Boston Beer Company CEO Dave Burwick will step down and retire from the company’s board of directors, effective April 1. Michael Spillane, a Nike executive and lead director on Boston Beer’s board of directors, will supplant him.
Executives from Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B), Molson Coors Beverage Company and Constellation Brands all championed core beer during Beer Marketer’s Insights’ Beer Insights Seminar Monday in New York City.
While much of Boston Beer Company’s annual business plan (ABP) meeting with wholesalers Tuesday was dedicated to beyond beer innovations (see yesterday’s coverage), “beer is still our middle name,” founder and chairman Jim Koch once again attempted to reassure everyone.
Traditional beer is expected to decline -2% in the next five years, Boston Beer founder and chairman Jim Koch told wholesalers Tuesday during the company’s annual business plan meeting with northeastern wholesalers. “We say a prayer for the big brewers because they’re the ones that really build the trucks that we can then fill out, but I think the reality is it will probably not grow in the lifetime of the people in this room,” he said.
Boston Beer Company is expanding its ready-to-drink canned cocktail portfolio with the addition of Loma Vista Tequila Soda, the company’s first tequila-based RTD.
The Boston Beer Company – parent of Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard, Twisted Tea, Truly Hard Seltzer and Dogfish Head – aims to become the No. 1 beer industry supplier in the fourth category, CEO Dave Burwick said during a conference call with investors and analysts to discuss the company’s third quarter 2022 earnings.
Boston Beer Company reported a -6% decline in depletions, while shipments increased +1.4% in its third-quarter 2022 earnings report today. Boston Beer recorded a $27.1 million non-cash impairment of intangible assets related to the Dogfish Head brand
Many new beverage-alcohol products on display at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) trade show earlier this month in Las Vegas “[f]ocused on premiumization, convenience, betterment and enhanced flavor profiles,” according to Goldman Sachs senior equity research analyst Bonnie Herzog.
Craft brewing has grown up and that’s OK. “Like it or not, we’re not the new kids on the block; we’re not revolutionaries, like we were in the beginning,” Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch said.
Dogfish Head’s canned cocktails are gaining traction in the fast-growing spirits-based, ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail market. Dollar sales of the Dogfish Head brand family (+92.3%) are outpacing the overall segment (+56.5%), according to NielsenIQ total U.S. all off-premise data, shared by Bump Williams Consulting.
A little more than two years after announcing it would open, Boston Beer’s Dogfish Head taproom in Miami will shut its doors on November 5 due to “marketplace factors beyond our control,” according to an internal memo.
Boston Beer Company is launching a multimillion-dollar, multi-channel marketing campaign to support Truly Hard Seltzer, which it recently reformulated with real fruit juice. In the new ad campaign, Boston Beer, which has leaned on singer Dua Lipa in previous Truly ads, has instead turned to fruit flies to help promote the reformulated hard seltzer brand.
The college football season kicked off last weekend and will go into full throttle this Labor Day weekend. For those watching at home, Boston Beer Company’s Twisted Tea will be heavily featured this weekend and throughout the season. Boston Beer’s playbook for Twisted Tea includes a 360-degree marketing “Tea Drop” campaign, with new 15- and 30-second TV spots that will be featured across the major networks airing college football games.
One year after its launch, the joint venture between Boston Beer Company and Beam Suntory revealed a third product: Twisted Tea Sweet Tea Whiskey. Hard MTN Dew – a collaboration between Boston Beer and PepsiCo – rolled out to Las Vegas retailers this week after a regulatory standoff with the Nevada Department of Taxation.
For the 52 weeks ending July 16, the combined malt- and spirits-based hard seltzer segment reached $4.263 billion, according to Jefferies equity research managing director Kevin Grundy. In the last four weeks, spirits-based seltzer’s share of the business has reached 9.1%. Malt- and sugar-based hard seltzers account for 90.9% of the segment – and their sales are declining.
