Athletic Brewing and the NA Beer Revolution | Bring Your Beer to Work
4/22/202638 min
With its brewery finally open, Athletic Brewing is on a mission to get its beer into stores. But Heineken, the European leader in this space, is also chasing this growing market and now has its sights set on the U.S. And Athletic wants to prove it can compete not just with the alcohol industry, but against all beverages.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Brown· Host0:00
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Business Wars ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. [instrumental music] It's twenty eighteen, and in Brooklyn, New York, Athletic Brewing co-founder Bill Shufelt walks into the back office of a Whole Foods. On the surface, Shufelt projects an air of friendly confidence, but inside he's a bundle of nerves. He's carrying a cooler filled with Athletic's non-alcoholic craft beer, and he knows the future of his company may hinge on the decision of the regional buyer he's about to meet. She stands to greet him and gestures toward her desk with a serious, slightly hurried expression.
Speaker 10:52
"Bill, hi. Come on in. Now, I do want to be upfront. I'm only meeting with you because my colleague in Stamford asked me to. We've never really gotten into the non-alcoholic beer space, and we don't have any plans to. I'm not trying to be unfriendly. I just wanna manage expectations."
David Brown· Host1:10
Shufelt just smiles. Since he left his high-flying finance job to start Athletic the previous year, he's gotten used to this response. For decades, non-alcoholic beer has been considered the poor cousin of the real thing, mostly associated with people who can't or don't want to drink anymore.