118 - Building the Small Beer brand (feat. Mason Robinson of Small Beer)

0:00We thought, hey, small beer as a category is due for a revival and it's a great bar call. And as the small beer category grows in America, if we have sort of first mover advantage and we are known as small beer, then when anybody orders a small beer, we sort of reap the brand benefits and the association.

0:33Mason Robinson: Mason Robinson. Hey, what's up? Hey, Isaac. Great to see you. Excited for the cast. Man, we love this segment. I know we've talked offline. We love your brand as well. So tell us, give us a quick background on you and what you do, and then a quick rundown on Small Beer. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Mason Robinson. I am the co-founder of CMO here at Small Beer. my partner Jess Thomas is the other half and I have a background in marketing and brand building I spent about nine years at Chubby's Shorts as the director of marketing and we're really just trying to like snag what went well there and layer it on to a really cool beer brand Chubby's was acquired and then that IPO happened in 2021.

1:25It took a few years off and then Jess, aforementioned Jess, came to me and had a great idea which was, hey, let's get into some white space in BevAlk. And he had the foresight to kind of see where the puck was headed here, thinking abstention is probably a bit overblown, but moderation is here to stay. And there really wasn't a great brand in small beer. I know we'll talk about terminology, but low strength or mid strength, whatever you want to call it. And yeah, we jumped into this together and have really been stunned with the speed at which people are coming around. Obviously, low alk beer is popular globally in Japan, in the UK, in Germany, in Scandinavia, what have you.

2:15But in America, it felt like it could use a kick in the pants with a dope brand that specializes in just getting people excited to be a part of a mini movement here.

2:29Mason Robinson: That's my background, a little bit about how and why. And yeah, we're thrilled to see the progress that we've made in just about 18 months. You really can count the number of brands on maybe two hands. I mean, it is very, very new. So good timing on your part. And let's stay on terminology. So let me back up. Kodo, we don't like mid-strength as a term. I don't want to leave you there. We just colloquially call it small beer. So you have a great name. So how do you think about that terminology? When you think about it, because you're building the category while also building your brand. So mid-strength, session, small, there's probably 20 other names.

3:15Mason Robinson: So there's that question. And then there's another question on top of that, which is like, what's the cutoff ABV wise? Yeah. I'll start with the latter. And just because I think it's easier to kind of put constraints around it. 2 % to 3.5, 3.9, I suppose, anything under four. Yeah. And over two. some people say no and low to mean like zero and 0.5 or to mean you know zero and low strength which would be inclusive of small beer so we just think about it as like two if you're in the two's and threes we'll give it to you that's a small beer um and it's fine as far as like the name and in building the category in the brand um that was very intentional the thought was we want to kind kind of Kleenex, Google, Xerox, this thing.

4:08Well, also the history of the term I should lead with, you know, like medieval England, small beer. I'm sure you know this, was just kind of the re-brewed dregs of the beer that was brewed originally for kind of the class that could afford it. But it would come out very low strength, but it was actually safer than water. So the brolderriot, you know, was drinking it, the laborers and children, just because it was safer. And, you know, you can get a little buzz, but we thought, Hey, small beer, um, as a category is due for a revival and it's a great bar call. And as the small beer category grows in America, if we have sort of first mover advantage and we are known as small beer, then when anybody orders a small beer, we sort of reap the brand benefits and the association.

4:58So that was the, um, that was the thinking behind the name. And then, yeah, in terms of category building, we're just trying to get people to understand the occasions and the benefits or sort of the associated benefits with all of the occasions where a small beer is better for you for numerous reasons. And, you know, and have a great time doing it. I think beer is a little stale, like the branding in beer and can use more like an injection of fun. It's kind of what we're after at the heart of it.

5:34Mason Robinson: Do you think there's an occasion that best suits small beer? Oh, good question. Golly, there's so many to choose from. Lunch beers come to mind immediately. Sure. Because I don't know, I'm just kind of on a small beer lunch kick right now. But then there's also like the after work beer. There's the happy hour beer where you want to have a few and you don't want to embarrass yourself. We're finding a lot of resonance with kind of call them like social athlete, like people who like if you work out at six in the morning, small beer is the beer for you. If you're working out before you go to work, but you want to drink beer, you don't want to drink, you know, 7 % IPAs the night before or anything that's going to jeopardize.

6:17It's kind of like if you have responsibilities, the tagline is beer for people with to do.

6:21Mason Robinson: Yeah. And we think that pretty well encapsulates the rationale behind drinking beer. Or it's like you're day drinking, you're drinking all day, you're watching six hours of football or March Madness, and you want to have more than a beer every 60 to 90 minutes. There's a number of use cases, but before I ramble on too long, I'll give you a firm answer and I'm going to stick with lunch beer right now. I'll take it. Yeah. My answer was - What about you? No, my answer was almost all occasions. I mean, when I drink beer, I want to do it in quantity, and that's not from any sort of bad place. It's just, no, I would drink beer 24-7 if I could, if it would make me a piece of shit father and human being.

7:08Mason Robinson: And the ability to drink something that is lower ABV is just an instant value prop. It's perfect. I love it. Occasionally, I want something with a little more weight behind it, but rarely. I mean, I just— Yeah. Yeah, rarely. The other use case on the topic of drinking something with some weight behind it is like people call them pacer beers or midnight beers or like maintenance beers. So if you do, which is like a totally fine use case, I've found myself in this position, get out to a bit of a hot start, you know, or you do like a shot in a beer or something. If you're right where you want to be and you want to stay there, small beer is the move.

7:43Switch to, you know, too close for missiles switching to guns or whatever that line is.

7:50Mason Robinson: it's a jim jim lahey right in the fucking cut that's uh i'm right where i need to be like right right and you want to stay there yeah you know you jeopardize it with full strength because as soon as you go over the edge you can't come back yeah then it's not fun yeah you want to you want to stay buzzed yeah right do you this is a super uh nerdy question do you guys have a calorie call out on your your packaging or is it is the main claim just the abv oh uh we definitely screamed the ABV from the mountaintops. The calories on the box, I'd have to look at the most recent design of the can, which is in my fridge.

8:23I want to say they're not on the cans, but we've had that commentary. It obviously should be. And what I'll say to a lot of people is, hey, this is less calories. Our IPA has less calories than a Coors Light. They're like, oh, that's incredible. I wish I'd known that. So I think there's a lot of opportunity to push that harder than we do currently.

8:44Mason Robinson: There is an obvious upside. I mean, we spent the whole conversation talking about it. You can drink more with less downside, but messaging around that can be tricky potentially. Do you think there's a, this might be too highfalutin, but like a social responsibility angle here, you know, like the idea that you can have a few, but still drive or still do whatever you need to do. I mean, do you ever think about that? We think about the social responsibility thing not like dramatic i kind of think like yo if you're gonna drink beer this is the beer to drink like it it feels it feels more responsible than any other beer you could put in your hand any other alcoholic beer you could drink and then as far as like the drink more and the driving thing we we will never touch and sure don't and i don't think anybody should um i would never say you know if you're going to drink and drive then drink this but the reality is if you are does relieve a lot of the social pressure about getting home.

9:46Like when you're somewhere and you need to drive yourself home but you want to partake socially then people feel less concerned because you can pace yourself more appropriately, right? And you're going to end up in all things equal a better place than you would have been if you were drinking full strength beer. But no, we don't. it's not a part of our marketing tool set. Anything around driving, it's just like everybody, please, for God's sake, be reasonable, be responsible, be smart. Yeah, don't drink anything and drive.

10:20Mason Robinson: Yes, yes. That is the hard line. But there are occasions where I'm like, oh, this is what I want. I'm driving home in an hour. I don't want to have a guilty conscious. I do want to have a beer. So small beer foots the need. Do you draw a line between driving and operating heavy machinery? what is that operate all the machinery you like yeah like as long as you're in a field you're not hurting anyone like yeah get on a track there or something i got a buddy well you've seen him if you've seen our branding uh his name is will cheese bro oh yeah he's got the mullet yeah yeah he's a hunk and a construction worker in steamboat so he operates all the machinery and uh not gonna get him in trouble because his co-workers are cool you know i think just get out have fun and uh i'll end with everybody be reasonable is he is is will american yes yeah he strikes me as an is an aussie uh there's something about he's got that vibe he does have an aussie vibe yeah um we grew up together in minnesota but that makes sense okay yeah we used to call him the legend in high school he's four years older than i am and he's a older brother of one of my best friends growing up, but he's just always just been like larger than life.

11:36So I got him involved. Okay.

11:40Mason Robinson: We are bullish on this segment. You are, obviously, you're dedicating a good portion of your life to it. We hear across regularly, we've worked with a lot of brands that are trying to get in here. We've heard that sub 4 % beers can be hard to sell. uh have you run into that i think there's a and i haven't seen any hard data to support it but from consumers but also from from retailers i mean have you had those conversations at all yeah we have those convos with distributors and retailers and consumers there are hurdles that people got to get over the first one is typically this is going to taste like this is going to taste like watery natty light uh there's like a three two association where all the macro beers would just add water to their already bad tasting light beers to hit this 3-2 ABV or like by weight, you know, criteria.

12:30Minnesota is the only state that is still enforcing that law. But I think there is an association with low strength that is like, this is going to be watery, thin, watery, and not good. Once people taste the beer, they're like, oh, wow, this is delicious. That is like the most common comment we get on first trial is like stunned at how good it tastes and jess and i were stunned at how good it tasted so shout out to pat our head brewer who like crushed it um i think there's been advancements athletic has made non-alc beer taste better it still doesn't in my opinion taste good but it's certainly like miles ahead of what it was 10 years ago and i think brewers have been able to take these technological advancements and apply them to small beers to get them to taste good so we got to get over that hurdle the other one is like there are a lot of shoppers who are uh bang for buck you know abv per dollar like i want to get as drunk as i can for as little money as i can and those just probably are never going to be our customers which is fine But, you know, anything new is inherently hard to sell because it's novel and there's no data to, there's not a ton of data in America to demonstrate, you know, its popularity or the projections that we believe, the potential that we believe the category has.

13:58you know, you kind of got to chip away. It's the responsibility lands largely on me and our marketing to do the education. And then we just got to get it out and get people trying it. And as soon as they do, it's almost like they start coming up with the occasions themselves. They're like, oh, this tastes good. And I'm bringing this on the boat tomorrow. Like this would be epic to have 12 of these on the lake.

14:23Mason Robinson: Your beer is fantastic. People send us beer. I mean, We have clients, obviously, but people sit as beer all the time. And I'm always pleasantly surprised when beer is good, you know, because, yeah, you're expecting not a full flavor, especially your IPA was shockingly good. Was not expecting it to have the full body and hot punch that it had. But again, low ABV. So, yeah, really well done. It's excellent. So who's drinking small beer? You talked about the guy or gal that's getting up at four, let it be a psycho getting up at five and working out in the morning. I agree with that. But do you have any idea like man, women, man, man, women, young, old, like parents, what do we got here?

15:09Mostly men, but we don't want to exclude women at all from this brand. Because when women do try small, they are also very pleasantly surprised because they're like, didn't expect it to taste good and also love a low, ABD option because I'm not as big of a person and I don't want to drink as much alcohol. And I really want to keep my head on straight in social situations. Like I'm actually more uncomfortable being drunk in public than men are. That said, our customer is certainly men, typically 25 to 45, a lot of like Gen Z influence around moderation. Like they're not drinking as much or they're doing the zebra striping thing, like on the younger side of that range, they're drinking a little bit less and small beer just fits their interest in like, participating socially, but not consuming as much alcohol.

16:01And then on the higher end of that range, I'm 40 this year. So all of my cohort seems to have young kids and responsibilities that are meaningful. And you You know, whether that's job or health or children, wherein they grew up binge drinking, like did that whole scene for 10 years and enjoyed it, but cannot one physically handle it to, you know, put themselves in those positions because they have dependents and responsibilities, what have you. but like 25, 45, call it predominantly male with a lot of interest from other segments of society. That's really exciting. Some moms who are like breastfeeding, but they're okay.

16:50Having a little, you know, they might've had a glass of wine or something, but they'll have a little bit of beer. Grandparents who can't handle the gut punch of an IPA, but still want a beer. You know, there's a, there's a broad swath, but there's certainly like an epicenter around like, probably dudes who know what chubbies is who's like who know the chubbies brand for sure yeah

17:10Mason Robinson: your your vibe definitely has that you definitely have that pov uh yeah this is uh something that we talk about a lot and i know we're making predictions more than anything but who do you think small the the segment uh who do you who are you stealing share from long term is it craft at large is a macro light beer is it in a beer is it something else the beauty of small beer we believe is that it doesn't it it's occasion additive um it doesn't necessarily steal from other occasions maybe as dramatically as like could be initially perceived and a reason being is where people might drink you know water or juice uh you know they might have a full strength in the water do the zebra striping thing they're actually more likely to just have a couple of small beers or it opens up new occasions like lunch beers um instances wherein you might not otherwise drink at all you can or you might drink a water or you know a juice or what have you you can drink small beer right so right now i think we'll largely get our early adopters from craft from na zebra stripers But long term, we think this can be a standalone category.

18:31If you look at what happened with low elk in grocery stores where it didn't exist and then it began to slowly exist. And now sometimes the – did I say low? I meant to say no. Yeah. Now sometimes the no elk sections are bigger than the alcohol sections and they're in the front of the store. You got to walk through no elk to get to full strength. We envision a future wherein there are three categories in a grocery store, no elk, small beer, full strength. And we're certain that small beer category will be populated by a dozen other brands, but it will be sort of a fridge staple that you have next to your full strengths, your freaking voodoo Rangers for when you're on that mode and your athletics, you know, and then you'll have your, I think, more occasion friendly small beers for the daily.

19:21Mason Robinson: You're in Texas, right? Yes. Heavy in Texas. Where else are you guys distributed? Oh, Colorado statewide, Connecticut statewide, and Georgia statewide. Connecticut. Why those markets? Connecticut, we lucked into an awesome distributor, Breastcombe Barton called us, and they wrote an email to the info at that they found kind of buried on the website, and they were like, Like, hey, we literally never do this. But we see the vision. They missed out on Athletic is what they told us. And that was where Athletic started. And they want to take some share from Athletic. Basically, they don't want to miss the next, what they think is the next big thing.

20:04So we had a really talented distributor come to us and say, hey, we're going to run this thing. uh we we want to in connecticut we we have a lot of na drinkers here that we think we'll we'll pick it up quickly and then we got a really great distributor savannah distributing in georgia because like the map is super random admittedly it's really more so where we've had outside of austin and colorado denver and austin were our intentional first launch cities because of the demos there. The others were more opportunistic because we got interest from really wonderful distributors.

20:44Mason Robinson: Can we say where your brood, where your contract brood? Oh yeah, prost. Yeah, prost. Shout out to prost. So your contract brood right now, what does the future look like? Does it ever make sense to own your own facility anymore or maybe open a tap room or just stay asset light and build a killer lifestyle brand asset light lifestyle brand is the plan never say never it's just so expensive and contract brewers come with the expertise like a prost and every time we mention prost to anybody who who's in the industry they're like oh holy shit yeah really good they make great beer so we have no plans to move away from them in the near term if you're think it 10 years down the line who knows but yeah for now it's like let's work with the best in the business and let's keep it asset light and let's focus on education awareness affinity and leveraging our first mover advantage to get in the markets and getting people excited about beer again i want to challenge you i think that now is the best time in history to spend three million dollars on a brewery build out.

21:53Mason Robinson: I think you got to do it. Yeah. No, no, no. You want in? Yeah. Is somebody coming from you? Yeah. Right. We'll find it. Uh, no, that, that that's, that's what I would recommend as well. That's excellent. Where do you think this segment is by 20, 20, 30 is a nice round number, but, but where, where, where do you think just call it mid strength is by that point? Yeah, I think resoundingly more popular. And man, yeah, 2030 is a nice number. I would have said when we started this thing, where we are now in terms of awareness of small beer or mid-strength in America is probably where I would have pegged us being in like 2028.

22:33Like it felt like we turned this thing on. And then there were so many more entrants in such a shorter period of time than we anticipated. and people have been quicker to come around. Like we thought, hey, we got two, three years to start to build this category before anybody of note is jumping in and competing. And now we're seeing really big breweries output some okay brands, but it's moving faster than we thought. So by 2030, I would love to, I'll be optimistic and say like, everybody knows what, small beer or mid-strength beer is, and the large grocers are starting to build out their own sections for it.

23:19Mason Robinson: You mentioned it at the very top and we glossed over it, but I think the reason that it caught, or at least people hear it and understand it, is abstention, abstaining versus moderation. I think that's the lead here. And we have a ton of clients that make NA beer, great in a beer it's not something that i would ever reach for ever like it because i would just drink a sparkling water you know versus just a small beer and a couple it just it makes it makes inherent sense to me i'm one person but i i think a lot of people probably i i hear that regularly like why would you drink an in a beer but then they're athletic is one of the largest breweries in the country so don't do my word for it all credit to athletic they've done a phenomenal job and we um we know that we're benefiting from their existence um because you can kind of say you know if people are hung up on the price point we're always at or below athletic and it's like if people are willing to pay that for non-alcohol for no alcohol they're going to be willing to pay that or less for for some alcohol and i'm with you like cannot drink na beers i don't see the point um i never have i probably never will i still kind of feel like if you're drinking na it's because you're you know i don't know if you're like and more power to you if you're in recovery or or what have you but it's like just drink something that tastes good if you're not drinking something yeah alcohol in it thankfully small beer both tastes good and has alcohol in it so it's like that makes way more sense to me um and we are fine we have this conversation all the time It feels like an odd juxtaposition because athletic is 30 % up year over year on huge bases.

25:05But everybody I talk to seems to feel like it's not that I don't meet people who drink athletic. I do. But they seem to have that same sentiment where it's like, yeah, it's kind of pointless. Like, I don't know. I'll open one and hold on to it for four hours. Like just to have something in my hand that tricks people into thinking I'm drinking a beer. It's like, okay, you could just have a beer. Perpetually 17.

25:26Mason Robinson: We have to make sure people think that we're cool and drinking beer. Right, right, right. Where, I don't know if you are willing to share, but where do you see small beer, the brand now, long term? I mean, is this something that you build forever? Is this something that you exit? You have a history of doing that successfully. What does this look like over the next, you pick the range? Sure. Next five years, we're building. We're working our tail lot. We want like owning, owning is always awesome. Right. Yeah. But the beer and the Bev Alk industry is like, so right with M and A, it's almost amazing.

26:07Like every day you seem to hear about something, some offer or some acquisition or what have you. But the thing with Jess and I is like, we can't even really, there's no point in thinking about that question. You know, that bridge is so far off. It's half a decade off at least. And if we wanted to enable that decision, it all comes down to build a kick-ass brand and do it now. And just, you know, regardless of what the outcome may be, the best way forward is to continue to build an awesome brand that people love. We're so nascent. We're like a lemonade stand. And we need to just like build awareness, build affinity, build resonance, build loyal customers, give people to understand what small beer is, why they should drink it, when they should drink it.

26:57And if 10 years from now, somebody wants to write a fat check, like, cool. But it doesn't affect our decision making in the near term.

27:07Mason Robinson: You guys have a really nice, tight portfolio, just two brands, two beers, two styles. Is there, I'm sure you've played with other styles. Is there anything in the horizon that you can share? Yeah, totally. We are working on a hazy IPA, which I'm stoked on, but I want a few of it. Like Ambers, we get a lot of requests for. What I think we want to do is have... Ambers. Ambers. In the year of our Lord, 2026. Yeah. Weird. People, I always have that probably most, both from distributors and consumers. I think there's five styles. I think there's a full shelf of styles that we can have perpetually. And then if we get big enough to kind of do like the seasonal stuff, good for us.

27:53But what I want are five differentiated styles, whether that's a stout, a stout or a porter, you know, an amber, I think something like with some citrus in it, like a, like a lime lager or something garage beers is having success with. But basically, to me, small beer is better beer. So you can kind of take the best brand in every category, the Blue Moons, the Guinnesses, Yinglings, and just be like, this is the small version of that. It tastes just as good, but it's less calories. It's less alcohol. It is inherently better for you, and you can drink more of them. So don't get it. And I feel like Athletic did a great job with their packaging and their line extensions.

28:43Long Drink did a great job. Their visuals are really powerful. When you see a full shelf of Athletic or Long Drink, their color schemes really draw you in. And then if you are a fan of Dingling, Guinness, Blue Moon, you have your small versions of those brought to you by small beer. That's kind of the long-term plan.

29:05Mason Robinson: Mason, where can someone go to buy small beer right now? www.drinksmallbeer.com. You can purchase us in 33 states, the lager or the IPA. And then we are also available in retail in Colorado, in Austin, and the surrounding 13 counties, and in Connecticut and Georgia. Amazing. We love what you guys are doing. Thank you for making time today, Mason. Absolutely. Wonderful conversation. Thank you, Isaac. Thanks for listening to Beer Branding Trends. If you like what we're doing here, if you find this valuable, please rate and review us over on iTunes. And head over to BeerBrandingTrends.com to join more than 5 ,000 subscribers who receive our monthly email newsletter covering strategy, currents, and actionable advice from Kodo Design, a branding firm on the front lines of beer and beverage branding.

29:51Mason Robinson: Take care. We'll catch back up with you soon.