First Drop: Holiday Wishes for the Beverage Industry

It’s been a bruising fall for a lot of people and as we round the corner into 2025, I thought it might be a good time to offer some gifts to people within the industry.

To the founders of sub-$10 million businesses: I wish you profitability, working capital, and lower interest rates, so that it’s easier to ramp up production and hiring, but with a set of reasonable expectations that have allowed you to survive even as tourist capital has left the marketplace.

To the VC investors: I wish you a speedy rebalancing of Limited Partner portfolios such that they find a need for alternative investments once again. Maybe the booming stock market and the record highs at Bitcoin will bring a need for diversification into different asset classes, and we’ll see a speedy close yet again. Maybe a drop in interest rates will help. Whatever it takes.

To the distributors: more guaranteed buyouts of the size of the KDP is planning to shell out for Ghost Energy.

To the distributor clients: may the work ethic on the part of the distributors that got Ghost to that position now fall to YOUR brand.

To Lance Collins: A dressage-inspired horse hydration beverage laden with all of the IP you can handle.

To Coke & Pepsi: A renewed thirst for innovation following the latest round of zombie brand elimination.

To KeHE: A warehouse for every box, a box for every shelf, a shelf for every bottle, and a long string of RFID codes to speed payment all the way around.

To UNFI: I wish you 2% more stability, and hope it’s worth it.

To the coconut water companies: may your tariff structure be low, and your supply chain active.

To the bourbon makers: samesies.

To Seth Goldman and Quentin Vennie: a special “BalTEAmore” Kiosk at Progressive Field (nee Camden Yards) – and a long playoff run to amplify it all.

To the Consumer: a big raise, lots of discounting and a sense that you’re getting your money’s worth.

To Celebrity Founders: Good CEOs.

To the Class-Action Attorneys, combing the beverage aisle: Class.

To the Supply Chain: The workers to get it all done, through some stroke of sanity.

To the Craft Brewers: A renewed love affair with your products, both internally and externally. You do great work – don’t forget it.

To the beverage industry overall: Clarity. Will the incoming Trump regime be a bag of rolled-up hundreds for the beverage business (i.e. slashed regulations on worker safety and cheaper fuel, increased opportunity for GRAS ingredients that purport to have properties that might have been left to the drug companies), or if it’s bringing with it brainworm-infested lumps of coal in the form of attacks on processed food, BPA, and price increases on supplies that move slower due to a lack of agricultural workers.

In either case, though, it’s got to be fairly reassuring to have a tobacco-company lobbyist as the new chief of staff, as well as a McDonald’s-loving president. The way nominations are going, however, we should see the Hamburglar nominated to lead the Bureau of Prisons any day now.

One final holiday wish: that the hard working reporters at BevNET, Nosh, Brewbound find juicy scoops and tasty ledes in the New Year, and that all you readers crack them open with joy and relish.