With more than 9,000 craft breweries in the U.S., consumers are inundated with choice on retail shelves or when bellying up to the bar. To stand out, solidifying a brand identity is becoming increasingly important to differentiate from the pack.

According to Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson: “The era of just opening a brewery that looks like all the other breweries and selling the broad suite of beers is over. The era of really customizing your brewery or its place and its clientele is only going to get more intense going forward.”

Brewbound Live will bring together three up-and-coming breweries with crystallized identities for a conversation on brand building on November 29 and 30 at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Joining the panel will be:

• Rich Bloomfield, co-founder of Funkytown Brewery in Chicago;
• LeAnn Darland, co-founder of Talea Beer Co. in Brooklyn;
• Haidar Hachem, co-owner and head brewer of Shojo Beer Co. in Miami.

All three will share advice in building brands and forging connections with consumers.

Bloomfield started Funkytown Brewery with Zachary Day and Gregory Williams and built the brand through the Pilot Project incubator in Chicago. Funkytown creates beers for underserved communities and built its portfolio on styles other than IPA based on consumer feedback with preferences for “low bitterness, less astringency, more flavor, and a lower ABV.” The brewery also won Brewbound’s 2021 Pitch Slam competition.

Darland and Tara Hankinson founded Talea with a vision to create a beer company that would appeal to women, eschewing the industrial taproom environments for more welcoming spaces. Talea’s beers are low on bitterness but more fruit-forward, with flavor inspirations such as pink lemonade, a “pineapple push pop” and “strawberry hard candy.”

Husband-and-wife duo Hachem and Marilyn Orozco created Japanese-inspired Shojo, infusing their Lebanese and Nicaraguan heritage to create the vagabond brewery. Their first beer was a Rice Lager fermented with sake yeast, created in collaboration with Unbranded Brewing.

Additional speakers will be announced in the coming weeks, with conversations focused on the future of the beer industry and providing actionable advice to beverage-alcohol industry leaders. Ample opportunities will be provided to network with industry colleagues, including a pre-event party at JuneShine on November 28, an opening night party at Firestone Walker on November 29, and wrap-up happy hour reception.

Brewbound’s Pitch Slam competition will also return to provide exposure to up-and-coming brands. Past winners include Funkytown, Lunar Hard Seltzer, Crowns & Hops, Wilie’s Superbrew, Novo Brazil Brewing, Border X Brewing, Hopewell Brewing, Wynwood Brewing, Braxton Brewing, and Appalachian Mountain Brewery, among others.

Brewbound Live is sponsored by Ollie, Scott Laboratories, Fintech, O-I, Yeti, Fast Track Packaging, CanCraft, the Beer Institute, Live Oak Bank, Strike Visuals, McDermott Will & Emery, Firestone Walker, and JuneShine. Supplier and service companies interested in sponsoring the Pitch Slam and/or Brewbound Live should contact Bryce McDonald about opportunities.

Early registration pricing expires this Friday, October 21! Register now to save $100 per registration.

Register for Brewbound Live >>

Previous Speaker Announcements:

• Maui Brewing & Modern Times Leaders Discuss Merging, Persevering and Looking Ahead
• Bell’s Brewery EVP Carrie Yunker to Deliver Keynote Address

About Brewbound

Published by BevNET.com Inc., Brewbound is a leading multi-media industry trade publication providing comprehensive information about the beer category, analysis of industry trends and in-depth interviews with industry leaders. In addition to providing daily news coverage, Brewbound also gathers entrepreneurs and executives to exchange ideas, discuss the state of the industry and hear strategies for succeeding in the alcohol beverage industry via a series of nationwide meetups, multi-day business conferences, live-streamed shows and podcasts.