Earlier this week Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS attended Brooklyn Brewery’s annual distrib meeting. Sunday night, we hopped around from a rooftop bar and restaurant with plenty of Brooklyn brews to choose from, to a boat ride on the Hudson, sight-seeing the NYC skyscrapers, Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty, and back to land, roof and beer.
The following day everyone congregated at Brooklyn Bowl for multiple presentations on beer industry trends, including consultant, Joe Thompson, dubbed “sage” of the industry by Brooklyn co-founder Steve Hindy, talking about distrib systems of the future, plus a lively panel including Steve, Joe and our own Benj Steinman, moderated by Brooklyn’s Robin Ottaway. Lunch at the brewery was just around the corner from the Brooklyn Bowl. A handful of us were able to get a quick tour of the brewhouse to see some of the recent additions: new tanks, new bottling line (yet to be installed), new barrel aged stations for Garrett Oliver and team to experiment. Currently they have a cognac barrel aged brew in the works.
Brooklyn had plenty of good news to announce. Up 25% ytd thru Aug, likely to enter BA’s top 10 Craft in 2013. Should end the year up 22-23%, which will put Brooklyn around 210-215k bbls, said sales veep Robin Ottaway. Another 2 yrs of 18% growth and they’ll already be at 300k bbls, Robin noted. Brooklyn announced entry into Vegas mkt in 2014, enticed, among other reasons, by #1 on-premise account, Brooklyn Bowl, opening a new Vegas facility. Then too, impressive MASH program is bringing “an adventurous mixof the best cultural happenings from our neighborhood and yours; dinner parties, concerts, comedy, readings and humanity's favorite beverage,” to 11 different cities in 2013. Check out the promotional video, made by local Brooklyn filmmakers: http://vimeo.com/61980712.
See pictures below.
