After just barely missing the 1 million case mark in 2022, Montucky Cold Snacks is aiming for 1.4 million cases in 2023, Seamus Gallagher, VP of marketing, and Jeff Courteau, VP of sales, shared with Brewbound.
The more than 100,000-barrel volume target comes as the Bozeman, Montana-headquartered, 4.1%-ABV-lager maker has added contract brewing capacity at Ninkasi Brewing, beefed up its team with key hires, added three new markets and launched a nationwide campaign.
“We missed it by just a little bit,” Courteau said of the million case mark. Still, Montucky increased volume around 15%. “But we’re on track this year.”
Brewing started at Ninkasi’s facility in Eugene, Oregon, last month, and will supplement existing contract production from City Brewing. Beer produced at Ninkasi will feed western markets, including the Pacific Northwest, California, Alaska, Wyoming and Hawaii.
“With additional capacity coming on with that second contract brewer, with additional headcount, with first-time ever full of national marketing programming, we think that’s a number that, it’s going to be a stretch, but it’s also attainable,” Courteau said.
The added production from Ninkasi will help ensure that Montucky stays in stock on store shelves, Gallagher added.
Montucky, which was founded in 2012 by Chad Zeitner and Jeremy Gregory, is at a pivotal moment of transition, focused on sustaining its growth without shotgunning distribution to juice volume, Gallagher said. To get to the next level, Montucky is putting the people in place to ensure that it can be a better partner with its wholesalers, he added.
Key hires over the last year include Allagash Brewing Company’s long-time California sales manager Aaron Nelson, who joined Montucky in February; VP of operations Jack Waibel, who left Rogue Ales & Spirits last year to take the similar role; and Geoff Hammond as chain director.
“We’re trying to put that layer of oversight in with some mid-level management, so we can start amassing a ground level team to really be the partners we know we need to be to our wholesalers,” Gallagher said. “Our wholesalers are increasingly overwhelmed with 2,000-plus SKUs, a million different suppliers, and we realized to be the partners in this business [we want to be], … we have to have the feet on the street to maintain those relationships.”
Even with the added headcount, Montucky is still a “small but mighty” team of just 17 total people, who have taken the brand to nearly 1 million cases sold, Courteau said.
Montucky Cold Snacks is distributed in 35 states, following the additions of North Carolina (Anheuser-Busch network), Rhode Island and Massachusetts (Horizon Beverage) this year. The goal is to “double-down” on existing markets, especially California and Texas, this year while the new markets get up to speed.
Courteau pointed to Montucky’s growth coming from “legacy markets,” and noted that new markets take about a year to 18 months to get rolling.
“Texas is growing at 30%, Tennessee’s growing at 40%, Illinois is growing at 20%,” he added. “It’s these markets we’ve been in for more than two, three years and really driving the volume.”
Atop Montucky’s priority list for 2023 is California and Texas. Montucky launched in the Golden State during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since transferred to independent wholesaler Scout Distribution.
“Within the first week, they sold us into Dodger Stadium, we had meetings at Disney, it’s just really exciting to see the opportunities kind of present themselves in Southern California,” Gallagher said. “Plus, with Aaron in position, we’ve just seen some amazing results in short order.”
The emphasis on Texas is also paying off so far with the Lone Star State being among Montucky’s best performing markets early this year after a “relatively flat” 2022 in the state, Courteau said.
Colorado also presents an opportunity for the brand, which is in 40% of the state’s off-premise accounts, but “runway” to grow in the on-premise channel, Courteau shared.
Even in Montucky’s strongest markets, the brand has room to grow distribution.
“If you look at Nielsen [NIQ], we’re under 5% ACV [all commodity volume] across the country,” Courteau said. “So we have a ways to go.
“We’re simple. We have four SKUs, we have one liquid,” Courteau continued, highlighting Montucky’s product mix of 6-packs of 16 oz. cans, 12 oz. can 12-packs, 12 oz. can 30-packs and 24 oz. single-serve cans. “But at the same time, sometimes we get overlooked because we are so simple. So it’s really, making sure that we’re placed right on the shelf.”
“We’re beer flavored yellow beer,” Gallagher added. “I think that’s refreshing for a lot of people. We’re not going to launch 9% hazy next week. We know who we are. We know what our consumers want us to be and we want to be that for them.”
Montucky’s strongest on-premise accounts across the country are selling as many as 2,500 cases a year, Courteau said. The company’s top two accounts last year were a bar in Mesa, Arizona, and a neighborhood watering hole in Nashville.
“These accounts are doing hundreds of cases a month of Montucky,” he said. “Five years ago, we were excited if we had an account do 50 cases a month, and now it doesn’t even get somebody in the top 100 accounts for us.”
In addition to supporting markets with feet on the street salespeople, Montucky will put a marketer in-market to connect the brand with local culture and causes, starting in Colorado, Gallagher said.
“They’re going to be finding those spaces and places in between the on- and off- premise to really celebrate community,” he said.
Montucky becomes relevant in these far flung markets by donating 8% of sales to local causes.
“Honestly, we give back way more than 8% of our profits to causes,” Courteau said. “We’re really trying to lean more into the outdoorsy and beach and river cleanups, things like that, because that’s really what the brand started on.”
To further forge that consumer connection, Montucky has launched a campaign to name one drinker its official mascot. The winner’s face will be emblazoned on “thousands of Montucky cans across the nation,” as well as on the side of a NASCAR truck. The contest started from consumers telling Montucky that their beer speaks to them.
“We had all these people saying, ‘You’re my beer of choice. You speak to me and my community,’ and we’re like we’ve done nothing to speak to your community,” Gallagher said.
“They’re like, ‘You should sponsor me. I want to be the spokesperson of your brand.’ So I saw the challenge there and was like, ‘OK, let’s see how dumb we can make this.’ And we’re putting their face on the side of our NASCAR truck. We get one opportunity for the year to actually get big branding on it, and we’re not putting our brand on it per se. We’re putting a consumer’s face on the thing.”
Montucky has received hundreds of submissions so far, and will narrow it down to 10 consumers for a final fan vote this month. The strategy is to not pigeonhole who the Montucky drinker is because it varies across the country, Courteau said.
“All these other brands will come in and be like, ‘Our drinker is the guy who hangs out at the beach and goes surfing, but that’s the only person who drinks our beer,’” he said. “That’s one of 150 different types of lifestyles that drink our beer, which is pretty cool.”