Beer buyers believe the category will still be king for this year’s July 4 holiday, according to the latest Beer Purchasers’ Index (BPI) from the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).

Former Angry Orchard head cider maker Ryan Burk has joined Blake’s Beverage Company as VP of quality and innovation. Burk has been advising Blake’s and its portfolio of brands – Blake’s Hard Cider, Austin Eastciders and AVID Cider Co. – for a couple years, including through the launch of its most recent innovations.

Artisanal Brewing Ventures (ABV) has laid off about two dozen employees, Brewbound has learned. The craft rollup – which includes Victory Brewing, Southern Tier, Sixpoint Brewery and Bold Rock Cider – primarily eliminated jobs in sales, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

The latest installment of Brewbound’s A Round With – a weekly Insider-exclusive Q&A series with industry leaders – features Caitlin Braam, founder and owner of Yonder Cider and The Source.

The average U.S. consumer will spend $99 on a 10-person barbecue this summer, with a significant portion of that cost coming from bev-alc and soda, according to analysts from Rabobank, a financial services company.

On-premise chain accounts have bounced back from initial COVID-19 declines that shut down their businesses, but on-premise pains are far from over, according to CGA, the on-premise arm of market research firm NIQ.

Seasonal trends for onsite brewery sales have remained relatively consistent since January 2021, but “in real terms” – i.e. accounting for inflation – onsite sales continue to decline, according to Brewers Association (BA) staff economist Matt Gacioch, citing data from Arryved.

Five years ago, hard kombucha was expected to become the next big “fourth category” product, building off the initial momentum of hard seltzer, but promising bolder flavors and potential gut health benefits.

Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) trends continue to improve in the latest monthly off-premise scans report from market research firm Circana. Meanwhile, positive growth trends for Molson Coors and Constellation Brands – the two largest gainers from A-B’s declines – decelerated, according to data through May 19.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for beer at home increased +3.1% year-over-year (YoY) in May, increasing just enough to end six consecutive months of the category posting a CPI reading at or below +3%, before seasonal adjustment, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Schilling Cider has no plans to jump on the hard tea train, but the Pacific Northwest cidery still plans to meet similar consumer demand with its latest product launch: Schilling Hard Lemonade.

Craft beer’s dollar sales declines continued to accelerate through late May, according to market research firm Circana. Craft dollar sales in Circana-tracked off-premise channels (multi-outlet plus convenience) declined -5.5% in the four-week period ending May 19, accelerating from -3% in the previous period (ending April 21).

April domestic tax paid shipments declined an estimated -4.3% year-over-year (YoY), to 12.3 million barrels, according to Beer Institute (BI) chief economist Andrew Heritage, citing estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

Memorial Day bev-alc shopping “broadly met or exceeded distributor expectations,” according to Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog in the investment management firm’s latest Beverage Bytes survey of distributors and retailers.