According to Brooklyn Brewery CEO Eric Ottaway - speaking in this guest podcast from Rabobank Liquid Assets - non-alcoholic beer is not about less, it's about more. The non-alcoholic segment opens more places, more occasions and more people to the struggling beer industry.
Brooklyn Brewery, which works closely Kirin and Carlsberg, originally launched its non-alcoholic beer brand, Special Effects, in Europe. The brand now represents more than 5% of their European sales, far outstripping the companies' most optimistic expectations.
Now, the upstart craft brewer is trying to bring their innovative approach to the US market, where non-alcoholic beer has a long history of underwhelming results.
In this Rabobank Liquid Assets podcast, Eric sits down with the RaboResearch team to discuss his company’s push into the category and whether non-alcoholic beer can gain a meaningful foothold with US consumers.
Up for discussion on this podcast:
“A regular - who comes in on Sunday to watch the game and used to have one pint of Guinness - had four pints of Special Effects and then a pint of Guiness.” Eric Ottaway
1. Who is the non-alcoholic beer consumer?
2. How do you build a non-alcoholic brand in the US and Europe?
3. Why non-alcoholic beer helps, instead of hurts the beer category?
4. How big will the non-alcoholic beer segment be in 5 years?
This podcast features Eric Ottaway, CEO of Brooklyn Brewery; Rabobank’s global beverage strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analysts Jim Watson and Francois Sonneville and analyst Bourcard Nesin.
This podcast was published on November 6. Picture credits: We Are You NY Photography.