Another partnership with Republic National Distributing Co. (RNDC) has come to an end. This week, news broke that Anheuser-Busch InBev has terminated its partnership with RNDC in California and “several other markets,” effective immediately. Rumored for weeks to be the case, the news was officially confirmed in an email sent to the RNDC California team from RNDC West Region president Bryan Boeck, which was later posted to the r/RNDC subreddit.| VinePair
Editor’s note: On Monday, June 2nd, RNDC confirmed that it is withdrawing from California. Read the full story here. On Thursday, Brown-Forman — the spirits giant behind brands like Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve — announced major changes in its U.S. distribution, following the completion of a Request for Proposal (RFP) in 13 markets. Republic National Distributing Co. (RNDC), Brown-Forman’s longtime and current largest distribution partner, will see the biggest losses, dropping...| VinePair
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In America’s most lucrative drinks market, a multi-billion-dollar beverage-alcohol heavyweight coordinated behind the scenes to get its hands on one of the country’s most lucrative brands. The story may sound familiar to brewing-industry insiders, and it should. After all, it wasn’t even a decade ago that Reyes Beverage Group (RBG), subsidiary of the sixth-largest privately held company in the United States and by far its largest beer distribut...| VinePair
The collapse of Republic National Distributing Company’s California division at the beginning of this month is the biggest story in the booze business, for reasons I’ve reported at length here and elsewhere. But amid the epic, multibillion-dollar disintegration of the country’s second-largest distributor, another story about a different beverage-alcohol firm that was mismanaged into insolvency in the Golden State hit a dubious milestone. It’s been a year since a consumer-packaged-good...| VinePair
The general thesis of the craft-brewing “movement” — such as it was/is — at its founding midway through last century was that beer wasn’t a commodity until macrobrewers made it into one. This was a compelling thesis, and I think it’s borne out by the facts. But craft brewing is just one small segment of the overall beer industry, which is governed by theses of its own, such as the importance of market access, the superiority of scale, and the basic reality that if you can’t beat...| VinePair
Earlier this week, I broke the news here at VinePair that Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) plans to “withdraw” from California — like, the entire state — at the beginning of September. The second-largest wine and spirits distributor in the country has been collapsing in the Golden State for years, but its death spiral had tightened considerably since the top of 2025, when major brands began heading for the warehouse door more or less monthly. Now, it’s throwing in the t...| VinePair
Not even halfway into 2025, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) has hemorrhaged key supplier accounts in markets across the country, and especially in California. Now, VinePair has learned, the country’s second-largest wine-and-spirits distributor will be departing the Golden State entirely at the beginning of September. Over the weekend, social media was abuzz with versions of this rumor.| VinePair
Update: At 4:44am ET on 7/12/2023, roughly 12 hours after this story was published, Anchor Brewing Company issued a press release announcing it will cease operations and liquidate its business. VinePair will be updating reporting throughout the day. Clarification (7/20/23): A previous version of this article stated that multiple current and former workers had told VinePair that Russian River Brewing Co. was a potential suitor to acquire Anchor from Sapporo USA.| VinePair
