Blake’s Beverage Co. is looking to be a leader in not just hard cider, but all “fruit-forward fourth category innovation,” founder and CEO Andrew Blake told Brewbound.
Anheuser-Busch InBev’s beyond beer division is organizing itself around four priorities: hard seltzers, Cutwater Spirits, Nütrl Vodka Seltzer and Ghost Energy, beyond beer business unit president Fabricio Zonzini shared during Beer Marketer’s Insights’ spring conference in Chicago last week.
Heineken USA is getting into the spirit-based, ready-to-drink canned cocktail market with Dos Equis Margarita, a line extension of the imported Mexican beer brand that will hit retailers in 10 states by the end of June.
Former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Felipe Szpigel is merging his high-end, ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail brand Five Drinks Co. into a new beverage venture platform called Better Drinks, that will bring several Brazilian brands into the U.S.
With sales of spirits-based ready-to-drink canned cocktails continuing to boom, battles for turf in the cold box can be tracked to statehouses across the country. And spirit makers are looking for some low-cost ammo: While beer has historically enjoyed favorable excise tax rates, spirit makers are attempting to change those laws, they say, to level the playing field for products of similar ABVs and package sizes.
Waterbird Spirits, the Charlottesville, Virginia-headquartered spirits maker, which specializes in canned ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails, is the first beverage-alcohol brand in the country to use resealable lids on 24 oz. single-serve cans, effectively opening up the convenience store channel more widely to spirits-based RTDs.
Wings & Arrow, the brand house of Ashland Hard Seltzer and Villager Spirits canned cocktails, has closed a $10 million funding round, which will help support production of its existing and upcoming beyond beer offerings.
Anthony Spina and Matt Sievers – who’ve worked on brands such as Mark Anthony Brands’ White Claw and Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Pabst Blue Ribbon – have launched their own endeavor: Primer Electrolyte Charged Hard Seltzers.
Off-premise dollar sales of ready-to-drink canned cocktails (RTDs) and hard seltzers have more than doubled in the past three years, increasing +155% since 2019 (through January 8, 2022), according to NielsenIQ data, shared by the Beer Institute’s (BI) VP of research Danelle Kosmal during a webinar Thursday.
Boston Beer Company and Sauza tequila-maker Beam Suntory launched Sauza Agave Cocktails Thursday – a line of Mexican-inspired, ready-to-drink canned cocktails (RTDs).
While the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated growth for ready-to-drink canned cocktails (RTDs) over the last two years, alcohol delivery platform Drizly said the segment is more than “a pandemic-driven fad” and has the potential to drive retail sales.
More than half of the 500 retailers in Drizly’s annual retailer report said they will devote more shelf space to ready-to-drink beverages (RTDs) in 2022, according to the e-commerce alcohol delivery platform.
When Death & Co. opened its first bar in 2006, it rapidly established itself as one of the premiere names in the modern craft cocktail movement through its innovative approach to creating new drinks. Now, the company is hoping to do the same in the emerging RTD cocktail category with its first retail consumer product: a line of canned libations, which launched this month.