Liquid Assets: A Beverage Industry Podcast

As the big get bigger, many new brands and foreign brands are wondering how to get attention in the massive and complicated US distribution landscape? Sara Harmelin, Vice President – Digital & Innovation at Allied Beverage Group, and Michael Bilello, Executive Vice President – Strategic Communications & Marketing at WSWA, are both part of Access Craft, a program from WSWA to help smaller and new-to-market brands navigate the three-tier system and get the most of out their distributors. They share some success stories, best practices, and sage advice on finding success in the US market. 

We sit down with Danny Wirtz, vice chairman and a fourth-generation family leader at Breakthru Beverage Group, to discuss M&A, the digitalization of distribution, and how brands can work better with distributors in this time of uncertainty. Breakthru has a larger beer business than most other wine and spirits distributors, giving Danny unique insights into why some wine and spirits brands are choosing to work with beer wholesalers. 

Tom Cole (Chairman) and Francis Creighton (President and CEO) help lead Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA). We sat down with Tom and Francis at WSWA’s annual conference, Access LIVE, to kick off our series on US distribution. They share their views on industry trends, competition, and their legislative agenda for the year ahead.

To show off the global reach of the RaboResearch Beverages team, Steve and Bourcard sit down with analysts across four different continents, collecting stories about the economy and how it is affecting beverage brands around the world.  Episode breakdown: 1:23 - Jim Watson on the latest US beverage pricing data and why some brands are outperforming the competition.  18:21 - Andrés Padilla & Guilherme Morya on the Brazilian economy and how it is impacting the local coffee market. 31:31 - Sudip Sinha on how beverage brands are navigating the economy in markets across Asia. 40:53 - Francois Sonneville on the European economy and the on-premise in the UK. 48:57 -  Maria Castroviejo & Bourcard Nesin on the outlook for e-commerce sales in Europe and the US. This podcast was based on the latest edition of the Beverage Market Buzz: Click here to read the report.  

Against all odds, most big brewers were able to grow their business and expand margins in 2022. Can they do it again in 2023, or will lagging cost pressures and backlash from recent price increases come back to bite them? The authors of Rabobank’s latest Beer Quarterly report share how brewers are working to control costs, boost revenues, and present their outlook on big-brewer balance sheets for the year ahead. Click here to read Rabobank’s latest Beer Quarterly report: “Have Cost Increases Finally Stopped?”

At Liquid Assets, we take pride in avoiding “how-I-built-this” stories. But once in a while, a brand comes along whose path to success is so unique, so unexpected, that the best and most insightful question you can ask is: “How?” Beatbox Beverages is one of those companies. Cofounders Aimy Steadman (COO) and Brad Shultz (CMO) share the origins of the brand, how they stay connected to young 21+ consumers, how they leverage beer distributors to get more attention and find the right accounts, and why they talk sustainability to the trade and not consumers.

Economist power duo Jane Foley and Christian Lawrence return to discuss the most important economic trends heading into the new year and what a potential recession, persistent inflation, labor shortages, and a cost-of-living crisis for lower-income consumers could mean for the beverage industry. 

In a show packed with passionate debate, fierce competition, and even mutiny, journalist Kate Bernot (Good Beer Hunting, Craft Beer & Brewing magazine) and Brewbound Managing Editor Jess Infante help us process the most important stories from 2022. Kate and Jess also do a bit of a takeover, hosting the second annual Liquid Assets Quiz-of-the-Year. Happy holidays, everyone! Thanks for tuning in and supporting yet another year of the show!

Using recent industry headlines for inspiration, we break down three big questions on the minds of many beverage executives: Could a change in investor mindset brought on by the collapse of cryptocurrencies be good for the beverage business? What new brands and partnerships are working best at big beverage companies? Has the hype surrounding marijuana and CBD finally burned out?

An energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine is devastating the European economy. There is a global shortage of diesel, the go-to fuel source for the trains, trucks, and ships that support economic activity around the world. And greenhouse gas emissions are rising as households, governments, and businesses scramble for affordable, yet dirtier, sources of energy. Rabobank’s energy strategist Joe DeLaura and head of FX strategy Jane Foley join us to explain how we arrived at this crisis and why it might take a decade to address the underlying causes.

E-commerce and digital marketing are blurring the lines between sales and marketing, but sales and marketing teams don’t always get along. Carolyn Brown, Head of Commerce Marketing at AB InBev, and Rebecca Christiansen, AB InBev’s Director of eCommerce, see this as an opportunity to help their sales and marketing teams better understand each other and increase collaboration, setting up the world’s largest brewer for success in the digital age.

While many CPG companies are still keeping records on clipboards, new technologies like cloud computing, connected factories, and AI are helping more innovative firms capture and analyze the data they need to navigate disruption, reduce waste, optimize operations, and ultimately improve their margins. Alongside two guests from Amazon Web Services, Justin Honaman and Michael Connor, we explore how CPG companies are taking advantage of these new technologies and the digital revolution that is reshaping supply chains around the world. 

The 100+ Accelerator is a partnership between AB InBev, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive that allows sustainability-focused startups to pilot their innovations within the supply chains of these four multinational CPG companies. In an unmissable conversation, Molun Zhang of The Coca-Cola Company and Carolina García Arbeláez of AB InBev discuss their companies’ biggest sustainability challenges and how this new collaborative approach, the 100+ Accelerator, is helping to solve them.   Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

As the world braces for recession, Rabobank’s world-class economists Jane Foley and Christian Lawrence join the Liquid Assets team to dissect the most recent economic news and share what indicators they’ll be watching in the months ahead.   Check out our 2022 economics preview from January: The Most Important Trends of 2022.   Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Could inflation force beverage companies to rethink their packaging choices? And could those changes have a positive impact on climate change? With help from Packaging and Supply Chains Analyst Xinnan Li, we explore what is driving up costs in packaging and some less disruptive changes companies can make to address those problems in the near term. Our next episode will be dedicated to structural changes that may be needed to address packaging costs, waste, and the climate crisis.   Links to our article series on costs and packaging: Part 1 – Inflation's Impact on Beverage Supply Chain and Packaging Decisions Part 2 – Rethinking Materials, Because It’s Not Just What’s Inside That Counts Part 3 – Location, Location, Location Part 4 – Improving Recycling To Bring Every Bottle Back Part 5 – Will Inflation Fuel the Rebirth of Reusable Packaging?

McBride Sisters is a black-owned brand that explicitly – though not exclusively - markets to black women. As a consequence, the media, retailers and distributors, often assume your brand must only appeal to black women or worse, that it might actively push away other consumer groups. With help from Co-founder and CEO, Andrea McBride, we learn more about one of the fastest growing wine brands in the US and summarily destroy the idea that marketing to an underserved consumer group could undermine your relationship with others.  

In a format designed to maximize controversy, the Liquid Assets team analyzes some of the industry’s most urgent and contentious opinions and predictions. Expect plenty of rapid-fire debates as they answer questions like "Is hard seltzer dead?" "In two years, will anyone be talking about NFTs?" and "Will the US ever legalize marijuana?"     Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Constellation Brands’ Vice President of E-commerce, Wayne Duan, returns alongside Sara Master, Constellation Brands’ Senior Director of E-commerce Marketing & Digital Shelf, to discuss how alcohol brands can take their e-commerce marketing to the next level. In this episode, we discuss: The importance of digital content and how brands can maximize the impact of the digital shelf The evolution and growing importance of performance marketing and retail media How category advisory and captaincy are evolving in the digital world Additional Resources: To access Rabobank’s 2022 Alcohol E-commerce Playbook, click here. Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Constellation Brands’ Vice President of E-commerce, Wayne Duan, and Adam Springer, Constellation's Director of E-commerce Category Advisory, help the Liquid Assets team breakdown the US online alcohol business. In the first of two episodes featuring the digital team from Constellation Brands, we tackle big picture questions like: How much has the pandemic changed the e-commerce landscape for US alcohol brands? How should alcohol companies approach their e-commerce investment? What does the average online alcohol shopper look like? In a world of tied-house laws, how can brands improve the online shopping experience? Additional resources: To access Rabobank’s 2022 Alcohol E-commerce playbook, click here. Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com (just list Bourcard Nesin as your “Relationship Manager”)

Inflation, war, and general chaos are disrupting every aspect of the beer value chain. To help brewers plan through this conflagration of unfortunate events, we invited Bart Watson, Chief Economist for the Brewers Association, and Michael Uhrich, former Chief Economist for the Beer Institute and now principal at Seventh Point Analytic Consulting, on to the show. With their help, we use a draft to identify the most important themes from the current inflation and supply chain crisis and how brewers might manage them. Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com