Coronado Brewing Retools Cider Brand, Aims for 47K Barrels and Adds to Leadership Team
If one word had to be chosen to embody the past few years for the beer industry, “pivot” would be a strong contender. And pivot is what San Diego’s Coronado Brewing has done with its newest brand, Coronado Hard Cider.
Coronado soft-launched its U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic 6% ABV hard cider offering in its home market last December, with expanded California distribution rolling out earlier this year.
“Becoming certified USDA Organic is a huge endeavor,” Coronado marketing director Aidan Kennedy told Brebound. “You don’t only have to get ingredients that are organic, but your facility that you make it [in] has to become certified, so everything in that process has to be certified. None of the beers that aren’t organic can touch any of those [organic] beers; the storage has to be in a different facility.”
In addition to the “labor intensive” and “time consuming” process, supply chain issues halted Coronado’s organic apple juice supply.
“Because it cost too much money to ship and transport and pasteurize…” Kennedy said. “[Our supplier] said, ‘OK, we’re not going to produce enough of this organic juice to supply anyone who wants it,’ so our supply got cut off, essentially.”
“Coming out of the gates with an organic cider was a tall task,” Clinton Smith, Coronado chief commercial officer, said in a press release. “We exhausted every option in trying to obtain organic juice from our suppliers, but ultimately, we were unable.”
Determined to produce a contender in the “emerging” hard cider segment, Coronado tweaked its final recipe to use “conventional juice.” The reformulated product began hitting shelves in Southern California this month.
“Hard cider is a project that’s three of four years in the making now,” Kennedy said. “It was spurred by just industry trends, people looking for beyond beer alternatives, whether that be things that are zero alcohol, or the whole seltzer boom, which was what it was. But we really wanted to focus on more emerging markets that hadn’t been tapped yet, at least not within the craft beer world.
“When it comes to cider, it’s not a monopoly, per se, but there’s a few of the bigger guys, and then that’s kind of your options, unless you want to go hyperlocal,” he continued. “We wanted to tap into that potential.”
Coronado Hard Cider is available in two flavors – Nice & Dry (“purely apple”) and Super Fruit (with acai berry) – in 16 oz. 4-packs, with a suggested retail price of $11.99, “pretty much $1 below any of the other four packs on the market,” Kennedy said.
There will only be a “slight gap” in Coronado’s hard cider stock at retailers as the new recipe replaces the previous organic offering, with only “a few chain stores” still selling the organic offering, Kennedy said. Packs of the hard cider have been available at the brewery’s tasting rooms “for a while now,” and the feedback has been “super positive.”
“Initially, we thought it was going to be all these non-beer drinkers that come to the brewery with family and they say ‘Oh, I don’t want a beer, what else do you have?’ and they drink a cider,” Kennedy said. “But a lot of what we’re seeing is customers coming in who are regulars that drink beers every day – drank the IPAs, double IPAs – and they’re like ‘Today, I’m gonna try cider.’ And now it’s their favorite.”
While Coronado distributes its beers in 11 states – California, Arizona, Ohio, Minnesota, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, Florida, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – the hard cider will have a SoCal focus at first, so the company can “win in its backyard,” before expanding, Kennedy said. The product will expand to Northern California by Q1 2023.
Coronado Hard Cider – as well as Coronado’s hard seltzer line, launched in 2021 – will likely not be the last “beyond beer” products from the 26-year old brewery, as it “react[s] to trends and give customers what they want,” Kennedy said. For now, the company has enough on its hands with the demand of its core beer offerings.
“If our production could go 24/7, they would,” Kennedy said. “Just keeping up with the demand right now … it’s a lot to add to the production team, but they’re crushing it for sure.”
Coronado is targeting just over 47,000 barrels this year. That number would be a more than +12,000-barrel increase compared to 2021, according to the Brewers Association’s (BA) May/June issue of the New Brewer. However, the BA does not include hard seltzer or hard cider in its production estimates. In the first seven months of 2022, Coronado’s production is up +7.42% compared to the same period in 2021, according to Kennedy.
Coronado’s Weekend Vibes IPA (6.8% ABV) has driven growth for the company, making up more than 50% of its total sales. Its No. 2 SKU, Salty Crew blonde ale (4.5%), is only a year old, and is followed close behind by Palm Sway IPA (6.5%), Kennedy said.
Orange Ave. Wit (5.2% ABV), a staple in Coronado’s portfolio since 1996, will debut updated packaging later this year and transition from 12 oz. 4-packs to 16 oz. 6-packs – a package size Coronado’s top SKUs are already distributed in, Kennedy said.
To support production, Coronado recently hired a new head brewer, Chris Sartori, who will start later this month. Sartori most recently worked as the head cider maker at Golden State Cider, and has worked at several breweries, including Stone Brewing.
Sartori joins fellow Stone alum John Egan, who was hired this year as Coronado’s new VP of operations. Sartori has more than 20 years experience in craft beer “operations, supply chain management and sales,” – most recently working as a territory manager for Country Malt Group, according to a press release.
“With everything going on with production, having to ramp up everything to meet demand, [Egan’s] been a great addition to help streamline things over there,” Kennedy said.
Coronado also promoted industry veteran David Schreiber to VP of sales in March. Schreiber joined Coronado in May 2021 as director of sales in Southern California. He most recently worked as director of marketing and business development at Beauchamp Distributing Company, after more than three years at Lagunitas, and nearly seven years at Pittsburgh-based Frank B. Fuhrer Wholesale Co.
“Leadership wise, we’re in a great, great spot right now, with the hires we have,” Kennedy said. “Now it’s just getting everybody settled and strapping on the rocket ship.”