Boston Beer May Get Into The Cannabis Biz

, Boston Beer May Get Into The Cannabis Biz

(Courtesy Boston Beer Company)

The CEO of Boston Beer Company told CNBC on Friday that the brewer “is looking to enter the cannabis market next after its success in the hard seltzer business.”

“We’re not going to be the first one in, but we’re going to study and learn once the [hard seltzer] category develops. We’ll play it sometime down the road,” CEO David Burwick said on “Power Lunch.”

Boston Beer, home to Samuel Adams Beer, has been an economic tale of two cities of late…It’s Truly hard seltzer, which the publicly traded beverage company introduced in 2015, has been on a bigtime roll. Sales tripled in 2018 according to Burwick, and it currently makes up about “29% of the market share.”

, Boston Beer May Get Into The Cannabis Biz

Boston Beer CEO Dave Burwick

Boston beer’s Samuel Adams brand, on the other hand, is struggling. The company, which in May merged (can we just say acquired?), Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in a $300 million deal, has seen its sales continue to decline.

And although some see the new alliance, which brings Dogfish Head Founders Sam and Mariah Calagione into the Boston Beer family, as a perfect fit, the jury’s still out as to what this combined force will afford the company in the long run…Especially in light of craft beer’s slowing momentum.

So why not cannabis? Other beverage companies are getting into it…

In 2017, beverage giant Constellation Brands, home to the uber-successful Corona beer brand, entered into, what would eventually become a $4 billion dollar investment in Canada’s biggest cannabis producer, Canopy Growth.

Heineken-owned Lagunitas has been dabbling with pot beverage variations in California for a while now… And research firms are projecting that the cannabis drinks industry, although still in its seminal stages, is poised for huge growth

So with beer sales are falling and the Millennials and Gen Zers increasingly gravitating to alternatives like hard seltzer, it’s not surprising that Boston Beer, is keeping an open mind about eventually expanding its reach in the cannabis sector.

The heritage brewer is rightly credited as one of the pioneers responsible for bringing craft beer into the mainstream…So why not cannabis drinks?

(Pot Beer homepage image credit: Mitchell Maglio)

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