Following a year of explosive growth, non-alcoholic craft brewer Athletic Brewing is looking to lighten things up.
The Stratford, Connecticut-headquartered brewery is launching Athletic Lite, a non-alc light beer that checks in at 25 calories, 0 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of carbohydrates. The beer has been in development “in earnest for the better part of two years,” co-founder and head brewer John Walker told Brewbound. Athletic Lite is brewed with all organic grains – malt, wheat and a proprietary rice product – and Hallertau and Saaz noble hops.
Athletic Lite is the most requested new style from the brewery’s wholesale and retail partners, according to co-founder and CEO Bill Shufelt. And for good reason: The three biggest light beer brands (Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Lite) earned $9.412 billion in off-premise sales last year, according to market research firm IRI. Combined, they accounted for 21.27% of beer category dollar sales at multi-outlet food and convenience stores through December 26.
However, dollar sales of all three declined last year, as did dollar sales of the broader domestic premium segment (-5.9%, to $12.1 billion), according to IRI. The non-alcoholic beer segment increased dollar sales +24%, to $236.4 million.
Athletic has contributed major gains to the segment. Last year, the brewery produced more than 100,000 barrels, Shufelt told Brewbound.
Athletic Lite will be available through the company’s direct-to-consumer website. The beer launches too late for spring resets at major chains, so Athletic is looking at independent retailers for now. But the beer will be available at Whole Foods Market and Total Wine. Eventually, Athletic Lite will roll out to bars and restaurants.
“We expect this to potentially be a big on-premise beer,” Shufelt said.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of Brewbound’s conversation with Walker and Shufelt about Athletic Lite, the company’s new brewery under construction in Milford, Connecticut, and several other projects including its Two for the Trails philanthropic program and fitness class activations.
On making a light beer…
Shufelt: “We love, really, all different styles of beer. I tend to mostly gravitate towards IPAs I would say, but there is a great time and a place for an easy drinking clean, crisp light beer. It’s a style we’re both huge fans of and there’s enormous times of the day and occasion growth for it. But it’s really hard to execute, especially in a non-alcoholic format.”
Walker: “One of the biggest things that’s a challenge is when you’re creating something that is so light in calories, so light in carbs and has zero sugar – how do you make that taste like it has body, like it’s flavorful, like it’s still this great experience? So that’s one of the biggest challenges, and our team isn’t going to let anything out the door or mass produce anything they’re not pretty psyched about.”
On the proprietary rice ingredient…
Walker: “It serves a huge purpose – one that earlier on we didn’t know about. Through all the trials, we realized that rice delivers an amazing amount of flavor and body to these lighter beers. You honestly and truly get away with experiencing a full-fledged beer that’s under a half a percent.”
How was Athletic Lite tested before launch in addition to staff tastings?
Shufelt: “We’re really lucky to have our e-commerce as a trialing ground where we can do things on a small scale and our most popular, most well-received beers then get out the door and scaled to retail. It’s a much more assured level of success when we launch a brand at retail. Effectively everything released online is trialing for a bigger release. We did something like 48 pilots last year.”
Who are Athletic Lite’s target drinkers?
Shufelt: “The core Athletic drinker includes a lot of people and occasions where, typically, beer drinkers are so bucketed in different [segments], craft drinkers or macro drinkers. We really think there’s a time and a place for a light beer for all drinkers.”
“We do see Athletic Lite as a way to both expand craft beer into much bigger populations. Realistically, craft beer is a pretty small part of the beer market, and there’s both a huge amount of drinkers outside of the craft market. But then also there’s a huge population outside of the drinking population, which is basically 50% of the adult population. We want to give that 50% of the non-drinking adult public who’s very familiar with light beer, probably, an easy entry back into the beer category.”
“Growing the population of beer drinkers is a huge priority for us and welcoming people into the beer world and getting really approachable beverages to people to make that jump. That dovetails with what we’ve been talking about for years: We think non-alcoholic beer is the biggest occasion driver beer’s had in decades, adding days of the week and population back to the category.”
How will Athletic Lite be supported at launch?
Shufelt: “There is a big marketing campaign behind it. It’s actually our first coordinated marketing campaign at Athletic. Everything else we’ve ever done is very much just what we’re naturally doing in our community, like handing out beers at events we want to be at anyway.
“Athletic Lite is our first real campaign, I would say. It’s coordinated out-of-home and TV with buying during all the March basketball games. We have a great new ad spot coming out, podcast reads, newsletters – pretty cohesive, all-encompassing campaign support.”
On bringing Athletic Lite to the on-premise channel…
Walker: “We’re definitely working on a draft program, so that we can support a non-alcoholic beverage on draft out in the world. Keeping NA beer safe and compliant is critical in nature. And so we’re spending a lot of time researching and diligencing an effective keg program so that we can deliver that.”
Shufelt: “A majority of consumers, whether it’s a bar or restaurant, only have one alcoholic drink per, if they’re drinking. So there’s a huge amount of potential volume left on the sidelines, for sure. We’re seeing stats upwards of 60% of people are more likely to attend a bar or restaurant if they have a good non-alc menu as well.”
How is Athletic’s new brewery in Connecticut coming along?
Shufelt: “In the last month, there were no tanks in this building. Construction was just being finished in Connecticut. Now, it’s very much full. The warehouse is in place. Tanks are going in place. The canning line is partly formed.”
On Athletic’s bi-coastal brewery expansion projects, which have added about 400,000 barrels of capacity…
Shufelt: “Throughout 2021, we finished our West Coast expansion [in San Diego]. We’ve basically quadrupled the capacity on that building since we took it over. And then this construction project is only about like six months in but almost done on the East Coast.”
On Two for the Trails, the fund to which Athletic donates 2% of all sales to support hiking trails and outdoor spaces nationwide…
Shufelt: “We deployed $1 million through that program towards the end of last year in October, so it’s been really fun to see those grants hitting out in the world over the past four months. We’re getting ready to open up that program again for the 2022 grant program.”
On last year’s fitness center pop-up in Austin, Texas…
Shufelt: “It was a perfect representation of our brand. It was 26 days of five classes each with 20 people per class and they all sold out within hours. It was ‘Do a class then have a beer after.’ It was open to the public for beers too. It was a huge success, and our team had a ton of fun, so we’ll definitely be bringing that to more cities this year.”
Beginning March 26, Athletic will launch a similar pop-up at Dallas, Texas-based Class Studio, a woman-owned cycling and fitness studio.