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Anyone looking for an answer to when craft’s current era of compounding hurdles and declines will come to an end received a reality check Wednesday during Brewers Association (BA) president and CEO Bart Watson’s state of the industry address, held at the start of Day 2 of the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) in Indianapolis.
Around 10,000 industry members are expected to make the trip to Indianapolis for the 2025 Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America (April 28 to May 1). The gathering takes place against a backdrop of growing headwinds for craft breweries and an overhaul of CBC’s host organization, the Brewers Association.
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (SGWS) has consistently charged independent retailers as much as 12% to 67% more than national and regional chains for the same products, according to newly unsealed redactions in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) price discrimination case against the distributor.
Massachusetts lawmakers are considering doubling the commonwealth’s excise tax on beer, wine and spirits. The bill proposes increasing the state excise tax rate for malt beverages (including flavored malt beverages and sugar-based hard seltzers) from $3.30 per barrel to $6.60 per barrel.
U.S.Reps. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Al Lawson (D-FL) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week, asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review competition in aluminum pricing.
The Voodoo Ranger franchise now accounts for 65% of New Belgium’s business. CEO Steve Fechheimer again highlighted the shift in the Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered craft brewery’s priorities during the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s (NBWA) annual meeting last week.
Neighbors of Tree House Brewing Company’s Cape Cod taproom and the company have reached an agreement about on-site operations, according to a report in the Cape Cod Times.
New Glarus Brewing co-founder and president Deb Carey has filed a lawsuit against the law firm that sued her in August on behalf of three minority investors, as well as several unnamed media outlets that ran a press release provided by the firm.
After two years of elevated focus on social and racial justice issues, ownership within the craft beer industry remains nearly monolithically white, according to a new demographic benchmarking report from the Brewers Association (BA). Brewery owners are 93.5% white, and 92.2% of breweries have entirely white ownership, according to the survey of 500 randomly selected breweries.
Reyes Beer Division CEO Tom Day challenged the notion that competition in California’s beer market has suffered due to his company’s expansion efforts in the Golden State, according to a letter from the leader of the United States’ largest beer wholesaler to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
New National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) chairman Peter Heimark laid out his vision for what beer (and beverage) wholesalers will be facing over the next year during his remarks at the NBWA’s annual conference Tuesday.
Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) is exploring selling some of its German beer brands, valued at $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Beer makers aren’t the only ones rebranding to embrace beverages. The National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) unveiled a new logo and tagline today: “America’s beer and beverage distributors.”
The nation’s beer wholesalers and beer industry executives will meet in Las Vegas this week for the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s (NBWA) annual convention, and the meeting’s arrival comes amid turbulence. Large wholesalers continue to consolidate within the middle tier, while at least one New England craft-focused wholesaler has thrown in the towel. The pace of consolidation chugs on even as President Joe Biden has tasked the Treasury with examining competition within the beer industry at large, and that’s led to comments from at least two trade groups calling into question these mergers’ effect on the competitive landscape.
The Brewers Association issued a second round of comments to the Department of Treasury laying out the competitive challenges facing craft brewers, focusing on wholesaler consolidation, market access issues and restrictive state laws.
Key services performed by the Department of Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) will be paused if the government shuts down this week, TTB deputy administrator David Wulf said during the Beer Institute (BI) annual membership meeting this week.
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) Cacti Agave Spiked Seltzer is facing a proposed class action complaint that claims the brand misled consumers to believe Cacti contained agave spirits, rather than agave sweetener.
