Pride and Parquet, Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers’ Boston Celtics themed beer, hit retailers in early January, and early shipments of the hoppy lager have quickly sold out.
For the Framingham, Massachusetts-headquartered craft brewery, the partnership with the iconic Boston sports franchise is part of a strategy to go deeper at home with a focus on off-premise sales in 2021, co-owner Sam Hendler told Brewbound.
“Seventy percent of our sales are in Massachusetts,” Hendler explained. “We sell a lot of beer here at home, and we want to sell more beer here at home. We want to be the most beloved brewery here in Massachusetts, and there’s no better way to get that kind of recognition than partner up with an organization like the Celtics.”
Jack’s Abby first announced its partnership as the official craft brewery of the Celtics in July 2020, when the NBA was beginning its “bubble” of isolated games.
Six months later, with the NBA back in action (with a few postponed games due to COVID-19), Jack’s Abby sees the partnership as a “game changer” for the decade-old craft brewery. Part of the plan is to go big into the off-premise. That starts with but doesn’t stop at Pride and Parquet.
“We intend to execute off-premise at a higher level than we ever have,” Hendler said.
“It’s bigger than just one beer,” he continued. “It is the whole portfolio,” including the company’s two top sellers, House Lager and Hoponius Union.
“It is a level of impact programming we’ve never had access to in our 10 years in business,” Hendler said. “And we believe we are ready to deliver in 2021, and we are raring to go.”
Like other craft breweries with a heavy focus on at-the-brewery sales, 2020 was a difficult year for Jack’s Abby, which operates a large-scale beer hall and restaurant, as well as a neighboring taproom space for its sister brand, Springdale Beer Co.
Although Hendler believes the company is on “more stable footing” in 2021, with a plan to “build things back up,” the company won’t be able to perform financially the way it’s used to until the beer hall is back serving at a “somewhat normal capacity.”
“The good news for us is we’ve been living in this reality for a little while now,” he said. “We know what we need to do. We are stable. And I think if you had asked me on April 1 of 2020, if I would be happy with being able to confidently say I was stable on January, 6, 2021, I would have taken that in a heartbeat.”
Reflecting on 2020, Hendler said the company’s core offerings, as well as its seasonal programming and variety packs performed well.
“When you look at the off-premise world, there’s not much that didn’t work,” he said, noting that Shipping Out of Boston amber lager in its first year was a top-five new craft brand in the Boston liquor channels.
“It’s like torture looking back on the launch plans we had for that beer, which were all centered around on-premise activation,” he continued. “We had to scrap 100% of it, and it still performs at that level.”
For 2021, Jack’s Abby is retooling that programming to focus on off-premise retailers.
“We know the investments we can make to stay on stable footing but push a little bit more,” Hendler said. “That was the thing last summer; there was a trepidation of … spending because you didn’t know what was coming next. And now we have that confidence, that stability to really pick our shots. I don’t want to pretend 2020 was kind to us financially; it wasn’t. But we are on that stable footing where we have a couple shots to take, and we’re gonna take them, and we feel like 2021 is gonna be a really positive year for Jack’s Abby.”
Jack’s Abby is one of several craft breweries with NBA partnerships. Last July, Bend, Oregon-headquartered Deschutes Brewery announced a partnership with the Portland Trailblazers, with Rip City Lager.
Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned Breckenridge Brewery was among the first to forge a collaboration, partnering with the Denver Nuggets on Mile High City copper lager.
Meanwhile, Michigan’s Founders Brewing Company this week revealed a partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers, making the craft brewery the official sponsor of the Sixers’ 2021 season. As part of the partnership, Founders will release co-branded All Day IPA packaging and cans with the 76ers’ logo in the second half of the NBA season in retailers in eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware.