Brewbound Podcast

As far as we know, Bill Murray has never worked for a brewer or a distributor, but employees of both have probably identified with Phil Connors, the character he played in Groundhog Day who was forced to relive the same day over and over. Tech firm Groundhog thinks it has eliminated the recurring sameness of the annual business plan (ABP) process with collaborative software that ensures brewers and distributors are aligned and able to follow through on objectives. On the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast, founders Chris Russell and Eric Rabinovitz share the pain points they're trying to solve and how they plan to streamline the process to avoid that Groundhog Day feeling when brands and distributors meet months later. Before the interview, Brewbound's Justin Kendall and Jessica Infante recap the latest news, including Diageo's plans to shutter the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore, Mars backing away from its BuzzBallz collab, the end of the FTC's price discrimination probe into Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits and Deschutes' entry into hard sports drinks.

How do you balance two brands that are runaway successes? Stateside Brands president Matthew Quigley explained on the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast how the maker of vodka iced tea brand Surfside is juggling the addition of Super Lyte, a non-carbonated hard sports drink (vodka + ade). From a marketing perspective, Stateside has created dedicated teams for each brand, he explained. On the sales side, the company has built a national accounts team and stable of state managers who, after two years, finally have the bandwidth to take on another brand. The result is another brand in Super Lyte that is being dubbed the drink of the summer, while Surfside is on pace to sell 13 million cases this year, Quigley shared. Meanwhile, Super Lyte is expected to sell four million cases by year's end, making it the largest spirits-based ready-to-drink (RTD) launch of all time, he added. "It shot the lights out in our core in Pennsylvania, Jersey, New York," he said. "It just went gangbusters and it's still doing incredibly, incredibly well." Stateside is now pushing Super Lyte into 40-plus states to gain a "first-mover advantage" with a host of new challenger brands entering the hard sports drink segment, Quigley said. The target now is for both brands to cross the 25-million-case threshold. "If they both get over 25 million cases, which is like High Noon's highwater mark, I'm a happy guy," Quigley said. "I think I've done my job. Time will tell." Ahead of the interview, Brewbound's Jessica Infante and Zoe Licata breakdown the the latest headlines, including:

• Samuel Adams front of house workers' successful unionization effort;
• Mark Anthony's termination of Coors Distributing in the Denver metro;
• The end of Stateside's lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch InBev over its Skimmers brand.

The duo also tackles the NFL's crackdown on player celebrations pantomiming drinking a beer (or juice).

Intoxicating hemp beverages as they appear now may vanish from the market in mid-December. A looming federal ban was delayed a month, but the industry hasn't slowed down amid the existential threat. BevNET and Nosh senior reporter Lukas Southard joins the Brewbound Podcast to give a pulse check on the market, alternatives that may be in play if a ban goes into effect and why some states may ignore the ban altogether. "When people are being realistic … most of them concede that the December 12th deadline will pass without regulatory being in place," Southard said. "And that brands and stakeholders in this industry are gonna need to at least bide their time into 2027 until some type of regulatory framework is put into place." Before the interview, the Brewbound team discusses the latest news, including C4's beer-flavored energy drink; Kroger pulling Red Bull from shelves, Tilray's positioning of BrewDog as an Ohio craft beer brand and the Shock Top-Spirit Halloween candy corn beer collab.

On the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast, the team analyzes the tectonic shifts in the bev-alc market in the last week, including:

• Constellation Brands giving Coors Distributing Company the proverbial black rose, with plans to terminate their relationship in the next 30 days, and the odds of its portfolio heading to the Reyes Beverage Group, which entered Colorado earlier this year;
• Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits paying $12.5 million to resolve a federal probe into bribes given to retail chain grocery buyers;
• Underwhelming Labor Day off-premise scans;
• A major equipment manufacturer shuttering its brewing division;
• And more industry upheaval.

Brewbound's Justin Kendall, Jessica Infante and Zoe Licata also ponder the creation of the Two-Zie, a double koozie from mid-strength beer maker Dad Strength.

Von Ebert Brewing brewer Dashawn Agbonze sees himself as the "fun police" – a badge he wears proudly, much like the German brewers that he admires. "I'm always like, 'Why are we doing this?'" Agbonze said on the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast. "Ultimately, like the Germans, I don't believe in magic. I need an explanation. Let's talk it out. Part of that is, let's train people so that everyone can see the same vision and we have the same goal because we know exactly how to get there." Agbonze, a two-time Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling (MJF) scholarship awardee, shares his journey climbing the ranks of the brewing industry and why he believes education is critical for up-and-coming brewers. "The education is important because it enables you to be in a controlled space to fail," he explained. "You're not putting a business on the line. You don't have employees with families that you have to risk in order to learn that 'Hey, a clean tank would make the beer that you want,' or 'Hey, contamination via your canning line can happen,' or how to solve these problems in a safe space." Failures in a learning environment become key lessons in training the next generation of brewers, Agbonze shares. Before the interview, the Brewbound team discusses the latest news, including a major departure from Whole Foods' bev-alc team, an update on Pabst's stolen beer, the Beer Institute's latest beer supply data and FIFCO USA's new owner and new/old name. Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante also shares highlights from her trip to Asheville for the annual business planning meetings at Highland Brewing and Sierra Nevada.

The summer selling season wraps up this weekend with Labor Day Monday, and one of the hottest segments of the summer has been hard sports drinks. Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and senior reporter Zoe Licata dive into the fast-growing segment and how their views have shifted on it over the last year. They look at who is leading the segment now and new entrants looking to fast-follow, including Boston Beer Company. The duo also recap several rounds of layoffs, including Sapporo USA's wind-down of the Stone Brewing-branded locations in Escondido, California; Mark Anthony's integration of the Finnish Long Drink and coming sales team cuts; and Diageo's ongoing $1.2 billion restructuring effort hitting its NYC headquarters. Plus, Justin and Zoe discuss low-ABV beers (and Justin cracks Sierra Nevada's new Go-Two IPA) and Pabst's viral stolen beer marketing campaign.

Fingers boozeletter author Dave Infante joins the Brewbound Podcast to deep dive Diageo's ongoing restructuring and workforce slashing under CEO Sir Dave Lewis (aka "Drastic Dave" for his reputation for making big cuts at previous stops). Infante shares insights from his reporting and conversations with Diageo employees, many of whom wondered why the Guinness and Johnnie Walker maker was so slow to adapt to the modern bev-alc competitive landscape. "The frustration that I heard from current and former Diageo employees was mostly about why weren't we doing this before we had to start laying everyone off," Infante tells Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and managing editor Jessica Infante (no relation). "You don't have to get to this point before you start pivoting to RTDs." The trio also hit recent headlines, including Garage Beer and Liquid Death tapping into the real world animosity around data centers and BuzzBallz's recent Pop-Tarts partnership. Jessica offered a theory on the BuzzBallz-Pop-Tarts team up: "Kids aren't eating Pop-Tarts. You know who's eating Pop-Tarts? Sad, elder millennials who can't afford anything else and want a tiny treat. The moms who would be out marching on the capitol up in arms against this aren't feeding that to their kids." "They're the ones who are intrigued by the BuzzBallz Pop-Tarts that they saw on Instagram," Dave adds. "That's definitely going into their Stanley tumblers," Jess says.

Does every beer need a non-alcoholic (NA) analog? The Brewbound team discusses on the latest episode of the Brewbound Podcast. As Molson Coors prepares to launch an NA version of Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy, Brewbound editor Justin Kendall questions whether the product is trend chasing or if consumers are clamoring for it. Managing editor Jessica Infante gets White Claw Zero flashbacks, while senior reporter Zoe Licata offers a different perspective after exploring NA ciders. The trio also analyze recent headlines, including:

• Samuel Adams taproom workers' plans to unionize and Boston Beer's response, so far;
• And B3 Beverage's "complicated" partnerships, with a deal for Yards Brewing going forward and others falling through.

The decade-long consent decree that allowed Anheuser-Busch InBev's (A-B) MegaBrew merger with SABMiller to go forward expired in July, removing guardrails that had been placed on the world's largest beer manufacturer by the Department of Justice to ensure competition in the marketplace. Chris Jones, managing director of Central Market Strategies, joins this week's Brewbound Podcast to explore what competition looks like in a post-consent decree beer industry. Jones argues the consent decree did its job, creating a competitive environment that allowed new brands over the last decade such as Athletic Brewing, Mark Anthony Brands' White Claw and Boston Beer's Truly Hard Seltzer to become category leaders in non-alcoholic (NA) beer and hard seltzer, respectively, while also preventing A-B "from using its massive size as the world's largest brewer to disrupt the market." WIth the consent decree's guardrails down, including the removal of an independent monitor who maintained compliance by handling claims of interference and coercion, there now exists "a lot more risk in the system of this market power and abuses of market power that could result from the size and scale of the largest brewer," Jones said. Going forward, it will be important to track national market share in an already "highly concentrated market" and middle-tier consolidation in the years ahead, he added. Listen to the full conversation with Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante here. Before the conversation, Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and senior reporter Zoe Licata join Jess to run through the latest news, including Lawson's Finest Liquids' first NA beer, what distributors say is on their cut lists, a distributor territory swap in the Northeast and "warm beer takes" on the latest NFL beer marketing.

How can a new brand make a splash in the increasingly crowded ready-to-drink waters? A winning combination of differentiated flavors, artistic packaging and a willingness to work the market day in and day out. That's what has been working for Lake Hour, according to CEO Michelle Ivey, this week's featured guest. RTD canned cocktail brand Lake Hour launched three years ago amid the segment's meteoric rise. Its co-founders – actor Wyatt Russell and film producer Rich Peete – had no prior beverage experience, and tapped Ivey, an industry vet, as CEO in late 2025. "Once I tried it, I realized it was one of those, 'actually' brands that when you take a sip, you're like 'Wow, actually, this is great. This tastes so good,'" Ivey said. "And so, I was so impressed with what they did and what they built two years in as startup founders that have had no experience in the industry." Before the interview, the Brewbound team discusses recent headlines, including a proposed reprieve for intoxicating hemp beverages, how many retailers sold out of various bev-alc products during the World Cup and how Anheuser-Busch InBev views itself relative to spirits giants.