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Beer Tue Sep 08 2015
Crafting Deals with Big Beer
It's difficult to scale up in the beer (and cider) world without losing some of that indie cred. Two examples came up in the past week.
First, Greg Hall of Virtue Cider Co., announced that he'd sold a majority stake in the cider company to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the same global conglomarate that bought Goose Island Beer Company, the brewery he ran with his father, John Hall, for 23 years. Virtue will use Goose Island's brewery to bottle, keg and distribute its ciders. The agreement gives Virtue a big cash infusion and access to better distribution channels than it had on its own.
And today, Lagunitas Brewing, based in Petaluma, California but with a large brewery and increasing presence in Chicago, announced a 50-50 partnership deal with Heineken International. The deal provides the sixth largest craft brewery in the country access to Heineken's global production and distribution network; owner Tony Magee will continue to as president of Lagunitas, and operations will apparently stay basically the same.
