Welcome to Brewbound’s Inside Look at the Beer Business for the week that was … Saturday, September 21, 2024.

Happy Oktoberfest, everyone 🍻! Beer’s favorite annual celebration (sorry, Arbor Day) kicks off today in Germany, and probably also wherever you see anyone in ill-fitting lederhosen.

My enthusiasm may have gotten the best of me at the bottle shop last weekend in preparation … but I argue this is totally normal to have in your fridge. OK, maybe just … “acceptable?”

SEEING DOUBLE: Jack & Coke, meet Rum & Coke – BACARDI and COCA-COLA are teaming up to launch a new RTD, which like its Jack & Coke predecessor, will first launch in Europe and Mexico next year. No word on a U.S. launch at the moment.

• ALSO: JACK DANIEL’S Country Cocktails Hard Tea is now available nationally.

HEY YOU 🫵: Going to the NBWA Annual Convention in San Diego next weekend? Come have a toast – it’s on Justin! (sorta)

• Join for a happy hour at THE LOST ABBEY! Enjoy some beers and apps with the Brewbound gang from 4-6 p.m. on Sunday, September 29 (conveniently between NFL games and before the NBWA’s opening night party!) – register for the free event here.

Well, at least no brewery is being shut down! Although this will result in BRONX BREWERY beer now being made in … Westchester, NY.

No word on how many BRONX employees will be coming with, or if the brewery will be maintaining its taproom presence in its namesake borough where the existing brewery is (it has two additional taproom outposts in Manhattan).

The BRONX BREWERY made 6,671 BBL in 2023, according to BA numbers, -2%, and is just the latest NYC brewery to leave the city, following folks like INTERBORO and BIG ALICE, with BRIDGE & TUNNEL in Queens also facing a very shaky future. 

Median revenue per BBL of beer sold according to a recent BA member poll:

• Distributed beer: $438
• Taproom/on-site: $1,374

HACKENSACK BREWING CO

Head Brewer – Hackensack, NJ

BARE BREWS

Sales Representative – Charlotte, NC

BREWDOG

“We are crushing it in beer right now.”

ALDI’s director of buying, Arlin Zajmi in a new chat with BREWBOUND, sharing that ALDI has grown beer sales “over 100% almost across the board.”

The company has put its private label beers in 300 more stores over the past year (up to 2,000 of its 2,300 locations), and increased its SKUs from 8 to 16, plus seasonal beers, all of which are certainly helping the trends.

Brewbound’s 2024 Best Of Awards are open for nominations here. 

Note that Jess and I both agreed that Best Pizza in Jersey is something we couldn’t trust you people to vote on, and scratched it off the list.

Just giving a nod to a #goodread from Doug Veliky’s Beer Crunchers column this week, which did a really interesting dive into the kinds of data that UNTAPPD’s new Insights offering provides.

Doug tracks the data and how it could be of use to breweries on the local level, including month-to-month check-ins (January 2024 was poor), ways to suss out beer quality problems and the ability to see how a rebrand has affected a beer’s check-ins, ratings and retail venues. It’s pretty fascinating and worth a read. 

The BREWBOUND crew gets boozed up on this week’s podcast! Wait no, they talk about how MC is going with higher ABV options in the C-store channel. Eh, close enough.

Plus:

• A little non-alc kombucha talk;
• Some notable high profile job openings (wait, am I being replaced? 🫣);
• A splash of F1 to keep things classy.

Listen Here!

• JUNESHINE is adding a non-alc kombucha to its lineup, or just, ya know, kombucha as everyone else calls it. The five flavors will roll out to 300 WHOLE FOODS in December, with more distro in spring 2025.
• TREE HOUSE set up a pickup location in Boston proper, the PRU CENTER in Back Bay, for folks to order online and pickup on-site – but you can also buy beer from a storefront location in the mall. That's right -- you can now buy TREE HOUSE beer ... at the mall 🤯. Man, craft beer 2024 is fun.
• TX brewery WEATHERED SOULS is closing, after an unsuccessful bid to find new investors, among other business troubles.
• MA’s BROCKTON BREWING is also closing its doors this month after 6 years. It was one of 4 Black-owned breweries in MA.
• MC is launching 3 new c-store, large format focused SKUs at 8% ABV – BLUE MOON Extra, SIMPLY SPIKED Bold and TOPO CHICO Max.
• AMERICAN CANNING halted can production at its TX facility that produced proprietary aTULC cans, which have better shelf-life and resistance to corrosion and were developed by Japanese company TOYO SEIKAN, which suddenly pulled all support for the TX facility.

The discounted room block for BREWBOUND LIVE at the Marina del Rey Marriott Hotel on Dec 11 & 12 is now open! If you’re on Zoe’s floor, know that any beer you may find in the ice machine is already accounted for, buster.

Also – register now here!

PITCH AWAY!: Applications to compete in this year’s Pitch Slam competition are also now open through September 30 here.

NEW SPEAKER, WHO DIS? Here are the latest industry speaker additions to the lineup!

• Rebecca Maisel, GULF DISTRIBUTING SVP legal and government affairs;
• Lauren Doll-Sheeder, DOLL DISTRIBUTING managing partner;
• Jennifer Grant, MARKSTEIN Sales general manager and VP;
• Zech Francis, BEATBOX Beverages SVP of global marketing;
• Rebecca Dye Yonushonis, NEW BELGIUM BREWING CMO;
• Lindsay Kunkle, FORESIGHT FACTORY director, head of U.S. Consultancy.

They join previously confirmed speakers:

• Mary Mills, consultant for 3 Tier Beverages;
• Arthur Moye, owner and CEO of FULL CIRCLE Brewing;
• Kaleigh Theriault, director of thought leadership, beverage alcohol vertical at NIQ;
• Brian “BK” Krueger, VP of business development and portfolio strategies at Bump Williams Consulting;
• Natalie Cilurzo, RUSSIAN RIVER co-owner;
• Peter Skrbek, CEO Deschutes Brewery;
• Lester Jones, NBWA chief economist and VP of analytics; 
• Jennifer Hauke, DRAFTLINE TECHNOLOGIES founder and president; 

PLUS - RETAILER ONE-TO-ONES: Beer and other bev-alcohol brands can participate in meetings with leaders from WHOLE FOODS, EXTRAMILE CONVENIENCE and other businesses, who will be available for private, pre-scheduled meetings. Brands will be selected at each retailer’s discretion. REGISTER HERE.

This week’s beer comes along with a “good luck with that!” message, going out to U.K. researchers studying the effects of making the classic 20 oz. British pint smaller, with the goal of improving alcohol consumption/general health of the population.

They conducted an experiment with 12 pubs (uh, less than 1% of those contacted to participate), to use smaller pint glasses (with an according price cut). While there was no word on the resulting health effects (that may take a while) – the beer effects were that -9.6% less beer was poured. So yeah, good luck convincing pubs to make a switch.

Make no mistake – I’m all about keeping a close eye on one’s alcohol consumption, but how about I dunno … increasing the availability of another glass/pour size option for those who want it? While I haven’t been across the pond in a while, I already saw many establishments offer half-pours at least for higher ABV craft beers.

So, let’s send a beer out to keeping one’s alcohol consumption at a place that’s responsible (looking at you 19.2 oz. cans of 9% ABV beer, ahem 👀), while still maintaining a culture of imperial pints for classic (and lower ABV) British and European lager, and most importantly, free beer from Justin’s basement fridge.

Slainté!  

-Sean McNulty 

(you can always reach me here on LinkedIn)