Shortly before a federal judge placed Uncle Nearest, Inc. into receivership last month, he offered a frank assessment of the business acumen of the liquor firm’s husband-and-wife co-founders Fawn and Keith Weaver. “It looks like you’re out over your skis,” said the Hon. Charles E. Atchley. As far as euphemisms go, it was a pretty generous way to describe over $100 million in defaulted loans. But the point is salient, and widely applicable within the world of beverage alcohol. The arti...| VinePair
“You know when you meet somebody on the street, you ask them ‘How are you doing today?’” Dan Carey, the co-founder of Wisconsin’s beloved New Glarus Brewing Co., told me on a 2024 episode of VinePair’s award-winning “Taplines” podcast. “At a Craft Brewers Conference, it [used to be] ‘How much are you up this year?’ It was a game to say, ‘Oh, we’re up 10 percent,’ ‘Well, we’re up 80 percent!’” “Brewers don’t ask that anymore,” he added, chuckling wryly...| VinePair
In the late aughts, I did my weekly beer shopping at a Whole Foods on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Craft beer was exploding so much at that time that when the supermarket opened in 2007 it had an entire separate store just for beer. For a few years, it was arguably the best beer store in the entire city. The Bowery Beer Room, as it was known, had cooler after cooler of the hottest IPAs of the moment, six fresh taps for growler fills, grain stations for homebrewers, and a large selection of ...| VinePair
Bud Light was the undisputed best-selling beer in the country. Twisted Tea was just hitting its long-simmering breakout run. Reyes Beverage Group was still called Reyes Beer Division. It was a different beer industry when I first took the helm here at Hop Take in September 2022. Which, duh: Time is linear, and change is constant, etc., etc. Still, my tenure here each week has coincided with some of the most tectonic shifts the American brewing business has known since… I mean… certainly t...| VinePair
Craft beer is struggling, but its market challenges aren’t unique; specialty coffee is facing similar hurdles. What can roasters learn?| Perfect Daily Grind
Brewers often find new ways to repackage old ideas, especially in regard to lagers. But none are as successful as Coors Banquet — here's why.| 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
