The job cuts in the tech sector have finally touched beverage-alcohol. Drizly, the Uber-owned alcohol e-commerce delivery platform, underwent “company wide” layoffs that affected around 100 roles. Brewbound’s Zoe Licata first to reported.
One now-former worker described the cuts as a “layoff tidal wave,” in a Twitter post that was later deleted.
The official word from the company followed: “Drizly made the difficult decision to reduce the size of its team by approximately 100 roles. This was a part of a corporate restructure as Drizly officially begins integrating certain operations into Uber for a strategically aligned, centralized BevAlc vision.”
In early 2021, Uber acquired Drizly for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. Drizly has hit a bumpy road of late, drawing scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over competition concerns, as well as failing to secure consumers’ personal information, resulting in a data breach that affected 2.5 million consumers.
Post-pandemic boom, we’ll be watching how the e-commerce market continues to evolve.
In other news …
Dedicated non-alcoholic craft beer maker Athletic Brewing expects to be a top 15 independent craft brewery by the end of the year. The company is already a top-25 beer category vendor in off-premise dollar sales as tracked by Circana (formerly IRI).
Atlanta’s Orpheus Brewing is closing its brewery and taproom, effective April 23. However, the brand will live on in distribution thanks to beverage platform Bevana. Meanwhile, Orpheus founder Jason Pellet is moving to Amsterdam to start a brewery, but will continue to manage the brand from afar. Look for more on Bevana next week on Brewbound.com.
Heading into the spring, Dogfish Head is prioritizing new year-round beer Citrus Squall, an 8% ABV beer-cocktail hybrid (an imperial golden ale and paloma), and the company’s new Crush canned cocktails.
Lagunitas’ Chicago taproom is reopening on April 13, after being closed since March 2020.
The Jack Daniel’s & Coca-Cola RTD is now hitting retailers nationwide.
Five months after a raid of Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits’ California offices, the nation’s largest wholesaler is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for alleged price discrimination, per Politico.
Debra Crew is taking over as CEO of Diageo in July, as Sir Ivan Menezes will retire on June 30 after a decade of leading the spirits and beer giant.
Canning company Wildpack Beverage is getting a $20 million loan from Manna Capital Partners to scale operations at its six plants. As part of the deal, Manna is taking a majority stake in the business.
Leaders of the California Craft Brewers Association laid out their legislative agenda for California craft brewers.
On the first of two Brewbound Podcasts from the California Craft Beer Summit, we catch up with Russian River’s Natalie Cilurzo on the 2023 Pliny the Younger triple IPA release, and Oak Park Brewing’s Rodg Little on the Sacramento breweries mission and national ambitions for the People’s Beer. Listen for free here.
Off-premise beer category sales declined -3.2% during St. Patrick’s Day, although the holiday lifted draft sales, per Circana.
Meanwhile, the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s monthly Beer Purchasers’ Index shifted toward “a more predictable [ordering] environment” in March.”
Our condolences to the Steinman family and the team at Beer Marketer’s Insights on the loss of Jerry Steinman, who died at age 99. Steinman founded Beer Marketer’s Insights in 1970, paving the way for beer industry journalism.
Finally, a housekeeping note: We’ll be talking about strategies for opening multi-state taprooms during Brewbound’s first meetup of 2023 on Sunday, May 7. We’ll be joined by Monday Night Brewing’s Jeff Heck, Hi-Wire Brewing’s Adam Charnack and Weathered Souls’ Marcus Baskerville. We’ll also be discussing craft’s contradictory growth drivers with Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione, Greater Good Imperial Brewing’s Colleen Quinn and Athletic Brewing’s Bill Shufelt. And the National Black Brewers Association will join us to share their mission and goals. Tickets are available now.
And that’s a wrap on this week. As always, a huge thank you to Jess and Zoe for their hard work. And thanks to all of you for reading and supporting our work. If you’d like to become a Brewbound Insider, check out this link.
We’ll be back next week.