120 - The Three Questions Every Brewery Needs to Answer with Shane Lohman of Five Star Beverage Group

0:00Shane Lohman: So you have to figure out, are you LeBron James or are you TJ McConnell in a distributor's roster? Know your role, know how to play it well and have realistic expectations based on that role. And I think, you know, that can do worlds of good for you.

0:25Shane Lohman: Shane, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah, same. I've been following you for a minute. I really enjoy your perspective. Please tell us a little bit about your background in beer and Bev Alk and then what you do at Five Star Beverage. Yeah, shoot. I've been in beer for since 2011. I got into, in Pittsburgh, we call them beer distributors, but they're really just beer stores. Opened my own retail beer store right out of college. It was kind of a, right as craft beer was getting popular, craft beer dedicated store did that for about five years. decided to sell that, wanted to get into something a little bigger and opened my own, started my own independent beer wholesaler that was craft beer focused in Western PA, really covered the Western half of the state.

1:13Shane Lohman: Did that for a little over eight years. That was acquired a couple of years ago. And since then, I've just been doing some strategic advisory work with brands, just driving scale, brand building stuff. And it's been nice. So it's been probably over 15 years now. Was there ever a thought to get out of beer when you sold the distributor, or was it obviously, no, we're going to keep powering forward and doing consulting? You know, there's been a thought to get out of beer since I got into it. I love beer, but it can be a tough business. No, but not really. I've started to dabble in some other projects outside of beer, but it's just an industry that I can't seem to get away from, And I don't say that in a negative.

1:58Shane Lohman: It's just an industry that keeps drawing me back and that I've always enjoyed. We're the same exact way. We work in food and Bev, but I mean, we just, the thing that like clothes and feeds my children is beer and will continue to be beer. So I love it. Yeah. I can vividly remember like a year into it being like, oh, there's no way I'll be in this. I can't last in this. And here I am. Well, let's stay there for a minute. Let me give you an easy prompt here. Describe the current craft beer industry in one sentence. It's an industry that needs to embrace the maturity of the market and the brand building and business principles that come with that maturity.

2:40Expound on that. I'll let you have more than one sentence.

2:44Shane Lohman: No, you know, it's an industry that to me, I view it as a positive because it's developed into a mature business. It's no longer, you know, an emerging category that's trying to find its way or, you know, it's a mature segment. It's turned into a real business and it needs to be operated as such. And, you know, I think when breweries or brands do that, you know, good things can happen. Agree. Yeah. What do you think, you might have kind of touched on it already in there, but what do you think most breweries are fundamentally misunderstanding about the market today? I think where they fit in, you know, and that would be to say, fundamentally, who are they selling to and who are they competing against?

3:30Shane Lohman: Bart Watson gave a kind of state of the industry talk recently. And he talked about the fact that, you know, you shouldn't be confined by what you see as the traditional kind of guardrails of craft. And that is the industry evolves, you know, you need to think outside of that box. And I thought that was really powerful. And just knowing who you're competing against, who you're selling to, I think where you fit into the market in general is really important. I agree. One of the things I saw you write a while back was that the craft beer boom disguised the absence of real brand strategy. And I agree.

4:04I think I'm going to agree with most of the stuff. I'm kind of repeating back to you here. What did breweries get away with during those boom years that just will not work anymore?

4:14Shane Lohman: Man, they got away with everything. Um, novelty really drove sales and created that growth for such a long time. You know, I love the product in the industry. I love the people that create the product, but so many breweries had success for such a long time, almost despite themselves. They didn't really know fully why they were having that success. And then when the dynamic shifted pretty quickly, they didn't know how to fix it when things started going wrong. And, you know, the thing I tell people is that great product isn't enough anymore. It's just table stakes. And for so long, that great product was enough.

4:51Shane Lohman: You know, like I said, the market's matured and, you know, it's important to teach breweries how to thrive in that new dynamic because that dynamic is here to stay. Do you think that most breweries, if you can paint with a broad brush, need to be making beyond beer or fourth category other things? or can you still find success just doubling down on beer and doing that really well today? I think you need to figure out who you are and why, and then kind of do what's authentic to you. If Beyond Beer isn't authentic to your brand kind of core energy and message, then don't do it. But to me, the important thing is figuring out who you are and why you exist, not just in the market, but why you exist in general.

5:36Shane Lohman: Because to me, that informs, you know, what you do and why. If, you know, I always think that Maine Beer is such a great example of just, you engage with that brand and you get it. If Maine Beer came out with a Mimosa RTD tomorrow, just because the category's hot, it just wouldn't make sense. I think there's a lot of opportunity in categories beyond beer. And I think that talk that Bart Watson gave really spoke to that. Like I said, not being confined by the traditional definitions of craft, but you got to do what's authentic to who and what you are as a brand. Similar question here. I know it's case by case, but you walk into a struggling, let's call it a regional brewery, just so we have a definition.

6:24Where are you starting? I mean, what do you start even auditing? Packaging, pricing, portfolio, retail strategy, positioning, all of the above, something else?

6:35Shane Lohman: Yeah, I think it might be a little bit less case by case than you think. I'd walk into pretty much every single struggling regional brewery tomorrow and start with the same three questions. Who's our target consumer? What are they currently drinking? And how do we get them to switch to our product? product to me the answer to those three questions form the core of your brand strategy and they really act as design constraints for your product development and your brand development you know those answers should create the strategic foundation that inform everything that you do in your brewery and I tell breweries and brands this all the time until you can answer those three questions really effectively you shouldn't be doing anything else you know and I mean that seriously so that if you're sitting and you're running or operating a regional brewery and you feel like you're struggling, the first thing that I would do is answer those three questions.

7:34Shane Lohman: And don't just answer them, you know, kind of pressure test them and get feedback from the market, iterate on them, get more feedback, iterate again. It can take a lot of hard work to find those answers, but answering them can legitimately change the trajectory, you know, brewery and your business. And that's kind of the positive and the hopeful thing that I speak to with a lot of breweries. It's possible. You just got to be willing to do the work, but I'd start with those three questions. This is something I was discussing with Cody just the other day. How many breweries that you work with do you feel have a genuine sense of who their audience is?

8:13Because we, I don't want to lead you, but like we just find, it's very much back to the very beginning of just getting away with stuff, you know, I mean, like people just, I don't know, like a craft beer drinkers or audience, like that's not, yes. Yeah. And, you know, yeah.

8:28Shane Lohman: I would say most of them don't. Yeah. And it, it sounds like, but it is a positive because it's like, all right, well, we've got a lot of, lots of, you know, work with in terms of creating some kind of progress here, but yeah. Who are they? You know, if you're walking down the street, can you kind of generally spot them? Not necessarily brewery, but we did work on the distribution side with Blake's Hard Cider. And they were always really good at like, who does our current drinker, like what do they look like? You know, they're probably 25 to 35, maybe skew a little bit more heavily female. You could kind of get a feel for who they were.

9:14Shane Lohman: You knew they were drinking Angry Orchard. So yeah, I think a lot of breweries don't know. And it's a scary thing when you figure that out. How do you go about even beginning to collect that information? I mean, do you just sit down in your tap room and look at who walks through the door? I mean, or are there, what do you do? I think you've got to target it. You've got to have a sense of who you want to speak to. And it really starts to uncover or unpack what I mean when we say like how we're operating as a business, why we exist as a business. You need to know who you're serving and why. And I think it's so scary for a lot of breweries because they have existed for a number of years with people just walking through the door and wanting their product.

10:01Shane Lohman: And it almost feels like you're going backwards, like you're going back to square one. But you've got to create the products that you develop with, with intention of who they should be speaking to. And that's going to get those people through the door, not, you know, seeing who comes through the door. Because who comes through the door is going to change based on the products that you have. But you need to create those products to speak to a certain target audience, if that makes sense. To me, it's too generic. Like, I agree with you. I hear breweries all the time. Well, we make great IPAs for IPA drinkers.

10:35Shane Lohman: Like, who's an IPA drinker? Because that was never super clear, but it certainly looks a lot different than it did 10 years ago. Yeah. You know, a lot of those people may not be drinking beer or have changed the way they drink beer. So, you know, yeah. This is one of the most, I've been looking forward to discussing this with you because we discuss this with folks all the time. you so let me bear with me you've written you've written that the best liquid in the world can still fail if sitting in the wrong section of the store agree we've heard from the problem we've heard from many of our clients is that retail placement is really hard to influence especially if you're smaller especially depending on your distributor relationship your retailers your state laws all the above but that doesn't make what you said not true so how can a let's say a smaller brand, especially think about retail placement, route to market strategy, when they might not really control those downstream decisions that much?

11:32Shane Lohman: Yeah. So your shelf placement and your price point on the shelf shouldn't necessarily become downstream decisions. They should be, like I said, design constraints when you're developing products. So again, I'm going to keep repeating it. I do it with brands all the time. Who's your target consumer? Because that gives you design constraints for what type of product you're creating. If you develop products using that as a design constraint, you'll end up on the right section of the shelf. But if you've spent a decade producing high-end IPAs and sours, and all of a sudden you throw a light lager 12-pack into the mix, you know, don't be surprised when national chains aren't going to throw it next to Modelo overnight.

12:11Shane Lohman: You know, and again, what's your target consumer currently drinking? If you use that as a design constraint for not only what type of product you're creating, but the price point you need to hit up on the shelf, you're going to end up in the right section of the shelf, or at least you should. You know, if your target consumer is currently drinking Modelo, that's going to inform not only the style that you brew, but the price point that you need to hit, which informs your entire product development process. You know, the amount of breweries that I've seen that brew a light lager, throw it in a 12-pack, charge$25.99, and expect it to sell sitting next to Modelo just because your product is supposedly better.

12:46Shane Lohman: If you develop products with the right design constraints with the consumer in mind, those products will end up in the right section, on the right shelf, at the right price point. You have pointed out that certain brands become distributor priorities because distributors immediately understand what to do with them. I think this is the same conversation. What are the clearest signals that you can input so that a wholesaler will go, oh, yeah, this one's a winner. This one's built to win, to build the scale? Yeah. Again, you answer those three questions and I think it informs the foundation of a sales pitch or just a game plan for the distributor to execute so that they know this is who we're selling to, this is what we're selling against, and this is how we're going to make that sale.

13:32Shane Lohman: Because when you can clearly illustrate that for distributor partners, if you can clearly show them how to create wins at scale on the market, they're almost always going to, if not prioritize you, support you. Because a sales rep can walk in, they know where to sell it. Again, with that Blake's Hard Cider example, when I had the distributor, our team knew where to sell it. We'd do tap surveys to see where Angry Orchard was selling. We'd go sell at Angry Orchard and we'd sell it this way. You know, it's all real cider, third generation family farm. It's better product, tastes better, customers will like it.

14:09Shane Lohman: 10 bucks more half keg, what's not to like? And we could create scale like that. You didn't have to convince our team to support Angry Orchard. You didn't have to do some song and dance. It was like, oh, we can win with this. So our team wants to sell it. And to me, that's how you get distributors on board. When you're thinking about pricing, especially with spirits, it might be a little easier. but with beer i feel like you're always going to to some degree run into just kind of category like it's going to be 14.99 depending on where your market is you know six packs going to cost x four packs going to cost y and we've worked on a lot of projects where you're intending to make something more premium but you just kind of run into that wall early and you kind of have to work backwards from there to figure out you know your cogs and everything i mean is there is there and that what i just said might be completely backwards is there a way to think about that where we we have our positioning.

15:05Let's say we've answered the three questions. Can we charge, you know, a two buck premium on a thing that is now the most expensive thing, even if by two bucks, you know, next day, like how does that work?

15:17Shane Lohman: Yeah. I mean, it can take some time, I think, to develop. To me, it's not just as simple as like our product is better. So we're going to charge$2 more. I think it's some of the time, effort and patience that comes with brand building. Like a benefit of living in Southern California is that I can go to the local butcher and they have Pliny the Elder in the cooler. You know, I don't really price compare, right? I'm not like, God, how much is this compared to, you know, whatever's next to it? I just get it. I think that's taken a lot of time for breweries like that, you know, a Maine or a Russian River.

15:56But it's, I would say, kind of not an exact science.

16:03Shane Lohman: It's just there's a balance there in terms of price point, how it plays in. I just know that it shouldn't be as binary as are liquids better so it can automatically be priced higher. You know, and it's something that I tell a lot of brands is some of the best brewers in the world work at companies like Constellation or AB InBev. You know, they have the best production equipment in the world. So I have noticed in craft beer that there's almost this automatic assumption that, oh, that that macro stuff's not as good. You can go anywhere in the world and Budweiser tastes the same. You know, and that's a tribute to the how, you know, quality their brewing team is.

16:46Shane Lohman: And so it's just tough to, I know that's kind of a roundabout answer, but it's tough to say our products better, our liquids better, so we should automatically charge more. It's just this inexact sign. That one's that, you know, it can be tough to nail down, but I know it's not as simple as just our products better, so we should charge more. How does the brand support that, you know? Yeah. Yeah, the idea of the brand should precede you. I mean, it's like the selling power of the brand. And you walk in, and Pliny is a perfect example. You're going to buy it at whatever its price, wherever it is, because it's Pliny the Elder or the Younger or whatever.

17:23And that's because of, I mean, decades of brand building and goodwill and just repeatability and trust built up. It's amazing.

17:32Shane Lohman: Yeah, and I'm sure you know it's one thing to build a brand that, you know, we can answer those questions and they look good on paper. And it can just take a lot of time and hard work and trust and patience to build that brand. Hard work. Yeah. Back to the very beginning. I mean, the things that we took for granted, we as a category, you know, 10, 15 years ago, you actually have to get out and build your brand today. And that's grueling and unsexy and very hard. Yeah. And I think just the consistency. I see less of it now in craft beer, but the mistakes, whether, again, the amount of brews I've had that it's like, oh, bad batch, or we couldn't find the same yeast strain, so this lager is still good, but it tastes a little different, or that stuff's killer when you're trying to build that brand consistently.

18:26You've spent a ton of time on both sides of this table here, so supplier and distributor. What is – and we've probably spent a whole hour on this. What are some things that are fundamental misunderstandings between how distributors – let's think from the brewer's side, how distributors actually think and make decisions internally? I make the best beer. Look at my labels. They're awesome. How can they not pick this up? Are they crazy? Oh, boy.

18:53Shane Lohman: Yes. No. Um, the first thing that I would say is that most distributors do in fact want your brand to be successful or at least want to find brands that they can grow and be successful with. You know, beyond that, I would say that a great starting point is that it's so impactful to have a clear understanding of how a distributor views their portfolio and their business. I always compare it to a basketball roster, like know your role, know what the organization expects from you based on that role and have realistic expectations as to the results that you can see based on that role. So if you're the backup point guard on a basketball team, you're going to be expected to create plays for the scorers, play hard defensively, bring energy off the bench.

19:41Shane Lohman: You're not going to score 30 points every night. I tell the story that in college, I went to Duquesne, I worked for the basketball team, And TJ McConnell was our point guard my senior year. He was a freshman. And small, no offense to TJ, a little bit of an unathletic, short white guy. And, you know, he's just made it. He didn't get drafted. He found a way to get onto a roster, stay on a roster. He found a role. He knows his role. And he fills it. And I think he's up to roughly$90 million in earnings in the NBA. And he plays for the Pacers, actually. He knows his role. He fills it well. And so you have to figure out, are you LeBron James or are you TJ McConnell in a distributor's roster?

20:23Shane Lohman: Know your role, know how to play it well, and have realistic expectations based on that role. And I think that can do worlds of good for you. Do you think you should walk into that first meeting and kind of set that relationship, that aspiration with them? Or do you think that that's maybe a presumption? You should. You say, like, we look at your portfolio. We think we could fill X role. And here's why you should pick us up. or is that presumptuous? Here's the value that we offer and maybe figuring out exactly what that role is should be a little bit of a collaborative process with the distributor, but it should definitely be a conversation that's had.

20:59Shane Lohman: As a distributor, I would respect the fact that a brand wanted to be clear on its role. And to me, that would signal that you have your stuff together in terms of just getting some structure and treating this like a business and executing at a high level. That would be a strong signal for me as a distributor, for sure. I agree. Yeah. Let's talk about innovation. Everyone's favorite word. It's a little overused. And I'm curious right now, when you hear a brewery or Bev Out group talk about innovation, what should that word mean? Define it. Let's start there. So I see it as when a brewery, and not just craft breweries, but even larger organizations that will remain nameless.

21:44Shane Lohman: I see that word and it's like, oh, we're just going to throw something at the wall. You know, see if it sticks. It's got lime in it. Yeah, it's got lime in it. Again, Mexican lagers are hot, you know, a couple of years ago. Sure. Okay. Oh, now we're going to throw a lime in it. Now we've got a year round lime lager. And, you know, to me, it should mean developing new products, you know, with strategic intent, clear target consumer in mind, some kind of differentiated value. I tell the story that I went to Scottsdale a few years back when I had my distributor and you walk into a BevMo, which unfortunately we don't have or didn't have in Pittsburgh, but you just walk down the craft aisle.

22:24Shane Lohman: And I was on vacation with my girlfriend at the time and just staring at the aisle gave me a headache. And I was in the industry. You know, how do you differentiate so that you're not just another, like you said, cool label on the shelf? innovation for the sake of innovation is kind of pointless and a waste of time and effort if you're just like i said if you're just throwing stuff at the wall without that strategic intent and hoping it's not going to go well innovation can change the trajectory of trajectory of your brewery and i mean that seriously but it has to be done with the right strategic intent why are we creating you know new products and like i said earlier it's got to be authentic You know, figure out who you are, what you are, and it should be authentic to that because that main beer example is such a good one that I always use.

23:11Shane Lohman: If they come out with that Mimosa RTD next week, maybe the RTD category is hot, but it's not going to be productive for main beer company. I want to ask you about top heavy categories here in a moment, but very quickly, think back to your last 10 engagements. Don't name any names, obviously. But how many of those did you make the recommendation to either expand the portfolio and introduce new products versus rein in and maybe rationalize products? Do you have a sense of that? Yeah. More often, I would say over the past year especially, it's become almost like a remodel. Like, are there some things we want to keep?

23:50Shane Lohman: But let's kind of re-envision how we see this portfolio or how we see this brand. And I worked with a brand recently that had two lagers. And they had four core year-round products, and two of them were lagers. Why? Just straight, like head-to-head lagers? One was a Mexican lager, and one was a light lager. And they're probably going to know who it is. That's fine. But all right. And they developed them at some point because the categories were hot. And they're looking at IRI numbers, national IRI numbers for styles. and light loggers are doing well. There's a couple of things there. One, again, don't just go chasing green numbers in the data because styles are hot.

24:32Shane Lohman: And two, sometimes those numbers can be misleading. Like they would send me the IRI reports and they'd show light loggers are up, I don't know, 7 % and IPAs are down 3%. Okay. Well, that IPA segment is still much larger despite being down 3%, and it's also more authentic to who you are. And I think it can be so confusing for consumers when I'm looking at a craft brewery and it's IPA, lager, light lager. Why? You better have a really good reason for making that light lager because people have a lot of brand loyalty to Bud Light, Coors Light, whatever it is. and if it comes off as inauthentic, that's a tough one.

25:22What do you think about mid-strength as a segment? That's the thing everyone's talking about right now, but I think it's also, I ask you a question and then I editorialize, that's what we do in the show. I think that the beer industry is kind of onto the next shiny thing. That's what, I mean, you've talked about it, moving to RTDs to X to Y to Z, and mid-strength is like the new, very nascent, but new thing. Do you think it has legs at all?

25:47Shane Lohman: I do. You know, again, I say it a lot. It's got to be authentic to what you're doing. I think a great example of that is the success that Firestone's had with their 805 NA line because they've done it authentically. And the way they did it, I just look at it and it doesn't feel like they were chasing something. It feels like it was done with intent in an authentic way. And I think that if you can do that, then it can be productive. you know, if you can't, like, yeah, there's potential in that segment to me, like mid-strength, I think there's a lot of potential there, but it's got to be done in a way that's authentic to your brewery.

26:27Shane Lohman: And I think that's hard as a business owner, because if you're looking for growth, it's easy to look at what's growing, you know, where's their growth, what's hot right now, and chase that. But then you look back five years later and realize that you've chased 11 different new things. And I, you know, when I, when we talk about craft beer specifically, those brands, like again, Maine Beer, Russian River, Firestone, you know, they're not necessarily chasing. And if they are developing new products or lines, they're doing it in an authentic way. The reason I asked that question is we're working with someone right now that also, it's not a Mexican lager, but similar.

27:10They have a couple of lagers in their year round portfolio and the ABV difference, the flavor profile is different for sure. But the ABV, one of them is a light lager. And the ABV just in my mind is putting on my consumer hat, isn't a big enough difference away from their other lager to where it kind of makes sense to me. And I was wondering, like, should you go to mid strength or should you not? And again, it's definitely case by case, but it's something we think about a lot. Like if you make a, or like an IPA. I'm not recommending anyone make a light IPA, but if you step down an ABV, it needs to be a pretty substantial step in order to register.

27:49I think there's a question in there. I don't know. I may be just wasting your time.

27:52Shane Lohman: No, no. To me, not at all. To me, when you get into different variations of a single style, it can be really tricky because let's say you're a fan of that brewery and you're a lager drinker in general. Now you've added some decision complexity to where you're not, if maybe if there's one lager, you like that brewery or lager drinker, there's a lager that you see on the shelf, easy decision. You walk up and all of a sudden there's a lager and a light lager. To me, it's like, oh, wait a second, which one do I want? And now you've made that decision that was really easy for that customer a little bit harder and you don't want that at the shelf.

28:37Shane Lohman: So to me, it's, it's, yeah, think about as a consumer, why is there a logger and a light logger? What's the reason for that beyond just chasing, you know, styles or, or hot segments? Let's stay on this very subject for a minute. Is there some layer or level of cannibalization that is acceptable we've never gotten a good answer a clear answer on this we've gotten very different answers from many different people introducing a new lager alongside another lager with the goal of obviously growing the whole pie but we know there's going to be maybe some cannibalization is that acceptable not acceptable yeah i think it's acceptable i think uh i'd be pretty impressed is probably the wrong word but a brewery that came to me and and had enough strategic outlay to say, here's our current consumer base.

29:27Shane Lohman: Here's what they're drinking. Here's how we're going to grow that by developing a new product, even if it cannibalizes the current lager by 5%, we're going to grow by 10%. Great. As long as you have that strategic intent there and you've thought it out, I mean, that's a lot of the battle to me. I think the trick is you just kind of make it up. gonna do you find so the breweries you work with do you find that a lot of them have I don't want to say put that much thought into it but have that level of strategy behind their product development or decision making uh the I would say the mega breweries do mega meaning you like we all know that mega big ass breweries would be the the technical term uh they think about it but even there, it's very unscientific.

30:19We think this may cannibalize a little bit, but it's differentiated enough in positioning and consumer that we think it'll grow the overall. So yeah, I mean, it's a conversation. And again, that depends on what you're releasing and what your portfolio looks like now. But no, most folks don't. And I don't think most folks need to necessarily, but just the lager and lager and IPA and IPA and two hazy IPAs, we see that a lot. It's like, who are these serving?

30:44Shane Lohman: Well, I think it stems from like we talked about back, you know, when the novelty played, it was like, we're going to have a new hazy IPA every week. And some of that, you know, even if you only have two or three now, just like, why are we doing this? Yeah. Yeah. You, you touched on this a minute ago. I don't want to, I don't want to forget it. A lot of categories are inherently top heavy, hard tea, seltzer, NA beer. You've mentioned cider. Cider's got maybe half a dozen, probably even less, frankly. So when you are looking at the outside going, oh man, RTD is on a tear or NA, what do you tell a brewery that's thinking about that?

31:24Man, we got to get into NA. Have you seen these numbers? It's crazy. Yeah.

31:29Shane Lohman: If we're going to do it, we better have a good reason because I saw a stat maybe two, three weeks ago that 10 suppliers control 97 % of the market in RTDs. So if you're getting into a hot segment expecting success purely because the segment's hot, you may be setting yourself up for a bloodbath, you know, and to, and on top of that, you've now done something that if it's not authentic to who you are, has diluted your brand a little bit as well. So, you know, yeah, growing segments or hot segments do provide, you know, some opportunity, but you've got to, you've got to have some real strategic intent or just clear thought behind why you're getting into that because it's not going to be easy or automatic success.

32:13Where does the beer industry back up? Where does the craft beer industry go by 2030? What do we look like?

32:21Shane Lohman: You know, I really hope that it's a healthier and sustainable place. I think we're heading in that direction generally. You know, I'll go back to the talk that Bart Watson gave, which I believe was at CBC, a lot of conferences lately. But, you know, getting outside of the traditional, you know, boundaries of craft or what, you know, you're an independently owned beverage brand. You know, what can you create? And I think that there's so much that can be really empowering because, you know, you're more agile than than these mega breweries. you know you a lot of these regional breweries or local breweries have direct contact with their consumers on a daily basis so they can get that feedback you know use that to your advantage because I think there's so much that you can do that maybe some of these mega breweries can't and if we can get you know I got into this business because I love the product I love the beer I love the people I really hope that we can get this to a more sustainable and healthier your place.

33:30Shane Lohman: I'm sure it's the same way for you every day, or not every day, but all the time when I'm reading these, oh, another brewery closed. It sucks, man. And it's the reason that, honestly, that I continue to do this advisory work with breweries is because I know that with the right approach, the right strategies, we can turn the fact that the craft segments matured into a leverage point to drive progress and create a healthier industry. So I hope that's where we get to. I think there's a real possibility that we can. I agree. And I think we will get there. Everything is doom and gloom and dour. And that's easy, you know, to understand why, kind of poking your head up and looking around the world.

34:10But I think that we'll be much stronger. And we're going to lose a lot of breweries. And I don't want to be crass about that. But, you know, that's, we're going to have some killer breweries on the other side of it, making wonderful beer with great value props. And I think we'll make it.

34:26Shane Lohman: We'll all be here. And I try and tell breweries and brewers, why'd you get into this? Because it is easy to get doom and gloom. But what's the point of doing... That's just such a tough energy every day that if you're just going to focus on that, remember why you got into this and just do cool stuff. To me, that's such an opportunity. Like I said, you get to talk to your customers every day. you get that direct feedback. Just remember why you did this, do cool stuff, you know, easier said than done. But I think there is still a lot of potential in the industry. Thank you for hanging out today, Shane.

35:01Yeah, I appreciate it.

35:02Shane Lohman: Thank you. I've, again, really glad to finally sit down and hang out and talk shop. Where should people go to learn about Five Star Beverage Group? Our website's a great place, fivestarbeverage.com, LinkedIn. You know, you can find me on LinkedIn. We have the five-star beverage page on LinkedIn. You know, if you go on our website, it's not my best content, but a lot of the content we filter onto there on our, you know, industry insights blog page. But either that or LinkedIn is a great place. Do you have a newsletter? I followed your LinkedIn forever. Do you have a newsletter yet? I don't. I don't know if I have the consistent discipline to do one.

35:41Shane Lohman: I'm working on it. But, you know, the last couple of weeks have been sporadic on LinkedIn, but usually at least a couple of times on LinkedIn, there'll be new content. Like I said, a lot of that filters onto the website. You know, people can feel free to reach out, but there's usually a pretty good stream of stuff on LinkedIn and the website. You're a good follow. I recommend it. I'll put that in the show notes. I appreciate that. Yes, sir. Thank you, Shane. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. 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.

36:25Take care. We'll catch back up with you soon.