Shanken’s Impact Newsletter, the leading source for exclusive data on the alcoholic beverage industry in the United States and internationally. Every issue features up-to-the-minute data and analysis on trends in the worldwide drinks market.
LEADING EXECUTIVES FROM ACROSS THE drinks industry descended on New York City on March 9 for the 41st Annual Impact Marketing Seminar. Hosted by M. Shanken Communications chairman Marvin R. Shanken, the marquee event featured presentations from major players across all three tiers of the beverage alcohol business. The proceedings kicked off with a wel-coming reception at the Kimpton Hotel Eventi hosted by Paul Duffy, chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America. The following day, Seminar attendees were addressed by seven of the industry’s leading lights, each with a unique perspective on the business: Takeshi Niinami, president and CEO, Suntory Holdings Ltd.; Paul Duffy, chairman and CEO, Pernod Ricard USA; James Thompson, chief marketing and in-novation officer, Diageo North America; Wayne Chaplin, CEO, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits; Mike…
IT’S BEEN A DYNAMIC PERIOD ACROSS THE DRINKS industry’s distributor tier, with the creation of Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru Beverage shifting the wholesale consolidation trend into high gear. Both Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru have largely completed their integrations and are now focused on leveraging their increased scale to deliver added value to their existing suppliers—and draw new partners to their respective networks. But while these two behemoths look to increase their share of the national wholesale market, our exclusive ranking of the top U.S. spirits and wine wholesalers shows that fellow heavy-weights like RNDC and Young’s are also in growth mode. All of the above are pro-jecting solid progress for 2017. Meanwhile, change is afoot at one of the world’s biggest spirits suppliers. Bacardi Ltd. has unveiled a succession plan…
BACARDI LTD. HAS APPOINTED A 20-year company veteran, Mahesh Mad-havan, as its new CEO. Madhavan, who was most recently Ba-cardi’s regional president of Asia, Middle East and Af-rica, will take over from cur-rent CEO Mike Dolan on April 1, 2018. In the interim, the 54-year-old Madhavan will transition to a new role as Bacardi’s regional president of Europe, effective imme-diately. He’ll be based in Ge-neva until becoming CEO, and then move to Bacardi corporate headquarters in Bermuda. During his two decades at Bacardi, Madhavan has served as managing di-rector of markets including India, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as the regions of South Asia and South-east Asia. In addition to his current regional role, he’s also been a member of Bacardi’s Global Leadership Team since 2014. “Our board of…
CAPTAIN MORGAN IS BEING EXTENDED WITH A NEW SHOT-FRIENDLY, COCO- nut-flavored offering called LocoNut. The newcomer is billed as a summer-inspired chilled shot option that blends Caribbean rum and spices with natural flavors in-cluding real coconut liqueur. LocoNut, which is 40-proof and retails at about $15 a 750-ml., is packaged in a round-shaped bottle reminiscent of a coconut. The packaging also boasts a “scratch-and-sniff” aspect: when scratched, it gives off a sweet coconut aroma. Diageo says the launch of LocoNut stemmed from positive response to another shot-focused Captain Morgan extension, Cannon Blast, which is blend of rum, Caribbean citrus and chipotle and jalepeño pepper and has a cannonball-shaped bottle that glows in black light. Last fall, the company also featured a limited Jack-O’Blast pumpkin spiced offering with similar packaging. Overall,…
U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE ALLYNE ROSS has dismissed Empire Merchants’ law-suit against fellow wholesaler Breakthru Beverage. The lawsuit, which sent shockwaves through the drinks indus-try, alleged that Breakthru subsidiary Reliable Churchill conspired with re-tailers to illegally ship alcohol from Maryland to New York, depriving Em-pire of sales and harming its business in the process. Empire claimed it might have lost as much as $100 million due to the alleged smuggling scheme. According to Empire’s complaint, Maryland retailers aligned with Reliable Churchill illicitly shipped liquor to New York retailers (where liquor taxes are some five times as high as Mary-land’s) to sell in New York. The com-plaint states that New York retailers would purchase the liquor in large cash sums—as much as $20,000 at a time—and that the Maryland retailers would then…
AFTER A DIFFICULT PERIOD IN WHICH it’s been under siege from new competi-tors in its core on-premise shot occa-sion, Jägermeister is going back on the offensive this spring with a new $15 million above-the-line campaign and packaging update aimed at reclaiming its former position as the top liqueur brand in the U.S. market. In 2015, Germany’s Mast–Jägermeis-ter SE acquired longtime U.S. importer Sidney Frank Importing Co., which had built the brand into an on-premise juggernaut, reaching a high of nearly 2.9 million cases in 2008. Since then, Jägermeister has seen its U.S. volume erode, slipping 4.6% to 1.7 million cases in 2016, according to Impact Da-tabank. Now led by veteran drinks ex-ecutive Jeff Popkin as CEO, Sidney Frank Importing has been renamed Mast–Jägermeister U.S. On May 1, the brand will…
