Liquid Assets: A Beverage Industry Podcast

February may be the shortest month, but this year, it has felt like the longest. To break it all down, the Liquid Assets team discusses the biggest stories from the past few weeks: Monster Beverage Corp’s beer dealings, the US Treasury Department’s report on fairness and competition in the US alcohol industry, and, finally, the potential impact of a global public policy push to reduce alcohol consumption.

Get up-to-date on equity markets, labor, and inflation as Rabobank’s world-class economists Jane Foley and Christian Lawrence join the Liquid Assets team to dissect the economic stories you need to pay attention to in 2022.

Journalist Kate Bernot (Good Beer Hunting, Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine) and Brewbound Managing Editor Jess Infante help us debate the biggest stories from the past 12 months. Things then turn fiercely competitive, as we go head-to-head in Liquid Asset’s first ever “Quiz of the Year”. Happy New Year, everyone! Thanks for tuning in.

The old playbook of geographic expansion, consolidation, and premiumization were widely successful, but those strategies seem to have run their course. If big brewers want to grow, they’ll have look outside of the beer category. In this episode, we bring you success stories from around the globe of brewers diversifying their portfolio and outline a strategy that could help all beverage companies take full advantage of this changing world. Read our latest Beer Quarterly: research.rabobank.com

Earlier this year, Marian Leitner-Waldman, CEO of canned wine brand Archer Roose, found an unusual business partner: the actor, producer, and director Elizabeth Banks. Celebrity-backed brands are not a new phenomenon, but the trend is gaining considerable momentum in beverages. In this episode, Marian and Elizabeth (now Co-Owner and Chief Creative Officer at the company) help us understand celebrity partnerships as a modern brand-building strategy – discussing why they joined forces, where they expect their collaboration to pay dividends, and their plan moving forward.

Steve Chasen, VP of Trade Marketing at Campari America, helped execute one of the most successful on-premise brand-building campaigns in history: that of the Aperol spritz. Linden Pride, Co-Founder & President of Dante NYC, is the proprietor of Caffe Dante, which was named the "World’s Best Bar" in 2019 and played a major role in popularizing the eminently Instagrammable fluorescent-orange cocktail. Together, they help us answer an important question: In the age of social media, e-commerce, and celebrity brands, how do you build a brand in the on-premise?

Pinterest is a powerful platform for occasion-based marketing. Kym Lewis, their Partnership Manager for beverages, and Tina Pukonen, their Global Head of Vertical Strategy & Marketing, share their best practices for building an occasion-based marketing strategy, on Pinterest and beyond.

We started our conversation expecting to talk about the news, but so much of the news has been dominated by major beverage companies shaking up their portfolio. Whether it was Molson Coors shutting down 11 brands, Coca-Cola cutting its portfolio in half, PepsiCo selling its juice brands for USD 3bn or Boston Beer partnering with PepsiCo and Beam Suntory, we try to figure out how each of these decisions fit into a larger strategy and what they may mean for the future of the beverage industry.

Chris Swonger, CEO of Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and Responsibility.org, and David Ozgo, their Chief Economist, talk about regulations, tariffs, and the overall well-being of the US spirits industry.

They warned us about the return of inflation during their last appearance on Liquid Assets. Now, six months later, we welcome back the Rabobank economic duo, Jane Foley and Christian Lawrence to discuss this pesky inflation situation and dive deep into how the beverage industry is dealing with upstream price spikes and shortages.

We have just completed three years of producing Liquid Assets, and it is high time for some joyful navel-gazing. In this episode, we look back at three years of the show and discuss what we got right and what we got wrong, and we send some love to the industry leaders who inform and inspire us and fill us with jealous rage.

This week, we are joined by Wine Industry Person of the Year, Heidi Scheid, and leading industry analyst Dale Stratton to discuss how quickly the wine industry will recover from Covid-19 and the opportunity for the wine industry to tap into health and wellness trends.

When a beverage company wants to create a new product – anything from a new line extension to a non-alcoholic drink – they turn to companies like Kerry Group. John Kelly and Paul Villis take a break from their work at Kerry Group to discuss product, ingredient, and flavor innovation trends.

In this episode, we're joined by Rabobank analysts Francois Sonneville and Maria Afonso as well as Brent Atthill, CEO of RMI Analytics and former global procurement director at SAB Miller and AB InBev, to take a look upstream at the malting barley supply chain, how it is evolving, and how it is linked to the overall health of the beer industry around the globe. To learn more: Rabobank’s Malting Industry Outlook Podcast: What Will Australia Do With All of Its Barley?

Our guest Wayne Blum is currently Director of US E-Commerce Strategy and Partnerships at Diageo, but before that he led digital for Nestlé Waters and their direct-to-consumer (DTC) business, ReadyRefresh. Wayne joins us to discuss why the world’s biggest brands are interested in going DTC, the challenges they face in the channel, and what’s behind the success of the world’s largest and most profitable DTC programs in the food and beverage world. For more reading, check out our latest reports on DtC Strategy: Are You Doing DtC All Wrong? Community Commerce: A New Model for Beverages

For Matt Dukes and Rachel Vodofsky, it wasn’t enough to build one successful digitally native brand. They built two! Leveraging learnings and consumer insights from their wine-tasting subscription service, Vinebox, they were able to successfully build a stand-alone sister brand, Usual. On this episode, Rachel and Matt explain what it takes to build a sustainable direct-to-consumer business, create value for consumers, and perhaps even revolutionize your brand development pipeline. For more, check out our latest reports on direct-to-consumer strategy: Are You Doing Direct-to-Consumer All Wrong? Community Commerce: A New Model for Beverages (for Rabobank clients only)

On March 11, 2020, the WHO officially designated the Covid-19 crisis a pandemic. One year later, we’ve asked NBWA chief economist Lester Jones to help us reflect on how beer – or should we say hard seltzer – consumption has changed and ask for an update on the recovery of bars and restaurants. Lastly, we have a lively debate about the most important trends facing America’s beer distributors: hard seltzer, RTDs, and digital transformation.

Our guest this week is Pat Roney, CEO and Founding Partner of Vintage Wine Estates. Pat’s company is going to merge with Bespoke Capital Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The USD 690m deal may not be the biggest we see in 2021, but it is super important and could set off a new trend in M&A, with massive repercussions for the wider beverage industry. For more on the latest trends in the wine and spirits industry, check out Rabobank’s latest Wine Quarterly report: Click here!

Following a tough year, 2021 hasn’t had the most auspicious beginning. Will things improve? To better understand the economic outlook for the year ahead, we invited Rabobank’s Senior Markets Analyst, Christian Lawrence, and Rabobank’s Head of FX Strategy, Jane Foley, to discuss markets, the economy, and what a new US administration could mean for beverage companies.

Luckily for you, our last episode of 2020 is totally Covid-free. No mention of 'unprecedented times,' 'uncertainty,' or 'trying times,' and definitely no use of the phrase 'the new normal.' Steve, Jim, and Bourcard break down three stories that caught their attention and are (mostly) not Covid-19 related: Bang! and PepsiCo’s tumultuous first year of marriage, the growing investments in alcohol e-commerce, and what beverage M&A trends tell us about how companies are thinking about innovation.