• 🔪 Liquid Death Names Retail, Strategy Chiefs
• 📕 Pisco Brands Aim Change The Narrative
• 🍷 Butterfly Buys The Duckhorn Portfolio
• 👣 Bigfoot Workers on Strike
• 🧑‍⚖️ Kroger-Albertsons Trial Updates

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Black Friday is so last century. According to Illicit Elixirs’ co-founder Jason Gaboriau Amazon Prime “has become a pop culture moment.”

With the rise of online shopping, and omnipresence of platforms such as Amazon, Walmart and Target, the push to outperform past promotions continues to build. Tomorrow marks the start of the Fall Prime Day event, so to help you prepare, we are bringing you insights from one brand’s past approach to the promotional event. 

“A sorta ‘Black Friday' for us all. The discovery and discounting can have a viral effect and is a high dopamine moment,” Gaboriau said.

Leading up to and during the July 2024 Amazon Prime Day event, the “dopamine-boosting” beverage brand tapped into all the trends to launch its first “Talent Tastemakers” SKU, Naughty Behavior Citrus Flavor, created alongside singer and actress Bella Thorne. The brand also discounted products by 50% with driving awareness as its primary goal.

“We knew we wanted a citrus flavor but it had to be more fun and flavorful than just orange. Working with our amazing in house operations and the flavor experts at Sensient, we came up with a Blood Orange Prickly Pear combination,” said Gaboriau. “We feel it is the perfect combination of uniqueness, bold fruity flavor and unexpected fun that represents both Bella herself and the Illicit brand.”

Did the push to promote and launch a co-branded SKU pay off? According to Illicit, the answer is yes. The brand claims to have more than doubled its total purchases and units sold in July compared to the month before the two-day-long sales bonanza. That momentum didn’t drop off either when the bargains began to wane. 

According to Gaboriau, while the brand’s sales dipped slightly as discount pricing was eliminated, its unit sales continued to climb 10%. Those results came as the brand leveraged organic social media and email campaigns, but did not engage in any additional paid advertising beyond the bounds of Prime Day. 

The co-branded SKU also outperformed its five other SKUs in July and continues to hold its #2 spot on Amazon. 

Ahead of this week’s event, Illicit added Buy With Prime to its Shopify site and will include a 30% discount as it works to “train our consumers to invest at our normal prices and smaller overall discounting,” Gaboriau detailed. 

With the second event of the year, Illicit will also re-employ many of its original tactics, including email marketing during the event (Illicit anticipates sending 3 to 4 during the two-day window), extending deals to drive trial, leaning on its Amazon rep for pricing and promotional guidance and utilizing its own team including focusing all effort on Prime Day promotions as well as assessing their own buying behavior and embracing those results as an “informal focus group.”

“Our Amazon strategy includes treating Amazon like any other brick and mortar retailer. The idea was to take advantage of that extra traffic while people are ‘shopping the aisles’ on Prime Day and incentivising them to put Illicit Elixirs in their cart,” said Gaboriau. “We are hoping that the combination of the fun event and a motivating price point will bring folks into the brand to try us and love us.”

Go Deeper: Insider Tips From Amazon

As its distributor shareholders take a greater share of the workload, Liquid Death is making changes to its sales and distribution team, reducing its internal staff while bringing in Michael Fine as its new chief retail officer to lead expansion efforts.

💧 Fine, who spent long periods at Nestlé Waters North America and BodyArmor before moving to run marketing at energy drink A SHOC last January, wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the move this morning that he was “thrilled to be joining the team” and to be “bringing my experience from other high growth brands to the table. We’re only just getting started...”

💰 Liquid Death also announced the promotion of current SVP of Strategy Marisa Bertha to Chief Strategy Officer, where she “will continue her leadership in key domains such as fundraising, investor relations, and executing the company's strategy with a focus on revenue-enhancing initiatives that combine product innovation, data, and insights to bolster retail performance and overall growth.”

☑️ The announcement comes after Liquid Death confirmed reports, first published in the Beverage Business Insights newsletter, that the company had made cuts to its sales and distribution staff.

Read the full story on BevNET for all of the details.

For some spirits, a signature cocktail is a gateway to consumers. For others, it’s something of a dead end. 

• Pisco brands are aiming to break free of the pisco sour, a signature cocktail that some say has harmed the Chilean and Peruvian distillate more than helped. 
• But cocktails are only part of the challenge for pisco, which faces a perception challenge and is dependent on small brands and passionate bar staff for consumer education.
• A Chilean trade group is also trying to push more brands into the U.S. market, arguing that more boats rises the tide, but resources are limited. 

BevNET Insiders can read the full story to learn how pisco brands are trying to change the narrative.

Private equity firm Butterfly Equity is making moves into wine country with the acquisition of The Duckhorn Portfolio, a luxury wine business, in an all-cash deal that values Duckhorn at around $1.95 billion.

📈 Duckhorn stockholders will receive $11.10 per share in cash as part of the transaction and Duckhorn will transition to privately held status.

🍇 Founded in 1976, California-based Duckhorn’s wine brands include Duckhorn Vineyards, Decoy, Sonoma-Cutrer and Kosta Browne and its products are sold internationally in over 50 countries.

🦋 Butterfly Equity has previously acquired food and beverage brands ranging from juice and vegetables producer Bolthouse Farms to protein brand Orgain to Milk Specialties Global, but Duckhorn marks its first, focused alcohol investment. 

It’s been a busy season for labor strikes, and the Teamsters aren’t slowing down as Locals 206 and 324 in Oregon have accused Bigfoot Beverages, one of the largest beverage distributors in the Pacific Northwest, of Unfair Labor Practices. The union alleges the PepsiCo-aligned business attempted to “unlawfully eliminate a core pension benefit and lied to the bargaining committee,” the union claims.

🪧 Workers went on strike on September 19 and the striking staff include over 200 drivers, warehouse workers, merchandisers and technicians.

💸 The Teamsters are alleging that Bigfoot lied about plans to cut pensions in favor of a 401(k) plan, which the union says would cost its members at the company “at least $3,300 per year out of pocket” to match Bigfoot’s current retirement benefits funding.

🤝 Bigfoot says it’s negotiating in good faith and has offered the union a ratification bonus of $2,500 for each member, competitive wage increases of $3 to $6 more per hour (between 10% to 17%), and said its 401(k) plan “offers improved benefits compared to team members current plan.”

💢 The Teamsters aren’t having it though. Geoff Stewart, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 206, said “We weren’t born yesterday, and we know a scam when we see one,” calling the offer a “pay cut” in a press release.

Yet another trial is weighing the impact of the Kroger/Albertsons deal, this time in Denver, and it is bringing a bigger focus on the proposed combined entity’s potential impact on prices.

• A pricing director for Kroger testified last week that the company raised prices at eight stores in Colorado to offset higher labor and operational costs. 
• Colorado, in the state’s bid to block the grocer’s mega-merger with Albertsons, claimed Kroger raised prices at those stores because they face little or no competition from other supermarkets and argued the company will do the same thing following its proposed combination, Law360 reported. 

🛒 Also last week in Denver, C&S Wholesale Grocers CEO Eric Winn said the company is committed to operating the 579 stores it would receive in a divestment deal if the merger is approved. Colorado contends C&S would eventually sell off or close the stores.

☁️ Meanwhile, Albertsons COO Susan Morris appeared before a Washington state court stating Albertsons and C&S have had a productive and successful relationship, despite expressing in an email that “they have never been good partners.” She is set to join C&S as head of retail operations following the merger.

Catch Up Quick: Kroger/Albertsons: Parties Agree In Colo. To Put Mega-Merger on Hold