Sea’s growing popularity doesn’t make the company immune to the realities of business, the challenges of balancing time at the brewery with his day job, the goal of maintaining a work-life balance and much more. ‘Being an older guy in this industry at the ripe old age of 48, I do know that quality of life is very important to me,” Funari said. “If I can create a legacy for my family and make this to a point where myself and my partners and the people who work for us can still have quality of life and enjoy their families, I think that’s more important to us than making millions.” Listen to the latest episode of the Brewbound Podcast above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. Email [email protected] with questions, comments or suggestions.

Atlanta Brewing Company marketing director Cameron Davis knows what it’s like to deconstruct and rebuild a legacy beer brand. That’s what Davis and her colleagues did in 2018, taking Georgia’s oldest beer brand, the former Red Brick Brewing Company, and transforming it into Atlanta Brewing Company, a moniker the company had used until 2010, just in time for the company’s 25th anniversary. Davis recalled that the idea to return to the brand’s roots was born out of “Tuesday Dream Time” brainstorming sessions. “We’d sit in a room for 20 minutes and just say all of the stuff that if you could imagine anything for this company, what would it be?” she said. Those conversations led the brewery’s leaders to wonder what if they went back to the Atlanta Brewing name. “It didn’t make any sense to us why we weren’t already Atlanta Brewing,” she said. There also wasn’t a lot to lose. “We were kind of at the point where we’re rebranding or we might not be around,” Davis said. “Honestly, we had those conversations about ‘If we don’t do this, will we be around in two years? I don’t know?’ I think that’s a question that a lot of breweries ask themselves.” In episode seven of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season, Davis shared the process for blowing up a brand, the advantages of working with an agency such as CODO Design (who recently partnered with Brewbound on a four-part Voices series on when to rebrand or refresh a craft brand) and the risk-reward of alienating existing consumers. “You have to do what you feel is best for your company,” Davis acknowledged. “And if some people aren’t happy with it, sorry.” Davis also shares the realities of rebranding, including the wait for seeing a sales bump. “We’ve just now started to see those sales go up,” she said, adding that core beer sales increased 28% after the changeover and merchandise sales exploded. “It took longer than we expected but now we’re starting to get that payoff, which is great.” Listen to the latest episode of the Brewbound Podcast above, or find it on popular podcast platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. Look for new episodes of the Brewbound Podcast on Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

FIFCO USA has undergone a lot of changes since its national sales meeting in Philadelphia last October. The company formerly known as North American Breweries — whose portfolio includes the Labatt, Genesee, Imperial, Honey Brown, Magic Hat, Pyramid and Portland Brewing beer brands, as well as offerings such as beyond beer offerings Seagram’s Escapes, Seagram’s Spiked, Hemptails and Fun Wine — named a new CEO (Rich Andrews) in December and a new CMO (Piotr Jurjewicz) earlier this month. The company has also pivoted away from its Pura Still spiked still water offering, redirecting its resources to the popular Seagram’s Escapes brand. A constant for FIFCO though has been chief sales officer Josh Halpern, who took center stage during the national sales meeting, starring in several skits with reality TV stars such as Chris Harrison and Cynthia Bailey, Philadelphia Phillies mascot the Philly Phanatic, and U.S. Olympic gold medal soccer player Carli Lloyd, as well as spoofs of Rocky and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. According to Halpern, doing so allows wholesalers, who are working with upwards of 70 suppliers these days, to see who he is. “This is such a people driven business,” he explained. “I started my career at A-B, and we used to say, ‘Making friends is our business,’ right? So I just want our wholesalers to feel comfortable with who I am as a person, and I’m not afraid to show my personality.” To Halpern, putting himself out there shows FIFCO’s wholesalers that its execs don’t take themselves too seriously, but do take the business seriously. In Episode 6 of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season, Halpern explains how FIFCO USA came to embrace being a big-small brewery, how that leads to co-creating brands with reality TV stars and why ceding some creative control to popular platforms such as Barstool Sports to build brand equity is necessary. “Part of that ‘Biggie Smalls’ mentality … is saying we need to give up a little bit of our ownership on the brand creative content side, make sure there’s guardrails in place and whatnot, but trust people like Barstool Sports, who have done really amazing things in the last five to 10 years, to help grow our brand equity for us and with us as well,” he said. “When you’re a company of our size, you need to relinquish a little bit of control, while at the same time have the right guardrails in place to make sure you’re very much in ownership of your brand.” Listen to the latest episode above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

Innovation in craft brewing is a lot like a pee-wee soccer game, with all of the players running toward the same ball. At least, that’s how Neal Stewart, the vice president of sales and marketing for Deschutes Brewery, sees it. And that’s not a bad thing. So how do craft brewers differentiate in a crowded and more competitive climate? They need to figure out what their “superpower is” and make that their focus, he explained during Episode 5 of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season. “What do you do really well?” Stewart asked. “Even if that kind of sounds similar to another brand, be OK with that, but really focus on that, and find a unique way of communicating that.” That’s just one of the nuggets of knowledge shared by Stewart, who recently added the VP of sales title and responsibilities to his existing role as VP of marketing for the Bend, Oregon-headquartered craft brewery. Stewart, who joined Deschutes in April 2019, has more than two decades of experience working for some of the biggest beer companies in the U.S., including Pabst, Dogfish Head, Molson Coors, Mark Anthony Brands and Flying Dog. In this week’s featured interview, Stewart discusses his preference for working with people with beer industry experience and who have “been through wars and been in the trenches,” the differences in starting at a large beer manufacturer versus a small craft brewery, and how craft beer has stopped being an “easy business.” Stewart also explains why he’s adopted a wholesaler’s mindset, and why he’s embraced the dreaded question, “How does this help us sell beer?” “For them, it’s all about efficiency and it’s all about moving boxes,” he said. “And I think that craft brewers right now need to be thinking about how do we move boxes and how do we spend our budget to do that immediately.” Listen to the episode above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected]. Editor’s Note: Justin Kendall is well aware that he confused Skynet with Skylab. He regrets the error and apologies to the Terminator.

Iron Heart Canning founder and CEO Tyler Willie’s path to a mobile canning empire started like many others in the craft brewing business. He was a home brewer with dreams of starting his own brewery. But once he discovered mobile canning seven years ago, he trashed his plans to open a brewery in Norwalk, Connecticut, and put a deposit down on his first mobile canning line. “There’s a brewery opening every day with a lot of talented people making beer,” he said. “Do I really want to be competing against these people or working with them?” For Willie, the answer was the latter. On this week’s episode of the Brewbound Podcast, he shares how he pieced together his East Coast mobile canning business — including making multiple acquisitions that covers from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. Although Willie hadn’t planned for Iron Heart to expand at the time of the interview, the company made another deal recently for Michigan Mobile Canning that will take the company’s business to the Midwest. “Over the last four years since we’ve been merging with the other mobile canning companies, it’s been a major effort for us to get consistency,” he said. “That’s been the biggest challenge so far. “Our goal is we don’t want to be the best mobile canner out there, we want to be the best canner period out there,” he continued. “We want to offer quality and expertise above what any brewery can do on their own.” Willie also discusses how beyond beer products are becoming a bigger part of Iron Heart’s business, his strategy for meeting his clients’ needs, the challenges of the business and much more. Listen to the episode above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

Cider is always taking people by surprise, according to American Cider Association (ACA) executive director Michelle McGrath. “CiderCon always beats the expectations of people who have never been here before,” McGrath said of the annual gathering of hundreds of cideries from around the globe, which was held last month in Oakland, California. “We are the premier professional conference for the cider industry in the world.” In Episode 3 of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season, McGrath shared the organization’s goals and challenges as cider fights for share in an increasingly crowded alcoholic beverage marketplace. This 2020 edition of CiderCon was the organization’s first since rebranding as the ACA and dropping the United States Association of Cider Makers moniker, a switch McGrath believes was necessary due to the organization’s increased lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. “We had more conversations with Congress than we’ve ever had before,” McGrath said. “When you’re trying to explain to somebody who you are and you lose them about halfway through the name, it’s not a very effective lobbying tool.” When the ACA meets with lawmakers, the organization is advocating on the behalf of both large and small cideries, so McGrath and her team must thread the needle between the concerns of low-volume, orchard-based cideries and global producers. “We’ve got hundreds of cidery members; our membership has increased 30% in the last couple years,” she said. “We’re representing not only hundreds of small, mom-and-pop cideries across the land, but also the vast majority of the volume of cider produced in this country.” One issue that affects cider makers of all sizes is the federal Alcohol and TobaccoTax and Trade Bureau’s regulations regarding cider packaging, which prohibits cider makers from packaging cider above 7% ABV in 12 oz. cans. With more consumers gravitating toward canned offerings, cider makers find themselves in a difficult spot to meet the demands of the market. “A lot of our members, they don’t necessarily want to go into cans, they believe their product demands a higher price point in a bottle and represents the type of cider that they make,” McGrath added. “But the market is perhaps forcing many of them into cans, so that’s a challenge because cider is not allowed to pack in a 12 oz. can if it’s above 7% ABV, due to the federal standards of fill, so this is something that we’ve been working on.” Another issue facing cider makers is overcoming false assumptions that all ciders are alike.. “People don’t realize that it’s that diverse,” McGrath said. “They say ‘I’ve had a cider; I don’t like it,’ but they never say ‘I’ve had a beer, I don’t like it.’ They usually taste several styles of beer.” Listen to the latest episode above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

The seeds for Kevin Youkilis’ second career were planted while criss-crossing the country playing professional baseball for the Boston Red Sox. The two-time World Series Champion said he would often visit craft breweries or sample the local options during road trips. In some cities, such as Kansas City, the home team made it easy, serving offerings from Boulevard Brewing Company in the clubhouse. Getting up for those games, playing at the highest level of competitive baseball, for world championships, required a lot of adrenaline. “A good beer after a game was everything to calm my nerves, to get me to slow down, to get me to bed,” he said. “You have to recover.” In Episode 2 of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season, Youkilis shared that he began thinking of his next career in the craft brewing industry long before his playing days ended in late 2014. In 2016, Youkilis made his move into craft beer, acquiring the former Los Gatos Brewery with his brother and relaunching the brand as Loma Brewing Company. After four years in the business, Youkilis said Loma Brewing is still finding its niche. Part of the dream is growing from an 11,000 sq. ft. brewpub in Silicon Valley to a larger manufacturing facility in a more blue collar area of California. “That’s our goal,” he said. “Through that, we’ll kind of figure out who we are, what we are and where we want to go. But our mission is really to bring the community together.” For Youkilis, that means bringing craft beer to traditionally underserved communities through multiple taproom locations. However, it won’t be using his celebrity to sell beer or define his new career. “We don’t have baseball pictures of me in there,” he said of his brewpub. “We don’t have anything to do with my past career. I think that’s our goal and vision is to empower the people within [Loma]. “I don’t want it to be about me. I want it to be about them.” Listen to the latest episode above, or find it on popular platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].