Liquid Assets: A Beverage Industry Podcast

The beverage market is more crowded and fragmented than ever, and building a long term relationship with consumers can feel, well, impossible. In this episode we explore two companies that beat the competition and built a dedicated consumer base doing something innovative: let people buy-in to their business… literally.

Despite producing 80% of the world’s coffee, smallholder coffee farmers are struggling to survive. Smallholders are key to coffee sustainability and a core component of the third wave coffee movement and premiumization. How can the industry help smallholders improve yields and coffee quality? And then how does that benefit larger roasters and traders? To answer these questions, we recruited Isabel van Bemmelen, managing director of the Progreso Foundation, to discuss smallholders, big...

What’s going on in the beverage world? Our coffee comes in a can, our seltzer is spiked, and our beer is aged in whiskey barrels. Consumers are fervently demanding more products that blur category lines. If beverage companies want a piece of the pie, they need to re-evaluate their historical product portfolio, their structure, and their strategy for product development.

In part two of our recording with Wayne Duan, VP of ecommerce with Constellation Brands, we dive head-first into the deep-end of digital strategy. What is search engine optimization and how can beverage companies make SEO work for them? How can small organizations thrive in a world of big data? And how can marketing teams and product development teams use data to supercharge performance? We answer all this and more in this week’s episode. In addition to our fantastic guest, this episode...

How should alcohol companies approach the e-commerce challenge? Wayne Duan, VP of ecommerce at Constellation Brands, joins us for back-to-back episodes to discuss digital commerce and the lessons he’s learned as an executive at both a national retailer and a beverage alcohol supplier. In this week’s episode, the team digs into digitally influenced sales, content management and how to hire and build an ecommerce team from the ground-up. Warning: the phrase “hipster, hacker, hustler” is used...

The price of mainstream beer has been falling for decades, and consumers increasingly see brands like Bud Light and Coors Light as value brands. As these iconic brews decline (in price and volume), they leave a USD 7 billion hole in the US beer market. At the moment, this mutli-billion dollar whitespace is being filled by aspirational, light lager brands like Michelob Ultra, Corona, and Modelo, but these represent a fraction of this new segment’s potentional. Tune in to learn how macro-beer,...

Cheryl Murphy Durzy is the founder and CEO of Liberation Distribution (LibDib) and she joins the RaboResearch Beverages team to discuss the future of the three-tier system. Cheryl started LibDib after years of frustration finding distributors for her family’s wine label. LibDib is a web-based distribution portal that ensures every “maker” in the US has access to distribution and brings suppliers and retailers closer together. In addition to discussing LibDib’s impact on the beverage alcohol...

Craft spirits are an explosive trend across the world. The craft spirits movement is just starting to emerge, but in virtually every developed economy, there are more distilleries and more craft brands than ever before. Can craft spirits follow the path of craft beer and seize a huge share of the market from mainstream distillers? On this week's episode of Liquid Assets, the team explains why craft spirits will continue to grow, but won’t to be as disruptive to large distillers as craft...

Rabobank’s resident beer guru Francois Sonneville and the rest of the team sit down to discuss the future of beer and how breweries can deliver for stakeholders and consumers in the face of stagnating volumes. This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Francois Sonneville, Senior Beverage Analyst; Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst.

By 2022, grocery retailers stand to lose USD 3.9bn in annual alcohol revenues if online sales continue to lag behind as the rest of grocery goes digital. In this bonus episode of Liquid Assets, the team dissects the future of beverage alcohol sales in supermarkets as consumers move their grocery spending online.

Where do you see the coffee industry in ten years? On this week’s Liquid Assets, the team tackles some difficult questions. This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst and special guest Ross Colbert, Global Sector Head - Beverages

Marijuana legalization is spreading like wildfire across the U.S. Nine states have legalized adult-use (recreational) marijuana and Canada will likely have national recreational sales by the end of the year. On the second episode of the Liquid Assets podcast, the Rabobank Beverage team takes a look at how beverage alcohol could be affected and what they can do to prepare for a future with legal cannabis. This episode features: Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages; Jim...

In the inaugural episode of Liquid Assets, the Rabobank beverage team discusses why online grocery is poised to drive online alcohol sales. They also debate which brands will be winners and which brands will be losers as online grocery spreads across the country. This episode features: Jim Watson, Senior Beverage Analyst; Stephen Rannekleiv, Global Strategist for Beverages and Bourcard Nesin, Beverage Analyst