Nearly three months after announcing her departure from the Beer Institute (BI), former VP of research Danelle Kosmal will join 3 Tier Beverages as a consultant.
Kosmal and her family are moving to Japan in December for a two- to three-year stay while her husband works with the Office of Naval Research Global in Tokyo. The work she’ll do with 3 Tier harkens to her tenure at NIQ, where she was VP of bev-alc practice for the market research firm, but with a more boutique feel, she told Brewbound.
“I’ll probably work with brewers and suppliers that are smaller than I’ve worked with in the past, and I think that’s really interesting,” Kosmal said. “What’s happening with those small brewers is so drastically different in some cases of bigger brewers or even large craft brewers – what their biggest needs are and what their biggest solutions might be.
“There might be people at their brewery that are doing so many different types of jobs and they just don’t have someone that’s dedicated to analytics, somebody that can think about their business that way,” she continued. “That’s going to be exciting, to be able to be that person.”
Kosmal spent slightly more than two years at the BI, the trade group that represents the nation’s largest brewers, importers and beer industry suppliers – a stint she felt was not long enough.
“I’m leaving BI before I’m ready, because there’s still a lot that I wanted to do here,” she said. “I’ve been here for just over two years – it takes a good year to get to know a job. And this is a unique one with a lot of different data sets.”
Still, Kosmal relishes the chance to immerse herself and her family in the culture of their new country, something she’s familiar with after living in Costa Rica for three years earlier in her career.
“That experience showed me more than anything that taking a step back, living someplace different always helps to give you a different perspective,” she said. “That’s one of the things that I’m looking forward to is getting a different perspective, understanding a different culture – around drinking, around the culture in general – and then using that new perspective to better understand the U.S. market too.”
Chicago-based 3 Tier’s clients include 83 breweries, 50 winemakers and 54 spirits brands. It provides sales data reporting and consulting to suppliers across bev-alc and non-alc beverages and distributors via partnerships with NIQ and VIP.
Since beer industry vets Donn Bichsel and Joe Sepka founded the firm in 2020, 3 Tier’s team has expanded to include 12 professionals whose careers include time at suppliers and data firms.
“It’s a really fabulous mix of people that have been around for years and people that are somewhat new to the industry that are coming in with a new and fresh perspective that I’ll learn from,” Kosmal said.
In addition to Kosmal, 3 Tier has hired Susan Wozniak, Julia Lechleiter and Kristina Kroon as consultants. Wozniak joined 3 Tier after eight years at Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned craft brands Kona and Devils Backbone. Lechleiter was previously a manager at NIQ’s BASES beverage-alcohol division. Kroon is the former national account director for IndieBrew, the craft platform that includes Scofflaw Brewing, Bearded Iris and Neon Cowboy Spiked Seltzer.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Danelle, Susan, Kristina, and Julia to 3 Tier, where their deep experience will help us deliver clients the empowering analytics and understanding businesses need to navigate a fast-changing beverage ecosystem,” Bichsel said in a press release.
Kosmal is also a frequent speaker at beer industry events, including several appearances at Brewbound Live. Rewatch her fact-check beer business trends during her Brewbound Live 2022 appearance with NIQ’s Jon Berg and 3 Tier Beverages’ Danny Brager.