Read the latest beyond beer news relating to companies involved with RTD cocktails, hard cider, hard seltzer, hard kombucha, spirits, cannabis, and non-alcoholic products. Take a comprehensive look at developments in these evolving sectors, offering valuable insights into the innovations, trends, and market forces shaping the world of beer and beyond.
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Former Angry Orchard head cider maker Ryan Burk has joined Blake’s Beverage Company as VP of quality and innovation. Burk has been advising Blake’s and its portfolio of brands – Blake’s Hard Cider, Austin Eastciders and AVID Cider Co. – for a couple years, including through the launch of its most recent innovations.
Allagash Brewing is launching its first non-alcoholic (NA) offering this week with the release of Allagash Hop Water. Hop Water will exclusively be sold in 12 oz. can 6-packs at the brewery’s tasting room in Portland, Maine, starting later this week.
The once-booming flavored malt beverage (FMB) segment is “showing some concerning declarations over recent weeks,” Bump Williams Consulting (BWC) founder Bump Williams noted in a recent report. FMB volume gains dropped by half – from +2.2%, to +1.1% – from the four-week period to the one-week period ending May 18, according to NIQ retail measurement data cited by BWC.
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) Cacti Agave Spiked Seltzer is facing a proposed class action complaint that claims the brand misled consumers to believe Cacti contained agave spirits, rather than agave sweetener.
With the summer selling season officially in the rearview mirror, beer category off-premise dollar sales ended with a -7.6% decline compared to the same period in 2020, but increased +9.3% compared to summer 2019, according to market research firm NielsenIQ.
Beer industry trade groups are calling on the leaders of the U.S. Senate appropriations committee to allocate additional funds to the Department of the Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) 2022 fiscal year budget. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued warnings this week about the potential risks of Delta-8 — a form of the psychoactive cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
Anheuser-Busch InBev is launching Stella Artois Liberté, a non-alcoholic (NA) offering for “beer lovers who want to enjoy a beer, but who want the option to reduce their alcohol consumption.”
Omission, the gluten-reduced craft beer brand Anheuser-Busch InBev acquired in its 2020 merger with Craft Brew Alliance, is wiping the slate clean next year.
The ready-to-drink canned cocktail segment continued to grow over the Labor Day holiday weekend increasing its share of the liquor category from 4% to 7% year-over-year (YOY) on the e-commerce alcohol delivery platform Drizly.
Boston Beer Company (BBC) has agreed to a five-year, $3.42 million deal with Peak Processing Solutions, a licensed developer, manufacturer, and distributor of recreational and medical cannabis products in Canada.
Can the hard seltzer segment outsmart the seasonal slump it typically goes through every fall? Two-thirds of the Brewbound team discuss in the newest episode of the Brewbound Podcast.
Despite recent slowdowns in hard seltzer sales trends, Boston Beer chief marketing officer Lesya Lysyj remains confident that the bubbly beverage and Truly Hard Seltzer are not going anywhere. “The category has become a mega category, and the growth is not done yet,” she told Brewbound.
The volume compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for premium and above-premium vodka in the US market has steadily decreased since 2015, dropping -3.1% from 2015 to 2019, and -3.5% in 2020 alone, according to the market research firm IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.
An overwhelming majority of distributors say a shakeout is coming to the hard seltzer segment and retailer shelves in 2022, according to the most recent Beverage Bytes survey from Goldman Sachs’ equity research team.
Hard seltzer’s late summer slowdown has pushed several financial services firms to adjust their forecast for the sparkling segment’s performance. “We are incrementally more cautious on the beer and hard seltzer category based on feedback from our beer distributor contacts in our new proprietary ‘Beverage Bytes’ survey,” Goldman Sachs equity research analyst Bonnie Herzog wrote in a report published today.
Los Angeles-based Nectar hard seltzer almost failed before it launched.
Ready-to-drinks (RTDs) are one of the fastest growing categories in beverage alcohol, but between confusion of how to define the segment, obfuscation of base alcohols, and murky ownership structures of certain brands, it can be difficult for consumers to know what they’re buying and who’s making it.
