Chicago-based Molson Coors announced its first spirits acquisition Tuesday, of Kentucky-based bourbon and rye whiskey-maker Blue Run Spirits, as it continues efforts to expand its product offerings beyond beer.
The Blue Run acquisition will more than double the beer giant’s spirits team, it said in a news release.
Blue Run co-founder and CEO Mike Montgomery will become vice president of Molson Coors’ Coors Spirits Co., which will house Blue Run as well as the company’s prior forays into whiskey, Five Trail Blended American Whiskey and Barmen 1873 Bourbon.
In an interview with the Tribune, Molson Coors Chief Commercial Officer Michelle St. Jacques described Blue Run as “one of the hottest new entrants in whiskey.”
“About three years ago, we shifted from a company perspective to become a total beverage company,” she said. “Our strategy was to continue to strengthen our core brands, our big beer brands, but also to premiumize and expand beyond beer.”
Blue Run will continue with plans to build distillery in Kentucky by 2025. The brand, which launched in 2020 and has won numerous bourbon awards, according to the news release, also has plans to release three new whiskeys in the late summer and fall.
Blue Run often produces its whiskey in small batches, Montgomery said, creating an air of exclusivity to the company’s releases.
“We’ve been able to create what I like to call bourbon hunters mentality, where people see Blue Run on the shelf, they grab it immediately,” he said.
Molson Coors, which has about 350 employees in Chicago, plans to move from its Wacker Drive offices to BMO Tower in the West Loop next summer. The company announced plans to move its North American headquarters from Denver to Chicago in 2019.
In the face of competition from craft and imported beer as well as rising consumer interest in hard seltzer, Molson Coors had begun its expansion beyond beer, launching a hard coffee and a canned wine earlier that year. In 2020, the company partnered with Coca-Cola on its Topo Chico Hard Seltzer.
The beer giant reported nearly $3.3 billion in net sales during the second quarter this year, up 11.8% from the same period last year and its strongest quarter since the merger of Molson and Coors in 2005, according to an earnings release.
Terms of the Blue Run acquisition were not disclosed.
When deciding how to make an entree into spirits several years ago, said Coors Spirits Co. executive chair David Coors, the company recognized the whiskey category had been growing well. The first part of the whiskey production process, he said, is similar to the process of producing beer.
The entry into spirits marked a departure from the company’s earlier identity.
When he was in college, Coors said he told his father, former Molson Coors Chairman Peter Coors, that the company should make a whiskey. The elder Coors, as his son remembers, said: “We’re good at one thing, and that’s beer.”
The company hasn’t ruled out introducing other spirits into its portfolio, but is focused on whiskey for now, Coors said.
