Brewbound Podcast

A growing number of beer companies are now positioning themselves as beverage companies. Count Everett, Massachusetts-based Night Shift Brewing among those embracing the distinction. “We’ve let our creative wings go in many directions and set up the team so we can expand in many verticals,” Night Shift co-founder Rob Burns shared during the first episode of the Brewbound Podcast’s third season. “One of the driving forces is to turn Night Shift beyond just a beer company into more of a beverage company. And that’s kind of our guiding light right now.” This is a route that brewers both big (think Molson Coors) and relatively small (Deschutes Brewery) are taking. For Night Shift, the journey to becoming a beverage company started with the launch of its distribution business, Night Shift Distributing. Burns shares Night Shift’s ambitions, including a $10 million bet on building a production facility in Philadelphia, how the 7-year-old company is juggling those projects, delegating responsibilities and much more on this week’s edition of the Brewbound Podcast. 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].

John Bryant hasn’t forgotten the sleepless nights, pacing the floor in the pre-dawn hours wondering how No-Li Brewhouse would make payroll in the Spokane, Washington-based craft brewery’s early days. It’s a feeling many startup founders can relate to as they’re building at a rapid pace. “I know a lot of people can probably relate to this: you have more invoices than you do money in the bank,” Bryant told Brewbound editor Justin Kendall during Episode 6 of the Brewbound Podcast. “I said, wouldn’t it be great to one day spend so much less time moving around what we pay to try to stay current and spend that time trying to be productive. Well at this point, we have $2,000 bucks in the bank, we’re $65,000 way past current and payroll is in three days, what do you want to do?” Fortunately for Bryant, the days of walking the floor at 3 a.m., drinking coffee and trying to figure out where the company can borrow and pay back to buy itself time. “I think that’s where the passion really came through,” Bryant said. “There’s a lot of times where we could have just given up, walked away, obviously it would have been very painful with a lot of debts and a lot of obligations that you have to fulfill. Or you grind and you try to figure it out.” In Episode 6 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season, Bryant shares how his company survived early struggles and why beer companies need to self-reflect and know when not to grow. Listen to Episode 6 above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. The Brewbound Podcast will return for its third season in early 2020. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

Responding to the marketplace is on Bob Pease’s mind. Nearly a year after the Brewers Association’s board of directors voted to change the craft brewer definition to be more inclusive of products beyond beer, Pease, the trade group’s president and CEO, views the change as “fairly insightful.” Since that change, several BA-defined small and independent craft breweries have expanded their portfolios to include offerings beyond beer, including hard seltzer, canned cocktails, kombucha, tea and other products. “I don’t think our changing the definition is the reason a small and independent brewery is making a hard seltzer,” Pease told Brewbound editor Justin Kendall during an interview before this year’s Great American Beer Festival. “Personally, I think that’s what small and independent craft brewers are doing to stay competitive, to try to respond to the marketplace, where there is a segment of the population who wants to drink products that are a beer alternatives.” Nevertheless, Pease said the trade group is pleased if the change has helped some craft brewers find success. In fact, Pease pointed to reports from some craft beer companies that hard seltzer now accounts for anywhere from 10% to 20% of their total volume. In Episode 5 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season, Pease gives a snapshot of the craft brewing industry in 2019, a year in which 1,000 new craft breweries will open, while a record number of beer companies will close their doors. He also ponders what it means for craft brewers to pivot into becoming beverage companies, opening up GABF to offerings other than beer and more. In addition to the interview with Pease, Kendall speaks with Beer Paws founder Crystal K. Wiebe about how the ebbs and flows of the craft brewing industry affects a small business that relies on the industry. The craft brewing industry generated $79.1 billion in economic impact in 2018. One of the small beer-adjacent businesses contributing to that figure is Beer Paws, a Kansas City area company that makes dog treats from spent grain. Listen to Episode 5 above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

Two of the legendary figures in craft brewing are beginning to take a step back from the industry they helped build. In October 2018, Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman quietly handed off the CEO role to Jeff White. The transition at the top of the 40-year-old Chico, California-headquartered craft brewery occurred so quietly that it wasn’t reported until January 2019. Also in January 2019, Odell Brewing’s three founders — Wynne, Doug and Corkie Odell — informed their employees that they’d be exiting the daily operations of the 30-year-old Fort Collins, Colorado-based craft brewery at the end of 2019. The transition plans were also kept under wraps until the company publicly announced that the Odells would retire and Eric “Smitty” Smith, a 25-year employee of the brewery, would assume the CEO role in 2020. If these two quiet transitions sound familiar, it was by design. Wynne Odell told Brewbound that she admired the way that Grossman handed off his chief executive role, and wanted to mirror that “very organic transition.” In Episode 4 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season, Odell shared with Brewbound editor Justin Kendall what she anticipates it will be like to wake up on January 1, and no longer be involved in the day-to-day operations of Odell Brewing. She also discusses why Odell Brewing’s co-founders didn’t want to “die with their boots on,” and why she’s now an evangelist for succession planning, even for founders who aren’t yet ready to step away from their businesses. Meanwhile, in a separate interview recorded during the Great American Beer Festival, Grossman discussed his own decade of delegation that led to White eventually taking the reins, reveals what he plans to do with his free time, and looks back on a transformational year for Sierra Nevada. Listen to Episode 4 above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

“Death by 1,000 cuts.” That’s how Deschutes Brewery founder Gary Fish describes craft beer’s current competitive landscape, as more venerable, regional breweries, such as his 30-year-old Bend, Oregon-based company, compete with a cohort of more than 7,500 small craft breweries. To Fish, the “800 pound gorilla” Deschutes is going up against is no longer Anheuser-Busch InBev, but these thousands of small, local breweries. So how does an established regional player such as Deschutes — the 10th largest craft brewing company in 2018, according to the Brewers Association — stay ahead of the horde? “The way to compete, from our perspective, is through innovation,” Fish told his company’s wholesalers last month during a national sales meeting in Portland. “It’s getting in front of them. Increasing the amount, the frequency and the volume of our conversations with our consumer, and listening to what they’re providing us, so we can get them the flavors, the concepts, the brands that they truly value.” For Deschutes, like many other brewers, innovation is taking the company to avenues beyond beer, with plans to launch Modified Theory, a new line of flavored malt beverages inspired by trends in craft cocktails and mixology, next year. Asked if he ever thought Deschutes would morph into a “beverage company,” Fish said he’s never ruled anything out. “I spent a lot of the last 32 years paralyzed by fear, so the idea that we would morph into this, I never thought negatively about it, but I also never thought that we’d be more than a beer company,” he said. “We make our own cider, we have our own whiskey, we have already become an adult beverage company, much more than just a beer company. So whether or not it was predicted, we’re already there. So the transition to some of these more than beer products seems a very natural one at this point.” In Episode 3 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season, editor Justin Kendall leads a panel discussion with Fish, Pacific Northwest general manager Chris Hudson, regional sales director Stacy Denbow and former Columbia Distributing chairman Ed Maletis. They discuss Deschutes’ evolution into a beverage company, how difficult it is to get mindshare and focus in 2019 and giving consumers what they want. Listen to Episode 3 above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

pH Experiment co-founders Karmen Olson and Thomas Bleigh have a license to fail. Of course, that’s not their objective — not with Craft Brew Alliance’s stated goal of generating $25 million in revenue by 2025 from its innovation arm. But if they do fail, the goal is to fail fast, learn from it and push forward. The clearest example of that was the pH Experiment’s clear IPA — which wasn’t clear. The beer proved to be a “pressure test” on the feedback the division’s leaders expect to get from their consumer focus group members, who resoundingly replied that the beer was a dud. For Olson and Bleigh, that’s the kind of feedback they desire, not a “promissory note on kindness.” The duo want their focus group members, who they call co-creators, to go on the ride of winning and losing with them. According to Olson, it’s part of the pH Experiment’s mission to be “comfortable being uncomfortable.” Bleigh added that if the division is truly going to cause a paradigm shift in the industry, then it has to “play in the margins.” In Episode 2 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season, Olson and Bleigh discuss the pH Experiment’s holistic approach to innovation with Brewbound editor Justin Kendall, who last month visited pH’s Portland, Oregon headquarters — located inside the former Widmer Brothers pub space. Listen to Episode 2 above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].

2019 has been a transformational year for San Diego’s fast-rising Societe Brewing. Long available only on draft via its own taproom and self-distribution, Societe, which started in 2012, signed with upstart San Diego wholesaler Scout Distribution in May. Starting sometime next year, the company plans to release cans of its popular offerings, including The Pupil IPA. But those weren’t the only changes at Societe, as co-founder Travis Smith departed the company earlier this year. Societe co-founder and CEO Douglas Constantiner discusses those changes with editor Justin Kendall on this week’s edition of the Brewbound Podcast. “San Diegans want The Pupil in a can so they can take it home,” Constantiner said in the first episode of season two of the Brewbound Podcast, which was recorded during the California Craft Brewers Association’s annual Beer Summit in Long Beach this past September. “We’re doing a disservice to our own citizens to make it draft only.” Constantiner also shared the difficulties of going through a “brewery divorce,” how the company has moved forward and what it’s like to “fail and die or succeed” based on his decisions. “I like the risk,” he admitted. Constantiner also shared his personal journey from investment banking to craft brewing. Listen to Episode 1 of the Brewbound Podcast’s second season above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast are published Thursdays. For questions, comments or suggestions, please email [email protected].