We discussed several of the most pressing topics in the beer industry with an executive who is well positioned to provide the viewpoint of a beer distributor. Tim McGettigan is the Director of Marketing and National Accounts at Reyes Beer Division. Reyes Beer Division is the largest beer distributor at 80M cases in the U.S. Its base of operations is in California, where it sells 1.6x as much beer as Anheuser-Busch affiliated distributors. Constellation Brands forced the sale of rights to distribute its brands in many California markets to Reyes in the last few years. Reyes has been a strong partner to Constellation Brands as well. Through the first half of 2020, Modelo Especial has sold nearly twice the amount that Bud Light has in California (~$340M v 160M). In April, Constellation Brands said Modelo was the #1 beer in Chicago, which happens to be the territory of Reyes’ oldest distributor with over 10M cases in the metro area. Reyes has also been acquisitive, having made 11 transactions in California alone in the past two years.
We asked Tim for more insight into Reyes' partnership with Constellation Brands. We also asked for his viewpoints on hard seltzer (Reyes is a Mark Anthony distributor) - which brands benefited during the pandemic, which brands benefited from inventory shortages, what product launches to look for, Constellation Brands' inventory issues, the magnitude of impact from cannabis legalization at the state level, and more. His answers are an invaluable channel check to consider along with the statements from the manufacturers and POS data. We were surprised by some of the answers while others gave us more conviction in our projections.
Click Here for a replay of our call.
For interest in specific topics we time stamped a number of questions.
0:35 Background on Reyes
2:40 Hard seltzer – How tight was inventory, who could have sold more, on-premise penetration, who benefited from the hard seltzer shortages, on-premise penetration.
9:26 Corona hard seltzer opinion and what happens at the retail level with new hard seltzer launches?
13:08 Insights into the Reyes – Constellation Brands partnership. Constellation Brands inventory shortages and on-premise outlook.
22:50 Independent beverage alcohol store trends, California sales trends and Mexican beer re-imports
27:20 Impact of cannabis legalization in California on beverage alcohol sales
28:50 What lost share to hard seltzer?
35:10 Predictions for 2021, non-alcoholic drinks, and new product launches
47:00 Distributor outlook vs. manufacturer outlook
