When you think of Coors, you are probably like me and you get the image of the silver bullet and the cold blue mountains on the side of the can. Or perhaps you know Molson-Coors as one of the top beverage brands in the world. But you most certainly didn’t think of Coors as a whiskey company, until now. David Coors joins the show to talk about the family business and going from a just beer company into a full beverage enterprise. David has a deep connection with whiskey that spans back to his childhood and he is spearheading the next phase of company expansion by releasing their first ever collaboration whiskey, along with Bardstown Bourbon Co, called Five Trail. Listen to David’s story and how Coors is learning what it’s like to get into the whiskey business.
Show Notes:
- Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about answering questions on industry news vs people’s thoughts
- Talk about your involvement with the family business and when you got into it
- How has Molson-Coors grown over the recent decade?
- At what point did you realize your name carries weight?
- When did Coors diversify away from Banquet into other beers?
- Why did your dad try to kill Blue Moon?
- What internships did you have at the brewery?
- What made Coors Banquet go to the stubby bottle?
- Was Cobra Kai a paid placement or organic?
- What lessons is failed marketing that you can apply to today?
- Did you have a hand in the seltzer craze hit?
- So what made you want to dive into whiskey?
- Did you have to sell your dad on venturing into whiskey?
- How did you figure out what kind of whiskey to do?
- Can you scale and sustain the malt part of the blend?
- How did you come to your proof point?
- What are those hard lessons you’ve learned by entering the whiskey business?
- Can your R&D team figure out how to make the barrel hoops blue when it’s ready?
- Do you yourselves going even further into the whiskey category?
- What trends in the beverage alcohol space do you see happening?
- What is your cannabis strategy?
- @fivetrail @molsoncoors
- Support this podcast on Patreon