Brewbound Live Speakers Highlight The Need for Craft Brands to Focus

The last year brought a sea of craft leadership changes, mergers and acquisitions, crossover product innovation and more. As the bev-alc marketplace becomes increasingly noisy and overwhelming, the unofficial theme of the 2023 Brewbound Live business conference was “focus.”

Leadership at Rhinegeist Brewery kicked off the conference in Marina del Rey, California exploring the transition at the top of the Cincinnati, Ohio-headquartered craft brewery following its own leadership changes.

Adam Bankovich, who was named CEO in October, gave the keynote address and explained how Rhinegeist is getting focused and simplifying its commercial strategy in 2024.

Bankovich admitted that the notion of Rhinegeist – which is also in the business of T-shirts and merch, distribution, private events and marketing, among other things – getting focused might sound rich to some. But in a dynamic industry, those things can both be true. He pointed to RGBevs, Rhinegeist’s attempt at playing in the flavored malt beverage (FMB) space.

“I asked a lot of questions around this when I started,” Bankovich said. “And this was a sales plan that I inherited when I joined the company in October 2022.

“The more I unearthed when I was asking questions around RGBevs – how did we make the decisions to enter this space, how did we make the decisions on the flavors and the liquids, what consumer understanding did we have – it was really clear to me that there was no focus in this product line and it was potentially set up for failure,” he continued.

Much of the 2023 business plan that Bankovich inherited was banking on a big year for RGBevs. Citing Circana data through mid-November, the FMB brand family was down -47.4% (a decline of $1.7 million), while its beer brand family was up +14.6% (a gain of $3.6 million).

“We were betting on a lot of growth for our FMB line this year and it didn’t materialize because it was not focused,” he said.

Bankovich shared a slide that showed the percentage of resources – time, energy and money – devoted to the FMBs was outsized compared to its return on investment as the Truth brand family accounts for 56% of Rhinegeist’s volume, compared to 26% for other beers and 13% to FMBs/refreshment.

Bankovich and Rhinegeist co-founder Bryant Goulding also discussed the leadership transition, creating space for leaders to create new pathways and much more in a Q&A following Bankovich’s keynote address.

How to Get Mindshare & Sell More Beer, with Stone Distributing, Breakthru Beverage & Tryon Distributing

Landing in a wholesaler’s warehouse is a big win for a supplier, but it’s often just the first step in a journey that ultimately ends in a consumer’s fridge.

Stone Distributing general manager Brian Fried, Breakthru Beverage California director of beer Sinead Carey and Tryon Distributing director of beer Elledge Davis shared the questions and tasks suppliers need to ask and accomplish along the way.

“As we think about new item launches and new brand launches, what we like to really think about is the end consumer,” Fried said. “As you’re thinking about your portfolio and you’re thinking about your approach to the market, be thinking about what role does that brand play with the consumer? What whitespace does it fill? What niche, what consumer needs is it going to meet?”

When exploring new offerings and new partners, Breakthru deploys a “very robust brand evaluation process” that ranges from market data to fundamental business questions, Carey said.

“We’re using data and analytics to tell us what’s going on in the market,” she said. “We’re also asking some really solid questions of potential partners and potential brands, as in, what are you looking to do? What channel are you trying to focus in on? Do you have some financial support? And are you financially stable, particularly if it’s a smaller supplier?

For Tryon, the first task in building a relationship with a new supplier is to “make sure their vision of success for the launch makes sense with our go-to-market strategy and our capabilities,” Davis said. “After compatibility is established, more complexity can be layered on.

“From there, you can add in the pieces of price promotion or incentivizing but making sure you’re in alignment is the first step,” he added.