Brewbound 2023 Large Brewery of the Year: Athletic Brewing

Speaker 1 [00:12] Thanks everyone for watching Brewbound Live. Now we're gonna bring you conversations with our 2023 Brewbound Award winners. Let's meet Brewbound's 2023 Large brewery of the Year, that's Athletic Brewing. Joining me now is Bill Shuffel and John Walker, the founders of non-alcoholic beer maker Athletic. Bill and John, congratulations.

Speaker 2 [00:35] Thanks so much. Thank you so much. We're super excited. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 [00:39] Well, Athletic continues its torrid pace. You crossed the 100,000 barrel mark in 2021. You landed at around 170,000 barrels last year. That made Athletic the 13th largest BA defined craft brewery by volume. How are you pacing this year?

Speaker 2 [00:57] It's still a really exciting time in the category and things have been going great at Athletic. Um, there's a lot of discovery going on non-alcoholic beer right now. Yeah, we're tracking to above 250,000 barrels for 2023, um, and really excited about the road ahead.

Speaker 1 [01:12] That's wild. That is amazing. So, uh, one of the things that stands out to me about your year is how ubiquitous athletic is becoming. Upside Donn Golden, uh, it was added to menus on JetBlue flights. The beer is also on the menu at 150 TGI Friday's corporate stores, and you've released collabs with Netflix and RTD coffee brand, Super Coffee. How are those partnerships helping take athletic to the next level?

Speaker 2 [01:45] Yeah, it's really a total team effort at Athletic. I mean, really, obviously there's great quality in the beer coming out of our brewing teams and our breweries, um, but then all those things you just touched on, the sales and marketing wins, we have a great team of people all around the country knocking down these doors on these wins every day. So it's, it's all just hand to hand combat out in the street like building relationships, community to community and totally a reflection of our sales team and trying to integrate into those cultural touch points to get non-alcoholic beer into the mainstream. So, yeah, we, uh, you know, John and I are still doing very localized efforts. Three of the last 4 weekends, I was out at sampling races and, you know, a few months ago, John and I were at 35,000 ft buying a round for a whole plane and sampling, so. Yeah, we've had a lot of fun, uh, as the company continues to grow.

Speaker 3 [02:35] I mean, I would just add that, you know, those partnerships just help us reach a wider audience. There's some awesome companies out there. We're super fortunate to partner with people like Super Coffee, Netflix, and, you know, we're just trying to grow the category, grow awareness, and kind of spread the positive message that this is an awesome beer that can be enjoyed at any given time, um, by anybody and trying to open up the The community of beer to the rest of the population.

Speaker 1 [03:03] Bill, you've really sort of brought this to fruition too. You've said that your goal is to help take athletic and non-alcoholic beer to places where beer really hasn't gone before. Where do you still want to go that maybe you haven't yet?

Speaker 2 [03:19] It's, I mean, the grass is still so green and undiscovered. Uh, we think of ourselves as a big brewery that's well distributed, but we are really just scratching the surface. Athletic is only in about 8% of total potential distributed outlets in the licensed alcohol universe. Um, and then non-alcoholic beer can obviously go a lot farther afield than alcohol. So it's uh, I would say we have many, many years ahead of knocking on doors.

Speaker 3 [03:48] I'd say one of the most exciting adventures we have going for us right now and where we hope to grow is in draft and on-premise. There's a lot of opportunity there, like you mentioned, TGI Fridays, um, but we're excited to bring draft, you know, we're piloting that close to our breweries right now and hope to bring it to more audiences in more states.

Speaker 2 [04:07] Yeah, on that, we, we passed about 25,000 bars and restaurants this year. Um, which is just a small fraction of the universe of on-premise, but as you know. Call it 50 years ago, the Independent corner pub was such a heart place of a community, and we, but like now it's gone to like 1 or 2 days a week where people drink alcohol on-premise. We want to bring back, you know, 7 days of occasions to bars and restaurants, and there's a lot of occasion growth there.

Speaker 1 [04:40] Well, there are a lot of folks out there who are using this as a pacer between the, you know, you buy one alcoholic beer, you have a non-alk beer in between, but That's one thing that I was hoping to dive into is you rolled out some draft beer business this year. What's the challenge in making that a little more, I, I guess, widespread?

Speaker 2 [05:02] Um, besides the fact that nobody wants them, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 3 [05:08] I, I think, you know, a lot of it goes to distribution and how to move kegs, cold chain around the country effectively. Um, you know, food safety is a primary concern of ours at Athletic, and, you know, we speak to that all the time in terms of production and safe production, so that we can all grow this category together and in a safe manner. Um, and kegs are much more challenging to work with because you can't send a keg through a tunnel pasteurizer. So there are a lot of food safety concerns that go along with distribution. So it takes a lot of buy-in from distributors, from the end user at the bar, um, communicating SOPs and best practices to all of your partners and getting that off the ground, you know, so there's kind of, there are a lot of hurdles, but once the lessons are learned and people buy in, um, it's totally approachable. It's really not any different from any other draft. And I think it's just teaching best practices in, in beer in general.

Speaker 1 [06:05] Another space that there appears to be some room for growth too would be the convenience channel. What do you see as sort of the opportunity there and maybe, you know, what's it gonna take to get more non-alk beer in those stores?

Speaker 2 [06:20] Yeah, and I mean, I joke about nobody wanting kegs. It's just people tend to have older perceptions of non-alcoholic beer and so bartenders are hesitant to dedicate a draft line to it until they see it actually really sells, and it sells a lot during the week too when some of the other beers might be slower moving. Similar to convenience, um. It's one of those things where people look at it and say, oh, there's no non-alcoholic beer sales there, so it will not sell there, but it hasn't had trial there actually. So, um, I think it's about the right brand awareness, timing, distribution, um, appropriate marketing. And right package. And so, um, we think we're bringing all that together. Um, there'll be an appropriate time to go into that channel, you know, probably over 40% of beer is in that channel at the end of the day. So it's obviously a really exciting, um, future for us there.

Speaker 1 [07:14] So I mentioned some of the volume gains that you've done and you've told us what you're on track for this year, and then we've talked a little bit about the marketing gains this year, but what do you see as sort of those milestone moments of 2023 that maybe we haven't touched on?

Speaker 3 [07:32] I'd say internally, there are a lot of projects that our team has undertaken to kind of mature as a company. We've been, you know, sprinting for the past 6 years and it's been amazing and fun, but our team has put a lot of work into building systems and, and infrastructure that can support us for the long haul. Uh, we've done a whole lot of work in terms of sustainability and improving our processes so that we're more efficient and more in tune with The environment around us and how we work with it and our impact on the environment. Um, so there's been a lot of improvements there over the past year.

Speaker 2 [08:08] Yeah. Along those lines, Two for the Trails had its biggest year ever, $1.8 million supporting over 150 outdoors organizations across the country. Um, so we're super proud of that program. And business is going really well in Canada and the UK, um, as well as a few other areas. So it's fun to see athletic expand across borders, but a lot of our fun has just been in our backyards in our communities. A lot of local events, run clubs, um, different fun team events and community events like we had a great Oktoberfest at the brewery a few weeks ago. So, um, yeah, all in all, uh, just kind of doing a lot more of what we've been doing.

Speaker 1 [08:46] Nice. Well, last question for you. When you look ahead to 2024, what do you see as the biggest opportunity ahead for athletic?

Speaker 2 [08:55] I think it's just steady growth and awareness and um. Yeah, so it's, uh, awareness is still really low for the evolving non-alcoholic category in the country, um, around 20% depending on the region and where you look, but, so, uh, distribution and awareness is all right around 20%, so there's a lot of opportunity to just do consistently what we've been doing at a bigger scale.

Speaker 3 [09:21] I think Bill captured it well, but you know, if there's some things to look forward to in 2024, there are a lot of new entrants into the category. And I think people building this category with their own voice and kind of exploring all the variety and, you know, the characters that can be embraced in craft beer in the non-alcoholic space is gonna do wonders for the future of beer in general, but especially non-alcoholic beer.

Speaker 1 [09:47] Well, Bill, John, congratulations to both of you and your team. What a year.

Speaker 2 [09:53] Thank you so much from the to the Brewbound team. Uh, we, it's a total honor, you know, as you know, we've kind of grown up with Brewbound, um, as we're at your event pre in business planning that we did Pitch Slam, and it's so much fun to come back and, uh, win some awards. It's, uh, joining great company of companies we really admire with this award. So thank you so much.

Speaker 3 [10:15] Thank you.

Speaker 1 [10:16] Extremely well deserved, so congratulations.