Cincinnati’s Rhinegeist Brewery has named Adam Bankovich as CEO and promoted several other leaders internally.
Bankovich, who had served as interim CEO since late April, was promoted to CEO effective October 13. He joined Rhinegeist as chief commercial officer in October 2022, after nine years at San Diego’s Stone Brewing, last serving as VP of sales. He maintained the CCO role while interim CEO.
Rhinegeist co-founder Bryant Goulding told Brewbound that the company received 250 applications for the CEO position but Bankovich proved he was the right fit for the role, quickly acclimating himself to every team and department and showing an understanding of the company’s strategy, culture and goals during his time at the helm.
“I watched [Adam] come into a time where we had some serious challenges … and stabilize and create a really clear set of expectations for layers of leadership, and then allow them the autonomy to grow,” Goulding said. “And the feedback that we got, even before he was an interim CEO, was that that clarity was really helpful and it really put a lot of that noise out. And there was a clear signal of what we needed to do to focus our efforts to succeed.
“The massive gains that we’ve just had on cognitive load and focus on what we need to do and what’s really valuable, how do you determine value – there’s so much under the hood that we’ve found valuable in really a short amount of time,” he continued. “[And] it wasn’t Bob and I doing this, Adam has really stewarded this sort of understanding that has turned into financial improvement.”
In addition to Bankovich’s promotion to CEO, Rhinegeist made three additional leadership promotions:
- Cole Hackbarth was promoted to VP of brewery operations. Hackbarth, who joined Rhinegeist in 2015, previously served as director of brewery operations. He’s credited with helping the brewery grow from 10,000 barrels to 100,000 barrels. He will oversee brewing, quality, packaging, maintenance and engineering.
- Marc Venegoni was promoted to VP of sales. Venegoni previously worked as director of national accounts. He and his team will be tasked with setting the brewery’s commercial strategy.
- Tracey Ireland was promoted to VP of marketing. Ireland previously served as director of marketing during her first eight years at Rhinegeist.
“The strength of leadership at Rhinegeist has certainly been one of the secrets to our continued growth,” Goulding said in a press release. “We’re excited to see how far we can take this brewery as we tackle the challenges of the future with a clearer sense of where we’re headed and the right team to get us there.”
Rhinegeist ‘Getting Out of Our Own Way’ Moving Forward
When Bankovich received his interim title earlier this year, Rhinegeist also began reevaluating its portfolio and innovation strategy. The company learned that the best approach was “getting out of our own way,” Goulding said.
“If we can just cut through some of our own noise, make better decisions, have the discipline to do that, and then we put more ammo behind fewer brands, all of that is a flex,” Goulding said. “That’s been a change from our sort of dramatic cerebral ping pong, handed over with clear marching orders – it’s more of a bottom-up approach than top-down and through really clear guidance.”
Rhinegeist is focusing on four pillars of innovation in 2024: Truth IPA, Hop Box variety pack, Cincy Light and the “return” of Bubbles.
The latter includes the sunsetting of RGBevs, Rhinegeist’s line of malt-based, fruit-flavored alcoholic beverages, inspired by Rhinegeist fruited ale flavors. Bubbles will be the only flavor to live on, but will be reimagined to return to its original recipe as a 6.5% ABV beer/cider hybrid.
“Basically, we’re bringing Bubbles back to the beer aisle,” Bankovich told Brewbound. “Even anecdotally, if you follow social media comments, you could see that people were asking for Bubbles to go back to what it was before. But we took a long hard look at it to make sure that that wasn’t just the vocal minority that was saying that and it wasn’t.”
RGBevs launched in 2022 as Rhinegeist’s response to demand for beyond beer offerings and flavored malt beverages. But the line failed to meet expectations this year.
“This whole year, we did a lot of learning or some understanding on why RGBevs was slower this year than we’d hoped by a wide margin,” Bankovich said.
“I would put Bubbles as beyond beer before people knew what beyond beer was, and now everything is boxed in these weird categories,” he continued. “We’re just getting out of the box.”
Bubbles will also have a rotating line of flavor extensions in 2024, starting with Blood Orange.
For the Truth IPA family, Rhinegeist is targeting the 1 million case mark in 2024, supported by the addition of 12-packs of Juicy Truth, its hazy extension. However, that will be the extent of additions to the line.
“We’re not going to just line extend, line extend, line extend and take our eye off the ball about what work we put in to support Juicy Truth this year,” Bankovich said.
Rhinegeist will also put more support behind Hop Box, its hoppy variety 12-pack, to “drive continued growth,” while “staying at a better price point,” Bankovich said.
Finally, the company plans to continue the momentum of Cincy Light, the light lager brand it launched this summer that helps support the name, image and likeness (NIL) fund Cincy Reigns for University of Cincinnati athletes.
“It has by far exceeded the wildest expectations that ever could have had for what a domestic light beer competitor could do for this brewery,” Bankovich said. “The demand has been huge, we still haven’t really found the ceiling. We don’t know what next year holds, but we’re definitely going to continue doubling down and investing.”
This strategy points to a more focused approach going into 2024.
“We’re also doing things like probably brewing half as many recipes next year than we did this year,” Goulding said. “We’re not going to lose a lot, a lot of that’s R&D.
“We can link up better between planning and production and create some space, really spending more time recognizing the cost of some of the inefficiencies in the craftiness,” he continued. “Not to iron out our energy and passion and innovation, but just to streamline.”
Want to hear more about Rhinegeist’s strategy and leadership changes? Bankovich will give the keynote speech at Brewbound Live in Marina del Rey, California, followed by a Q&A with Bankovich and Goulding.
Brewbound Live will take place December 6 and 7. Tickets are on sale now.