Dear Client: The Ranch Water space was already hot (see this morning’s issue), and it’s just turned up a couple of degrees: Liquor giant Diageo has just announced it has acquired Far West Spirits, maker of the 2-year-old Lone River Ranch Water brand, one of the topselling “Ranch Waters” in Texas grocery.  Price was not … Continue reading “Diageo Acquiring Lone River Ranch Water Maker”

Dear Client: One more segment bears coverage from last week’s Constellation meeting: The company’s bullishness on e-commerce.  Several distributors have told us Constellation is light years ahead of their supplier competition in building out this capability.  Newly promoted Mallika Monteiro, now EVP and Chief Growth, Strategy and Digital Officer, painted the immediate case for building … Continue reading “Constellation: Beer’s Digital Future “Moves Faster Than We Think””

Dear Client: Mark Anthony Brands held its third Big Bet Distributor meeting yesterday afternoon, and with it came a deep dive into the marketing plans that CMO John Shea has cooking up in his first full year at the company.  We’ll get into all the plans and numbers from John in just a minute, but … Continue reading “Mike’s Hard Lemonade Seltzer To Come Out Swinging This Month with Mike Tyson”

Dear Client: Over the past several years, Constellation’s message to distributors at its Gold Network Summits has been pretty consistent, saying more or less that ‘it’s high time you get with the high-end, because it’s going to take over.’ By now in 2021, it’s evident that they knew what they were talking about, and Constellation … Continue reading “Constellation GNS: We See the Future and We Have the Brands for It”

Dear Client: It was just the other day that we told a distributor source — looking at what seems to be a relatively successful (if slow) vaccine rollout  — that we expect the on-premise to come roaring back in the second half.  Now, several southern states are reopening businesses to the full extent and striking … Continue reading “States Reopening for Business”

Dear Client: Honest truth, I started thinking about writing this story several weeks ago.  And with the flood of news coming in every day, it has become more clear:  beverages — beer, wine, spirits, malt-based seltzers, spirits-based RTDs, wine based RTDs, hybrids, non-alc — are all converging into one market with an overlapping consumer, and … Continue reading “The Great Convergence”

Dear Client: Reyes’ West Coast headquarters, Harbor Distributing in Huntington Beach, California, has struck an agreement to acquire “substantially all of the assets of Redding Distributing Company in Redding, California,” furthering the distributor’s recent activity in Northern California. Redding sits atop the Sacramento Valley.  The deal is slated to close by the end of April, … Continue reading “Reyes Signs Yet Another Agreement in Northern California: Redding”

Dear Client: Apparently the line of companies waiting to get into the hard seltzer business is much longer than we thought. The next wave seems to be on-premise retailers, capitalizing on their popular drink brands. Last week we reported that Texas Roadhouse was rolling a hard seltzer, modeled on its flavored margaritas [see BBD 02-23-2021], … Continue reading “Sonic Rolling a Hard Seltzer”

Dear Client: It looks like 2020 was a pretty good year for beer after all, despite supply gluts and a paralyzed on-premise. The Beer Institute revised some of its 2020 domestic shipments numbers yesterday, such that the full year saw a gain of 0.1%, to 167,362,000 barrels. That’s vs. the previously estimated -0.5%.  October domestic … Continue reading “2020 Domestic Tax Paid Shipments Show Full Year Growth After All”

Dear Client: Anheuser-Busch InBev delivered its fourth quarter and full-year results this morning, and with it a look at how the brewer wrapped up 2020 in the U.S. A-B says its fourth quarter U.S. results were “impacted by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding restrictions to the on-premise channel.” Indeed, depletions were … Continue reading “A-B Posts Flattish Depletions for 2020”

Dear Client: With Anheuser-Busch set to report its fourth quarter and full-year earnings tomorrow, we thought it would be prudent to provide you with a primer on the brewer’s latest results in the off-premise.  But before we dive into where things currently stand for the brewer, let’s rewind a couple months back to take a … Continue reading “Despite Dollar Growth, Share Gains Continue to Elude A-B”

Dear Client: Longtime Constellation beer marketer Jim Sabia made headlines a few years ago when he was promoted to Constellation’s overall EVP and Chief Marketing Officer in 2018. But now he’s moving out of the top marketing spot at the company for a newly created position:  Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Beer Division, “with … Continue reading “Jim Sabia Moves from Constellation CMO to Managing Director of Beer”

Dear Client: In what seems like ages ago already, we had Constellation chief Bill Newlands on the virtual Beer Business Daily stage late last month to talk about run-room in every aspect of Constellation’s business.  Bill paints a rosy, fruitful future. Consider: Modelo is the no. 1 beer in some coveted markets, including Southern California … Continue reading “Bill Newlands on Rocket Ships, From Corona Seltzer to the Next Modelo”

Dear Client: It’s been a minute since we’ve caught up with Crook & Marker, and we’re glad we did because the bev alc company, which tells BBD it grew triple digits in 2020 and delivered over $26 million of retail in measured channels, has some big moves in store for 2021. One surprising move – … Continue reading “Crook & Marker Making a Run at RTD Margs”

Dear Client: You may have heard of Ashland Hard Seltzer. If not, here’s the gist: It’s a fast-growing organic hard seltzer brand in/from San Diego, opened by Saint Archer vet, Josh Landan (who you may recall sold that venture to MillerCoors in 2015). In fact, Ashland is quite reminiscent of Saint Archer, at least in … Continue reading “Ashland Hard Seltzer in Talks with A-B?”