Justin Kendall provides daily coverage of the beer industry on Brewbound.com, conducts live-streamed interviews during Brewbound’s events and co-produces the Brewbound podcast. Kendall is a nearly 20-year career journalist who led alt-weekly newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa.
Brand families are nothing new in the beer business. Within craft beer, they’re spreading like a zombie outbreak, which is fitting given the abundance of news about a few dead guys and a certain skeleton this week.
2022 marked a record year for New Belgium Brewing Company, as the Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered craft brewery’s volume topped 1.2 million barrels (+15% year-over-year), driven by the continued success of the Voodoo Ranger IPA portfolio, New Belgium CEO Steve Fechheimer shared. Meanwhile, Bell’s Brewery declined around -8%, to just shy of 450,000 barrels.
Dead Guy is getting a few friends. Rogue Ales & Spirits is transforming its iconic 30-year-old flagship offering into a brand family with the launch of Dead Guy IPA.
The pool of craft brewers launching non-alcoholic beers continues to grow. Joining the fray is Hops & Grain founder Josh Hare, who launched Rick’s Near Beer in late 2022.
Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) may have ceded advertising exclusivity rights to Super Bowl LVII, but the world’s largest beer manufacturer will continue to have an outsized presence during breaks in the game.
Middle-tier consolidation is off to the races. This week marked the first two distributor deals of the year.
The makers of pouch-packaged alcoholic beverage brand SUNiCE continue to push into alternative formats.
John Mallett says goodbye to Bell’s Brewery, Brewers Association membership dues are going up, takeaways from the Beer Industry Summit, M&A updates, and pickleball.
The number of brewer’s notices issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) increased by 732 in 2022, the smallest increase since 2023, Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson noted.
The state of middle-tier operations was among the focus areas of Beer Business Daily’s 2023 Beer Industry Summit this week in West Palm Beach, Florida. Leaders from five wholesalers offered insights on taking on non-alcoholic beverages, SKU rationalization, convergence, and trade down.
The Brewers Association (BA) will increase the cost of membership for the first time in nearly two decades, the organization reminded members Wednesday. New prices – which are tiered according to brewery size – will go into effect February 1.
More than three years after taking a majority stake in Michigan’s Founders Brewing Company, Spanish brewer Mahou San Miguel is formally integrating Founders, Avery Brewing and Mahou Imports into a new platform, Mahou USA.
Even as A-B hopes for a rediscovery of Bud Light, the company is preparing for Michelob Ultra, its second best-selling brand, to overtake Bud Light as its best-selling brand within the next five years, Anheuser-Busch InBev U.S. CMO Benoit Garbe said.
The beer category’s evolution since 2003 and the shift from total beverage alcohol to total beverage business was the theme of the opening session of Beer Business Daily’s 2023 Beer Summit at the the Breakers in West Palm Beach, Florida.
