Компания Wine & Beer Supply приобрела поставщика хмеля Havoc Brew Supply для расширения ассортимента ингредиентов

A local company known for providing the glassware to many local breweries has made a play into the ingredients supply side of the beer business.   Wine & Beer Supply recently acquired Havoc Brew Supply, a Maryland-based hops provider.  Based out of the Northlake Commerce Center in Ashland, Wine & Beer Supply provides breweries and wineries with customer-facing goods like glassware, bottles and cans, as well as back-of-house hardware like fermentation tanks and kegs.  Since merging with New Jersey-based winemaking supplier Gino Pinto in 2021, Wine & Beer Supply has added wine ingredients like grapes, juice and tannins to its offerings. Founder and CEO Dave Robertson said he’s been wanting to get into beer ingredients for a few years, but didn’t have the internal expertise.  “From a strategic perspective, we said, ‘Okay, where’s our weak spots, where are we underrepresented in the industry?’ Today we skew towards the wine side, and part of that is because we brought in a lot of winery customers when we merged with Gino Pinto,” Robertson said. “In order to serve the breweries, we needed to come up with a program where we have good, quality ingredients that can help them make the best beer. That was our focus, but we didn’t want to do it halfway.” About a year and a half ago, the company connected with Dylan Krzywonski, who’d founded Havoc Brew Supply in 2016 and had been supplying hops to breweries throughout the eastern U.S. On Sept. 1, Wine & Beer Supply’s acquisition of the company closed. Robertson declined to share terms.  The deal was for Havoc Brew Supply’s book of business, assets and brand. The company does business under the name “Hop Havoc,” and will be moved from its headquarters in Maryland to the Richmond area. Robertson said Havoc had about three or four employees, and that only Krzywonski is being retained.  Along with the Ashland headquarters, Wine & Beer Supply has warehouses in New York, New Jersey and Pittsburgh, the last of which opened recently. Robertson said the company does most of its deliveries itself, servicing much of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Rust Belt. It has a staff of about 50.  Wine & Beer Supply was founded in 2015, right as the craft beer industry began to blast off both locally and nationally. In recent years, though, it’s slowed down, with volume down nationally and closures happening locally.  In response to such headwinds, Robertson said the company has been doubling down on being a one-stop-shop for breweries and wineries, and the Havoc Brew Supply deal keeps it on that track.  “We’re definitely seeing customers that are feeling the pinch with lower volumes, both in craft beer and wine. The post-Covid drop-off has been real,” he said.  “But at the same time, we’re a relatively small company in a big industry. It’s still a multi-billion-dollar industry, and our perspective is, ‘Let’s be the best provider out here, especially on the East Coast.’ The eastern half of the U.S. is very underserved compared to the western half of the U.S., from a supplier perspective.” In addition to supply and demand fluctuations, Robertson is also no stranger to dealing with logistical trends that get sprung on the industry, like the national can shortage that arrived with the pandemic when breweries went all-in on to-go sales. More recently, the Trump administration’s ongoing trade war with Canada has hit the business, Robertson said.  “We do have bottles that we bring in from Canada, and the 50 percent  tariff that just went into effect has got those bottles sitting in Canada right now,” he said. “But we have a really robust supply chain now, which has been helpful. … When I started the business, I did not realize I was going to be so focused on being a logistics expert.”