TKTKTKYet another tater-based tragedy
🍺 BEER
Everybody wants to sell Tilray Brands a brewery. The cannabis giant’s beer division president told the crowd at Brewbound Live earlier this month that his team is fielding fielding 2–3 calls a day from owners looking to hock their breweries. OK, yes, technically, that’s not “everybody,” given there are like 10,000 breweries nationally and Tilray’s big buying spree only kicked off in earnest this past summer. But still.
The Teamsters are ready to strike Anheuser-Busch InBev. Nearly all—99%!—of the company’s 5,000 Teamster workers in the US have voted to strike in the event their contract expires at the end of February 2024 without another in place. The union said Saturday in a statement that there are no bargaining sessions currently scheduled; we’ll see whether talks resume once ABI sees this lockstep show of rank-and-file support for the Teamsters’ bargaining team. Stay tuned.
Armed Forces Brewing Co. secured its permits. Republican presidential nopeful Glenn Youngkin’s favorite polarizing military-themed brewery won approval to operate at a heated Norfolk City Council meeting this past Tuesday, with just one council member voting against its conditional-use permit despite objections from from LGBTQ+ activists, community organizers, two civic leagues, and the city’s own planning commission over its culture-war schtick, dog-whistling brand ambassador, site-inappropriate expansion plans, unauthorized construction work, and apparent disregard for municipal process and general neighborliness. As the Virginia Mercury reported Wednesday, it also turns out that AFBC’s chief executive (the guy who called local critics “truly evil” “extremists” in “classified” vlogs to investors) was stopped in Maryland for driving while intoxicated in 2013, no-showed at court, and avoided a bench warrant for his arrest for the following nine years, pleading guilty only in July 2022. It’s not clear what effect, if any, that could/would have on the company’s permit with the state to brew.
[Clarification 12/17/23 12:37pm EST: A previous version of this piece said Beal was “arrested” for driving while intoxicated. He was stopped for and charged with DWI in 2013, but court records are not clear as to whether he was actually arrested at the time of the incident. Fingers regrets any confusion.]
🍷 WINE
The Pacific Northwest’s biggest winemaker just slashed more staff. More rough stuff coming outta Washington State, where Ste. Michelle Wine Estates (SMWE) has laid off another 7% of its staff, according to a dispatch in Sean P. Sullivan’s vital Northwest Wine Report earlier this month. The regional heavyweight, which tobacco overlord Altria sold to private-equity overlord Sycamore Partners in 2021 for $1.2 billion, already shed 5% of its workforce this past February; in July, it announced a plan to reduce its grape contracts by 40% over the next five years.
Total Wine and the Federal Trade Commission are beefing no more. After a fall full of suits and countersuits, the legal wrangling between the country’s biggest wine retailer and its most important antitrust regulator appears to be reaching its conclusion. Last week, Total Wine and the FTC filed a joint notice of settlement with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where they’d been spatting over the latter’s request for the former’s documents pertaining to an investigation into alleged price-fixing by Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the country’s biggest non-beer distributor. That Total Wine fought the FTC’s request (a “civil investigative demand,” in the jargon) at all was “a rare turn of events,” per commentary from the National Law Review earlier this month. What a privilege to have watched history being made.
🥃 SPIRITS
Death & Co’s union drive failed. After going public with 100% of the 18 eligible union cards signed last month, workers at the prolific New York City cocktail bar voted Thursday on whether they wanted to be represented by Worker’s United… and lost 10-8. To state the obvious: that’s a LOT of flipped votes. Yeesh. I’m working on the “how” and “why” and should have a reported post-mortem soon. Stay tuned.
Beam Suntory is passing the Courvoisier to Campari. I think Fingers might be the first outlet to make that stupid joke, really shows you the sorry state of booze journalism these days. Anyway! The storied Cognac brand is moving from one global liquor portfolio to another in a $1.32 billion deal announced last week that frankly seems at odds with the brandy segment’s present slump. But Campari needs to boost its premium offerings in the US (where 60% of Courvoisier’s sales originate), and wants a bigger logistics footprint in France, and this could solve both those problems, so maybe I’m just a big dummy. Take us out, Busta!
Yet another tater-based tragedy is rocking the world of bourbon. We can’t have progressive taxation in this country, but we have the next-best thing, which is whiskey maniacs volunteering to be taken advantage of in breathtakingly obvious brown-liquor scams like the one unfolding in Louisville. There, according to a report last week from WDRB News, taters who should certainly know better have been bamboozled by Facebook ads for a fake liquor store selling mail-order bottles of Pappy Van Winkle for way-too-good-to-be-true prices as low as $20 apiece. One of the marks who got rolled called the website “perfect” and “such good scam,” adding his $100 loss was “not going to make or break my lifestyle.” Say it with me folks: tax those taters!
A note on the Doritos liquor. Yes, it’s true, the chip brand did an alco-llaboration with the experimental distiller Empirical. We can assume that this is just another limited-run publicity stunt to “generate on-theme UGC” and “drive social conversation” and move on. We can do that.
🫠 BUD LIGHT
Kid Rock said some weird shit to Tucker Carlson about Bud Light last week. After firing the starting gun AR-15 on conservatives’ transphobic meltdown over Bud Light’s relationship with Dylan Mulvaney in early April, the 52 year-old grandpa behind 1998’s “Bawitdaba” is singing a different tune these days. In an interview with racist Polo Bear Tucker Carlson last week, Robert James “Kid Rock” Ritchie said Anheuser-Busch InBev has “got[ten] the message,” and right-wing reactionaries ought to get “back on board” with its flailing flagship brand. “You don’t spank them for the rest of their life,” he said, clearly having a normal one. “Let’s move on. I mean we’ve done it for a whole lot worse. What about Japan? Germany?”
And UFC president/wife-slapper Dana White did, too. Not to be one-upped by Kid Rock, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s new $100 million-dollar shitheel also went to bat for the brand last week, and also on Carlson’s pathetic post-Fox talkshow, which is hosted exactly where it belongs: Elon Musk’s neo-Nazi dating app, X dot com (née Twitter). “If you consider yourself a patriot, you should be drinking gallons of Bud Light,” said White. “You should have Bud Light drums stacked up in your garage and drinking it right out of the keg.” ABI and Bud Light are “way more aligned with you than most of these other beer companies, that I guarantee you,” he added, speaking directly to the people who watch Tucker Carlson on Elon Musk’s neo-Nazi dating app. Looks like ABI’s embattled chief executive Brendan Whitworth has found someone to turn the big dial that says “racism” for him.
👀 RELATEDLY
How Four Loko’s past could shape Panera’s Charged Lemonade future. As the market converges on “total beverage,” and memes about adding alcohol to the fast-casual chain’s allegedly deadly caffeinated “Sips” line flood social media, I thought it’d be instructive to reflect in my weekly VinePair column on how another caffeinated beverage—this one alcoholic—rode a lucrative wave of pop-cultural cachet and morbid curiosity straight into the Feds’ field of vision.
Starbucks says it wants to resume contract negotiations—with a big caveat. The coffee megachain scored lots of friendly press for sending a letter earlier this month to Starbucks Workers United (SWU) indicating it was willing to resume bargaining after months of stonewalling and 44 unfavorable rulings from the National Labor Relations Board and federal judges on its brazen union-busting campaign. Baristas are calling bullshit, though, because Starbucks is still refusing to negotiate a master agreement that would cover all 360 unionized stores, insisting instead on 360 separate negotiations. (Behold capitalism’s efficient allocation of resources!) The company still hasn’t budged on its stance on negotiating via videoconference, either, meaning key negotiators for SWU hoping to ensure parity on all 360 contracts would have to fly all over the country at absurd expense and exertion.
Virginia’s booze controller is facing a million-dollar whistleblower suit related to allegedly lost liquor. Just one week after your fearless Fingers editor opened his trap in limited praise of control states, the Old Dominion’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (VABC) went and caught a case. The agency’s director of retail operations sued her employer Tuesday alleging its leadership had put her on administrative leave over a small-sum embezzlement scandal in retaliation for flagging a supposed $2.7 million inventory shortfall.
💬 BUZZWORDS OF THE WEEK
Beverage-alcohol marketers are constantly emailing me about their new “brand activations,” a vague term I don’t understand and won’t investigate. Most of these activations seem to be in-person events in cities I don’t live in, but last week, a publicist for a certain premium liquor brand told me about:
a digital holiday experience where all fans are welcome to toast the holidays.
That sounds a lot more interesting than saying “we made a website,” but I regret to inform you, they made a website. Also, they’re hosting events in cities I don’t live in. I’m activated!
If you see beverage-alcohol corporatespeak in the wild that deserves to be the next Fingers Buzzword, submit it for consideration to dave@dinfontay.com. All submissions anonymous!
🔗 VIRGIN LINKS
The Cable-News Kayfabe Is Dead (Nieman Labs)
Losing the Plot: When Leftists Turn Right (In These Times)
How Twitter Broke the News (The Verge)
The Gilded Age Makes a Mess of the Picket Line (The New Republic)
Friend of Fingers Denis K. recently suggested I include sources with these links to give readers a little more context. I think it works, thanks for the suggestion, Denis K.!