Three craft brewers and one ‘big beer’ executive walk into a room of beer distributors at 9:00 a.m. One of them pulls out a vaporizer. I forget how the rest of that joke goes, but everyone ends up laughing. That was the scene this morning at the 77th annual National Beer Wholesalers convention, being held in New Orleans.
A couple years ago, Ballast Point foresaw a distribution footprint that would include 35 states. In the words of chief commercial officer Earl Kight, however, the company is “still stuck” at 26. It’s not that the San Diego brewery hasn’t grown: Ballast Point made the Brewers Association’s list of the 50 largest craft brewers for the first time this year, having sold 88,204 barrels in 2013, up 86 percent over the previous year.
Another top-50 craft brewery has sold a piece of its business to private equity. Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing today announced that it has sold minority interest to TSG Consumer partners, a private equity firm that invests in middle-market consumer brands.
Attention beer geeks! Your next pint of Pliny could be coming from Paso Robles. Russian River Brewing, the award-winning craft brewery from Santa Rosa, Calif. today announced that it will produce a limited amount of its acclaimed flagship, Pliny the Elder, under an exclusive contract partnership with Firestone Walker Brewing.
The stage is set for a mega-merger between two of New York City’s largest beer distributors. A tentative agreement between Bronx-based Manhattan Beer Distributors — which will sell and deliver more than 35 million cases of beer in 2014 — and Brooklyn-based Windmill Distributing (d/b/a Phoenix\Beehive Beverage Distributors) is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015, according to Mike Mazzoni, an advisor on the transaction.
Victory has announced plans to install a canning line in its recently opened Parkesburg, Pa. facility beginning in 2015. Victory’s seasonal Summer Love offering will be the first in its portfolio to be canned, the company said. No further decisions have been made about what other varieties will go into the package, according to a company spokesperson.
Beginning in October, Stone Brewing Co., the country’s tenth largest craft brewery will begin distributing its beers to bars, restaurants, and other retail outlets throughout the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.Stone has tapped Horizon Beers for market coverage in Canada, and the brewery has a slew of launch events and tap takeovers scheduled for late in the month.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revised its proposed regulations on the transaction of spent grains between brewers and farmers. On Friday, the federal agency finally released its summary of key revisions, writing that human food processors (such as brewers) already in compliance with the FDA’s human food safety requirements “would not need to implement additional preventative controlsÔǪ when supplying a by-product,” such as spent grains.
Southern Tier Brewing, a fast-growing top-50 craft brewery based in upstate New York, today announced it has sold a percentage of its business to Ulysses Management LLC, an investment firm with offices in New York City. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Southern Tier co-founder Phineas DeMink told Brewbound that he would retain a financial interest in the company and remain in a leadership role.
Through the first nine months of this year, IRI numbers are once again telling a familiar story: Craft and cider continue to carry the beer segment’s growth across multi-outlet and convenience channels (MULC) with dollar sales swelling 21.3 percent and 82.1 percent, respectively.
Hold on to your trucker hats, America’s most hipster beer company is reportedly being sold to the Russians. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are reporting that Pabst Brewing Company — the Los Angeles-based producer of heritage beer brands like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Lone Star and Olympia — will be sold for upwards of $750 million.
Yet another U.S. craft brewer has embarked on a unique, international retail opportunity.Devils Backbone Brewing has inked an exclusive licensing arrangement with the British retail chain J D Wetherspoon plc, which owns and operates more than 900 different-branded pubs and 32 hotel locations throughout Britain.
On the heels of what may go down as the worst week in the history of the National Football League (NFL), one of its largest sponsors, Anheuser-Busch (A-B), is speaking out. A-B issued a statement Tuesday expressing concern over the NFL’s handling of recent off-field incidents involving active players who are alleged to have abused women and children.
Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head are investing in a growing craft spirits segment. Calagione, who described the recent influx of small-batch spirit producers as a “revolution,” believes Dogfish, the company he founded in 1995, has an opportunity to once again extend the brand outside of the beer category.
