Liquid Assets: A Beverage Industry Podcast

In a recent and much anticipated report, Senior Analyst Francois Sonneville modeled the spot market and actual prices paid among public beer companies in North America, Europe, and China. We discuss his findings and his ideas on how brewers can better control production costs and where future cost pressure may come from.

Be sure to download Francois’ report: Beer COGS dashboard Q4 2023

Clients can sign up for research here: Research.Rabobank.com

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

At this year’s Access LIVE conference in Las Vegas, we sat down with Breakthru Beverage Group’s Head of Digital and E-commerce Mike Boswell for an impromptu conversation on alcohol marketplaces. We explore the relevance and value of marketplaces at different levels of the value chain, discussing Drizly on the consumer-facing side and Provi for a business-to-business perspective. 

For more on this topic, be sure to read our latest report: Why Drizly never delivered.

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

Is neo-prohibitionism a threat to the alcohol business? Will GLP-1 agonists decrease alcohol sales? Are soft drinks companies losing interest in their effort to develop alcohol brands? To debate these and other controversial topics, the RaboResearch Beverage team plays one of our favorite games: Buy, Sell, Hold!

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services. 

As the largest wine and spirits distributor in North America, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits has a unique perspective on the US alcohol market. Senior leaders David Chaplin (Chief Growth Officer), John Wittig (Chief Commercial Officer), and Alan Wizeman (Chief Digital Officer) share their views on the health of the US alcohol market, consumer trends, distributor inventories, and the fast evolving world of business-to-business e-commerce.

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services. 

Economic power duo Jane Foley and Christian Lawrence return to discuss the outlook for a recession, interest rates, inflation, and consumer spending and how these economic trends could impact food and beverage companies as we enter the new year.

Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: research.rabobank.com.

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services. 

For the first time in more than a year, the Liquid Assets team gets to do a recording in the same room. They take turns picking news stories that speak to wider trends impacting the beverages industry.

Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

Bourbon has been booming for years, but that growth was preceded by a half century of hardship, hard work, and good luck that laid the groundwork for the soaring category we see today. Heaven Hill’s Max Shapira and Kate Latts lived through the good times and the bad. We tap that experience to understand the winding path that has led American whiskey to its current zenith and what more recent trends could mean for the future of this “distinctively” American spirit. Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

David Broughton, a journalist and director of research for Sports Business Journal, discusses the history of sports advertising, how it is evolving, and what recent changes to the industry mean for building brands on the back of humanity’s most beloved pastimes.

Rabobank clients can sign up for our research via this link: Research.Rabobank.com

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

With one of our favorite guests, consumer foods specialist Maria Castroviejo, and one of our favorite formats (a draft!), we debate the strategies that will drive beverage M&A deals over the next 12 to 18 months.

Rabobank clients can read our report The New Deal Environment by logging in to our website. 

Note: The content and opinions presented within this podcast are not intended as investment advice, and the opinions rendered are that of the individuals and not Rabobank or its affiliates and should not be considered a solicitation or offer to sell or provide services.

Margie Lehrman, CEO of the American Craft Spirits Association, and Bart Watson, Chief Economist for the Brewers Association, team up to discuss the winds of change blowing through the craft industry. Not long ago, the seas of craft beer and spirits were all smooth sailing as operators expanded into new, undiscovered territory. As costs rise, consumers shrug, and investors start to feel uneasy, many craft operators have been forced to batten down the hatches and rethink their long-term strategy, lest they should be blown off course. 

Steve and Jim invite Liquid Assets listeners to join them in congratulating Bourcard for becoming a father… on Father’s Day. Congrats Buki!!!

There are two major ways that beverage companies are changing their ingredients to fight inflation. Some brands are looking to cut costs by replacing their more expensive ingredients with cheaper ones. Others brands are developing new products or modifying existing products to increase revenues by adding more functional ingredients or making healthier versions of those products. We are joined by John Kelly and Paul Villis from the Kerry Group. They help us better understand what drives these decisions and share their experiences from helping brands manage this process.

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, Andréa 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:

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:

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

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.

This week we partnered with our sister podcast, Consumer Foods To Go, to discuss how bars, restaurants, and manufacturers have survived Covid-19 thus far and how quickly they can recover (fingers crossed) once the pandemic is over.

Listeners of Liquid Assets will love the work done by the team at Consumer Foods To Go. If you are interested in trends in retail, foodservice, or packaged foods, you can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app.

We tour the world of non-alcoholic spirits and cocktails through the eyes of the people who built its most recognizable and pioneering brands. Ben Branson, CEO and founder of Seedlip, and Claire Warner, co-founder of Aecorn, discuss their brands, how the industry should approach the non-alcoholic spirits category, and their partnership with Diageo.

A few months back, the outlook for specialty coffee was dire. Industry leaders feared that more than half of the coffee shops in the US would permanently close. To our delight and surprise, small coffee shops and roasters have proved far more resilient. Peter Giuliano, Chief Research Officer for the Specialty Coffee Association, shares how coffee shops have pivoted and become more digital and community-focused to not only survive but thrive in the current environment. We also discuss how the shift to at-home coffee consumption could reshape the industry long term, particularly the kind of coffee available at your local grocery store.

Thirsty for growth, beverage companies are shrugging off the yoke of tradition in search of greener pastures. Whether invading adjacent categories or creating new ones, big companies are pouring investment into new spaces where their skills and distribution offer them a distinct advantage. In this episode, we take a look at these ‘white spaces’ from four different angles.

Social media is starting to blur the lines between marketing and e-commerce. Rachel Tipograph, a leader in the digital marketing world and CEO of MikMak, helps us breakdown the basics: what social commerce is, why it's important to your business, and how you can use it to grow your brands.

Liquid Assets gets newsy! Instead of covering one topic this week, we help you catch up on some of the biggest news from recent weeks – accompanied by our expert commentary, of course. Later, we spend some time with Rabobank senior analyst Sudip Sinha on his playbook for capturing attention and sales from consumers stuck at home.

Just days before pubs were set to reopen in the UK, we caught up with Steve Alton from the British Institute of Innkeeping. As CEO of the leading membership organization supporting on-trade establishments in the UK, Steve has a unique perspective on the well-being of the UK pub scene and how it is changing as a consequence of Covid-19. We talk about the role of the pub, digital transformations in hospitality, the impact on big beer vs. craft, and more. It’s bigger than just a UK story and will no doubt resonate with operators in the US, Europe, and the rest of the world.

Tom Cole is CEO of RNDC, one of the largest distributors in the United States. Tom came on the show to discuss how his company is helping bars and restaurants navigate the reopening process, how distributors are supporting growth of e-commerce, and the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the wholesaler business (hint: more consolidation). This episode was recorded on June 17th.

Historically, companies could choose between two things: making lots of money or making the world a better place. Our guest, a leading voice in the world of marketing for over two decades, would argue that the opposite is true. If you want your business to do well, then you've got to do good – not just talk about it. We are seeing an example of this play out in real time. People around the world are pushing back against systemic racism. Consumers are demanding companies and brands do more than show solidarity; they are demanding action. Our guest, Ian Schafer, is an entrepreneur and former digital marketing executive who worked on campaigns for companies like PepsiCo, Diageo, Nestlé, and Unilever. His latest venture, Kindred, leverages live events (both digital and in-person) to galvanize purpose-led business transformation around the world. In this episode, Ian explains why purpose and accountability are so integral to the future of brand building and so much more.

The data provided by Nielsen is a critical asset for the beverage industry, helping leaders understand and plan around the impacts of the current crisis. Our guest, Danny Brager, is SVP of Nielsen’s US Beverage Alcohol Practice. In this episode, Danny takes us beyond the headline numbers to answer some pressing questions about the recent dynamics of consumer behavior and how past recessions have impacted consumption, and he offers a framework for how he is looking at the future.

Note: This episode was recorded on May 18, 2020.

A recent survey of US craft brewers suggests that 60% of US craft breweries will close if severe social distancing guidelines aren’t lifted by June. As chief economist for the Brewers Association, Bart Watson (Dr. Watson, actually) was one of the people who produced that survey. With help from Bart, we take the pulse of the craft beer business and discuss whether we will recognize it after the Covid-19 crisis is over.

What will US and global GDP growth look like in 2020? What will the recovery from the current recession look like? What indicators should we be watching to know if things are getting better or worse? Rabobank’s fantastic Markets Strategist, Christian Lawrence, sits down to answer these questions and more as we discuss the macroeconomic impacts of Covid-19. This episode was recorded on April 17 and features Rabobank’s Senior Market Strategist Christian Lawrence, Senior Beverage Analyst Jim Watson, and Beverage Analyst Bourcard Nesin.

With the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting every aspect of daily life and business around the globe, we turned to our international team (Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America) for a briefing on how Covid-19 is impacting consumers and businesses in their regions and what steps governments are taking to control its spread.

We recorded this episode early morning on Monday March 23rd.

For the third and final episode recorded onsite during the Unified Wine Symposium, we were lucky enough to sit down with the one and only Mario Zeponni to discuss all things related to wine M&A. There’s probably no one better to talk about the M&A scene in the California. 

Few people know the bulk wine market better than Glenn Proctor. Glenn is a partner at Ciatti, a global bulk wine brokerage firm. We bumped into Glenn at the Unified Wine Symposium in Sacramento and convinced him to sit down for an impromptu podcast recording on how the bulk wine market is affecting both growers and wineries – and how some companies are taking advantage of the current low-cost environment to innovate, build relationships, and create new brands.

With help from the wine industry legend, Dr. Mike Veseth, we debate how the US wine industry can overcome recent challenges and return to growth. Mike is an author, academic, lecturer, and editor of the popular blog, The Wine Economist. 

This is the first of three episodes we recorded on-site at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium and features Rabobank’s Global Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and Analyst Bourcard Nesin

Wayne Duan and Ben Galvin from Constellation Brands return for the second episode in our two-part series on e-commerce. This time around, we look at the future of e-commerce in the alcohol industry – and how brands can take an active role in shaping what the industry will look like in 2025.

Wayne Duan and Ben Galvin help lead Constellation Brand’s digital strategy. In this episode – the first in a two-part series – Wayne and Ben share their thoughts as we breakdown the biggest trends in alcohol e-commerce and discuss the most urgent challenges the alcohol industry faces in the digital world.

Rabobank’s team of economists says there is an 80% chance of a recession in 2020. For our last episode of 2019, we sat down with our Senior Market Strategist, Christian Lawrence, to talk about the economic outlook for 2020. Then we discuss what a downturn could mean for consumer behavior, investor behavior, and, ultimately, food & beverage companies. 

Recorded: December 10, 2019

This episode features Senior Market Strategist Christian Lawrence, Global Beverage Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, Senior Analyst Jim Watson, and Analyst Bourcard Nesin.

It’s been a big year for M&A in the beverage alcohol industry. In this episode, we review the most important deals of 2019: the big, the small, and the unexpected. From the surge of craft-beer and spirits acquisitions to blockbuster, billion-dollar deals, we tell you what happened, how it affects your business, and what it means for the future of the industry. Please note: this episode was recorded on Nov. 22nd 2019.

This episode features Rabobank’s global beverage strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analyst Jim Watson, and analyst Bourcard Nesin, the millennial responsible for killing everything that was fun in the 1980s. 

Brooklyn Brewery has just launched their first non-alcoholic beer in the US, called Special Effects, after its resounding success in Europe. Non-alc beer may often be seen as an alternative to traditional beer, but our guest, Brooklyn CEO Eric Ottaway, insists that Special Effects offers incremental sales, bringing “more places, more occasions, and more people” into the beer category. In the US, non-alc beer sales are tiny but growing quickly, and despite large brewers reportedly prioritizing the category, we’ve seen very little innovation in non-alc beer. In this episode, Eric sits down with the RaboResearch team to discuss his company’s surprising push into and refreshing approach to the non-alc category and whether non-alc beer can gain a meaningful foothold with US consumers.

Hard seltzer brands like White Claw and Truly have stormed onto the scene, injecting growth, excitement, and more than a little anxiety into the struggling US beer industry. Light and bubbly, and imminently 'sessionable,' hard seltzer has become a category unto itself. Its viral popularity offers big brewers an opportunity to draw female consumers away from the wine & spirits category – something they’ve struggled to achieve for decades. But, in order to do so, they face an unfamiliar challenge: Can they capture market share from 'big seltzer?'

All around the world, the growth of out-of-home coffee consumption has attracted a wave of investment from coffee players and non-coffee players alike. Coffee companies are facing new competition from all sides. Startups like Luckin’ are using tech and delivery to take new business models from zero to V60 in no time flat. Quick-service restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores are using coffee to attract new consumers throughout the day – often at the expense of established players. Since there is no single-origin for the changes in the out-of-home coffee world, we pour over the new businesses, strategies, and technologies that define the future of the industry.

This international episode of the podcast features Rabobank’s global strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and senior analyst Sudip Sinha calling in from Manila, Phillipines, and senior analyst Jim Watson and analyst Bourcard Nesin calling in from New York City.

Kombrewcha, a hard kombucha company, joined the ZX Ventures portfolio in 2016. Kombucha is now a billion-dollar global industry. And while the famously tart, probiotic beverage has naturally occurring alcohol, Kombrewcha (4.4% ABV) was the first brand to take things one step further and introduce hard kombucha to the alcohol space. In this episode, Liz Tomic from ZX Ventures makes an encore performance alongside Kombrewcha CEO, Garret Bredenkamp, to explain how they work together to perfect their product, scale their business, and maintain the entrepreneurial spirit along the way.

This episode also features Liquid Assets mainstays Jim Watson and Bourcard Nesin.

ZX Ventures is AB InBev’s global growth and innovation group. They are best known as a corporate venture fund, boasting an impressive and far-reaching portfolio that includes Swish Beverages (Babe Wine), Hiball Energy, RateBeer, Master of Malt, and Tripel Karmeliet, among others. But ZX Ventures is much more than a corporate VC. Their 1,500-person team is tackling everything from e-commerce and brand experience to international craft. In this episode, Liz Tomic, Global Director of ZX Ventures’ Explore Fund, explains how ZX operates, her team’s investment strategy, and how they balance independence and accountability while driving innovation at the world’s largest beer company.

This episode also features Rabobank’s global beverage strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analyst Jim Watson, and analyst Bourcard Nesin.

Jackson Family Wines has achieved a 33% drop in greenhouse gas emissions and a 60% reduction in the water required to produce a bottle of wine over the last decade. In February, the company, together with Familia Torres, announced a new working group, International Wineries for Climate Action, with a mission to decarbonize the wine industry. On this episode, Katie Jackson and Julien Gevreau from Jackson Family Wines share their bold vision for a more sustainable wine industry and the progress they’ve made in their own operations to reduce emissions and increase efficiency – all while becoming more profitable in the process.

This episode was recorded on location at JFW headquarters in Santa Rosa, California, and is hosted by Rabobank’s global beverages strategist, Stephen Rannekleiv and also features Rabobank’s Andre Baladi.

This episode replaces an episode titled ‘JFW – Preview’ which was accidentally published on July 23.

This week, two fantastic guests help us understand the drivers of M&A in craft spirits and what both founders and investors must do to create a successful long-term partnership. We highlight best practices – and potential pitfalls – in executing an acquisition.

Nick Papanicolaou, VP at Pernod Ricard’s New Brand Ventures division, offers buyer insights. He helped execute investments in Smooth Ambler Spirits, mescal brand Del Maguey and, most recently, Rabbit Hole Distilling.

Emily Pennington, content manager at Park Street Imports, represents the craft brand point of view.

Lastly, this episode also features Rabobank’s global strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and analyst Bourcard Nesin.

Back in November, Diageo sold 19 low-end brands – what they called 'non-priority' brands – to Sazerac for USD 550m. Then last month, Constellation Brands sold 30 of its own wine and spirits brands to E&J Gallo for USD 1.7bn. These transactions share a lot of similarities – both involve public companies selling low-end assets to a privately held competitor. Could this kind of shake-out of the bottom shelf become a trend – not only for alcohol, but for the entire beverage category?

Today's episode features global strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analyst Maria Castroviejo, senior analyst Jim Watson, and that 'other guy,' analyst Bourcard Nesin.

CBD is the most exciting and perhaps controversial new ingredient in decades. Despite a government crackdown on illegal sales, consumers are clamoring for CBD-infused products. On this week’s episode, we explore what is driving demand for CBD, and we lay out the best- and worst-case scenarios for the development of the CBD market.

This episode features a full house for the first time since December: Global Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, Senior Analyst Jim Watson, and Labradoodle Analyst Bourcard Nesin.

Nimble, fast-to-market, passionate, and ready to drive positive change, startups are disrupting every aspect of the food & beverage industry. Small companies represent an endless resource for innovative ideas that can help established brands adopt new technology and reconnect with consumers. The question is not should you work with smaller companies, but how?

Nina Meijers and Anne Greven are trying to answer that question. They manage FoodBytes!, a global pitch competition where innovative food & beverage startups share their ideas with investors and industry leaders. More than 2,000 mission-driven companies have applied to the FoodBytes! platform, giving Nina and Anne a front-row seat to the latest trends in sustainable innovation. In this episode, they tell us why large companies should partner with would-be disruptors, and highlight the most interesting and impactful innovation themes they’ve seen so far.

This week, we welcome two guests from Chicago-based startup Provi to discuss ways in which e-commerce could change the distribution of alcohol. Open e-commerce platforms like Amazon have reshaped the consumer shopping experience, but the concept of an open marketplace like Provi is new in the USD 160bn world of beverage alcohol distribution. Provi VP Nathan Mansperger and Founder & CEO Taylor Katzmann help us explore how the broader shift towards digitization could impact marketing, data, and day-to-day operations in the three-tier system.

The Wall Street Journal’s beverage reporter, Jennifer Maloney, helps the Rabobank team unpack a busy 2018 and predict the most important trends for 2019. In this fiery episode, everyone gets to choose one major story from 2018... then the group debate how it will impact the future of the beverage industry. At the end of the episode, we vote for our 'Story of the Year.' Will it be cannabis and Constellation Brand’s USD 3.9bn investment in Canopy Growth, or will it be e-commerce, soft drinks companies entering the coffee business, or changes to beverage alcohol distribution? You’ll have to tune in to find out.

This episode also features the usual crew: global strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analyst Jim Watson, and analyst Bourcard Nesin.

Ready-to-drink coffee has changed the way coffee companies can connect with consumers. Rather than brewing at home and waiting in line at a coffee shop, people can now buy coffee the same way they buy soda or energy drinks, unlocking enormous growth opportunities for the industry. The US RTD coffee market is worth around USD 4bn, and our analysts believe it could double in the next five to seven years. Our guests on this episode come from Rise Brewing Co., one of the fastest-growing, most innovative companies in the rapidly-evolving RTD coffee space. Co-founder Jarrett McGovern and COO Melissa Kalimov talk route-to-market, category blurring, and innovation in one of our favourite episodes to date on the Liquid Assets podcast.

Fausto Zapata is Co-Founder and CEO of El Silencio- one of the largest and fastest-growing ultra-premium mezcal brands in the United States. Since starting the brand in 2013, Fausto and his team of master storytellers have overcome fierce competition by using innovative, experiential marketing campaigns, infused with art, and driven by creative ethos. In this episode, Fausto sits down with the Rabobank Beverage team to discuss the secrets of his success and the wild ideas that are propelling El Silencio to the top of the craft spirits world.  

The beverage market is more crowded and fragmented than ever, and building a long term relationship with consumers can feel, well, impossible. In this episode we explore two companies that beat the competition and built a dedicated consumer base doing something innovative: let people buy-in to their business… literally.

Despite producing 80% of the world’s coffee, smallholder coffee farmers are struggling to survive. Smallholders are key to coffee sustainability and a core component of the third wave coffee movement and premiumization. How can the industry help smallholders improve yields and coffee quality? And then how does that benefit larger roasters and traders? To answer these questions, we recruited Isabel van Bemmelen, managing director of the Progreso Foundation, to discuss smallholders, big roasters and her organization’s block chain-backed trading platform, Beyco. This Episode also features Global Strategist, Stephen Rannekleiv, Sr. Analyst Jim Watson, and Analyst Bourcard Nesin.

What’s going on in the beverage world? Our coffee comes in a can, our seltzer is spiked, and our beer is aged in whiskey barrels. Consumers are fervently demanding more products that blur category lines. If beverage companies want a piece of the pie, they need to re-evaluate their historical product portfolio, their structure, and their strategy for product development.

In part two of our recording with Wayne Duan, VP of ecommerce with Constellation Brands, we dive head-first into the deep-end of digital strategy. What is search engine optimization and how can beverage companies make SEO work for them? How can small organizations thrive in a world of big data? And how can marketing teams and product development teams use data to supercharge performance? We answer all this and more in this week’s episode.

In addition to our fantastic guest, this episode features the classic  Rabobank lineup:  Stephen Rannekleiv – Global Strategist, Jim Watson – senior analyst, and Bourcard Nesin – Associate Analyst.

How should alcohol companies approach the e-commerce challenge?  Wayne Duan, VP of ecommerce at Constellation Brands, joins us for back-to-back episodes to discuss digital commerce and the lessons he’s learned as an executive at both a national retailer and a beverage alcohol supplier.

In this week’s episode, the team digs into digitally influenced sales, content management and how to hire and build an ecommerce team from the ground-up.

Warning: the phrase “hipster, hacker, hustler” is used on multiple occasions.

The price of mainstream beer has been falling for decades, and consumers increasingly see brands like Bud Light and Coors Light as value brands. As these iconic brews decline (in price and volume), they leave a USD 7 billion hole in the US beer market. At the moment, this mutli-billion dollar whitespace is being filled by aspirational, light lager brands like Michelob Ultra, Corona, and Modelo, but these represent a fraction of this new segment’s potentional. Tune in to learn how macro-beer, craft, and foreign brewers can take advantage of this “new mainstream.”

This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages, Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Associate Beverage Analyst

Cheryl Murphy Durzy is the founder and CEO of Liberation Distribution (LibDib) and she joins the RaboResearch Beverages team to discuss the future of the three-tier system. Cheryl started LibDib after years of frustration finding distributors for her family’s wine label. LibDib is a web-based distribution portal that ensures every “maker” in the US has access to distribution and brings suppliers and retailers closer together. In addition to discussing LibDib’s impact on the beverage alcohol marketplace, each member of the panel lays down a prediction for how the three-tier system will evolve over the next 10 years.

This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; James Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst and Special Guest Cheryl Murphy Durzy, CEO and Founder of LibDib

Craft spirits are an explosive trend across the world. The craft spirits movement is just starting to emerge, but in virtually every developed economy, there are more distilleries and more craft brands than ever before.

Can craft spirits follow the path of craft beer and seize a huge share of the market from mainstream distillers? On this week's episode of Liquid Assets, the team explains why craft spirits will continue to grow, but won’t to be as disruptive to large distillers as craft beer was to macro-breweries.

This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Maria Castroviejo, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst.

Rabobank’s resident beer guru Francois Sonneville and the rest of the team sit down to discuss the future of beer and how breweries can deliver for stakeholders and consumers in the face of stagnating volumes. This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Francois Sonneville, Senior Beverage Analyst; Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst.

By 2022, grocery retailers stand to lose USD 3.9bn in annual alcohol revenues if online sales continue to lag behind as the rest of grocery goes digital. In this bonus episode of Liquid Assets, the team dissects the future of beverage alcohol sales in supermarkets as consumers move their grocery spending online.

Where do you see the coffee industry in ten years? On this week’s Liquid Assets, the team tackles some difficult questions.

This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst and special guest Ross Colbert, Global Sector Head - Beverages

Marijuana legalization is spreading like wildfire across the U.S. Nine states have legalized adult-use (recreational) marijuana and Canada will likely have national recreational sales by the end of the year. On the second episode of the Liquid Assets podcast, the Rabobank Beverage team takes a look at how beverage alcohol could be affected and what they can do to prepare for a future with legal cannabis. This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst

In the inaugural episode of Liquid Assets, the Rabobank beverage team discusses why online grocery is poised to drive online alcohol sales. They also debate which brands will be winners and which brands will be losers as online grocery spreads across the country.

This episode features: Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst