The Brewbound Minute: Lord Hobo Leadership Changes, Pandemic Drinking & More

Justin Kendall [00:08] Welcome to the Brewbound Minute. All the beer industry news you need to know in about 3 minutes or so. My name is Justin Kendall, and I am the editor of Brewbound, and I am joined by Brewbound reporter extraordinaire, Jess Infante. Jess, are you ready to run down all the headlines that, uh, you wrote this week?

Speaker 2 [00:27] I am, you wrote some of this too, but there's a lot of news this week, so I think we should jump right in.

Justin Kendall [00:33] Lots of headlines, so let's start the clock about now. The big news of the week, Lord Hobo founder Daniel Lanigan is out as CEO of the Woburn, Massachusetts-based craft brewery. Taking his place is industry veteran Brian Walsh, who previously led Smuttynose, Pittsburgh Brewing, and Long Trail. In addition to hiring Walsh, who stepped into that role on Thursday, Lord Hobo named Simon Thorpe and Wendy Nawakunski to its eight-member board of directors.

Speaker 2 [01:05] Thorpe's name should be familiar to industry watchers, as he previously served as president and CEO of both Pabst and Duvel Moortgat USA. He also led Kirin-owned Lion Little World Beverages US Ops and played an instrumental role in the acquisition of New Belgium. Noak Kunsky is no stranger to Lord Hobo either, as she is a director of Valterra Partners, the private investment firm that acquired a stake in the brewery in 2017.

Justin Kendall [01:30] As for Lanigan, he remains a member of the brewery's board of directors. Those leadership moves follow Lanigan's name appearing in posts among the thousands of Instagram stories shared by Brianne Allen, and emboldened act advance from women who have experienced harassment, misogyny, and assault while working in the beer industry. Lanigan was specifically referenced in at least 3 posts, alleging he made advances toward female employees. In other news, did Americans drink more during the pandemic? Nope. That's according to a survey commissioned by the Beer Institute. Survey says 60% of respondents reported that their alcohol consumption remained unchanged.

Speaker 2 [02:13] Meanwhile, everybody is building something in South Carolina, including E and J Gallo, which makes the popular ready to drink vodka soda cocktail, or hard seltzer, depending on who you ask, high noon sunsets. Gallo is building a 423 million. Dollar new production and distribution facility with bottling and canning lines that is expected to be online in October of 2022. In other hard seltzer news, sugar-based hard seltzers are now considered malt beverages in Oregon and will be taxed accordingly. This ends the state's discrepancy with the federal government's classification of the popular bubbly beverage.

Justin Kendall [02:47] Finally. Brewbound's Brewals virtual meetup series returns on Thursday, July 15th. Re register now for free at Brewbound.com. Speakers include Dogfish Head Sam Calione, Nielsen IQ's Danell Cosm, and the Brewers Association's Bart Watson, with more speakers to be announced in the coming weeks. And that's the news. Those are just some of the stories that you can read at brewbound.com. Those are all available to Brewbound insiders. If you're not an insider, you can subscribe now. Thanks for tuning in.