Beyond Beer

Boston Beer Company reported strong earnings during its third-quarter earnings call Tuesday evening. The company reported depletions (sales-to-retailers) growth of 30%, 24% of which came from Boston Beer’s core brands and 6% of which came from Dogfish Head offerings.

Anheuser-Busch InBev reported today global revenue growth of 2.7% for the third quarter of the year, driven by an increase of 3% in revenue per hectoliter due to premiumization and strong growth in Mexico, South Africa and Colombia. Volumes worldwide decreased 0.5%; A-B’s own beer volumes were down slightly more with a 0.9% decrease. However,… Read more »

Consumers are considering health and wellness more and drinking less but willing to spend more on alcoholic beverages when they do drink, members of market research firm Nielsen’s beverage alcohol team shared during last week’s Brewers Association Power Hour webinar. Here are three takeaways from Nielsen’s latest update on craft’s mid-year performance. Consumers More Mindful… Read more »

Boston Beer Company is upping the ante as it tries to unseat Mark Anthony Brand as the beer category’s top hard seltzer producer. The company — which makes the Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard hard cider and Samuel Adams beer offerings — announced today the reformulation of all 13 Truly flavors in an effort to make them “crisper and more refreshing.” Boston Beer also revealed plans to release a Truly-branded line of lemonade hard seltzers in 2020

As beer companies look to non-beer products such as hard seltzer to buoy their businesses, many are beginning to reimagine themselves as craft beverage companies. “If you can think as a beverage company, there’s so much more whitespace that you can play in,” CANarchy Craft Brewing Collective president Matt Fraser shared during Brewbound’s final Brew Talks meetup of 2019.

Constellation Brands has once again promoted Mallika Monteiro. Last Friday, the New York-headquartered maker of Mexican import brands Corona, Modelo and Pacifico appointed Monteiro as executive vice president and chief growth and strategy officer. Meanwhile, Ceria Beverages, which makes THC-infused, non-alcoholic beers, has appointed Greg Miller as its first vice president of business development.

Starbucks, Apple, Tesla … and White Claw? Anthony von Mandl, the founder of White Claw parent company Mark Anthony Brands, told thousands of beer wholesalers Tuesday during the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s Annual Convention that his company is a disruptor in the vein of those iconic brands.

Call it a scoop. Call it a shill. Either way, Adam Schefter made news today about the relationship between the NFL and Anheuser-Busch InBev. Schefter, the ESPN NFL insider known for breaking the league’s biggest scoops via his Twitter account — including last weekend’s retirement of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck — announced this morning that Anheusr-Busch InBev-owned Bon & Viv is now the “Official Hard Seltzer Sponsor of the NFL.”

Lighthouse Strategies — the maker of the Cannabiniers and Two Roots lines of cannabis-infused non-alcoholic craft beers – announced today plans to roll out a line of non-infused, non-alcoholic craft beers. Starting in September, Two Roots’ non-alcoholic beers will be available in 145 BevMo! stores throughout California.

Four Loko maker Phusion Projects plans to launch a 14% ABV hard seltzer sometime in the fourth quarter of 2019. The Four Loko Twitter account teased the launch Tuesday night, posting an image of the forthcoming seltzer that quickly garnered 76,700 likes and 21,400 retweets, as of press time. Phusion Projects co-founder and managing partner Jaisen Freeman confirmed to Brewbound that Four Loko Seltzer will be introduced later this year.

Boston Beer Company is asking consumers to ditch their old alcoholic beverages and drink what they “Truly want” — hard seltzer. The company, which makes the Truly Hard Seltzer brand, today unveiled five, 15-second commercials featuring comedian and actor Keegan-Michael Key that are part of a national advertising campaign for the 100-calorie, 5 percent ABV seltzer. Those ads began airing today across television and all digital channels.

In this week’s edition of Last Call: Pyramid owner FIFCO USA settles a lawsuit with its Alehouse staff; Manhattan Beer Distributors and its delivery drivers battle over alleged ‘wage theft;’ Left Hand enters the CBD-infused, non-alcoholic drink market; New Delhi bans A-B InBev for three years; and more news bites.

The global cannabis market today — both legal and illicit — stands at $344 billion, according to New Frontier Data. With only an estimated 263 million users worldwide, the segment is poised for tremendous growth as regulatory barriers break down and consumers become more interested in the space.