Berry Bros. & Rudd – Some History and the Women Behind the Brand

On my way to 67 Pall Mall Wine Club for a meeting, I had some time, so I wandered into No.3…Just stepping through the front door it was a feast for my senses …. the ancient floorboards, mahogany wall paneling, antique furniture, Royal Warrants, old wine books and catalogs.  Looking closer I saw portraits of former Royal family members who were regular customers, and a framed letter from the White Star Line informing Berry Brothers of the loss of 69 cases of wine and spirits in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. What history! In short, the Berry Bros. & Rudd head office is a historian’s dream.

No. 3 St. James’s Street, London

No. 3 St. James’s Street is now used as the company’s headquarters. No.3, as it’s known, contained Berry Bros. & Rudd’s main retail premises until mid-2017, when these moved around the corner to a purpose-built shop at 63 Pall Mall.

Berry Bros. & Rudd, founded in 1698, and is Britain’s oldest, family-owned wine and spirits merchant. Still trading from No.3 St James’s Street, London, they have two Royal Warrants and five Masters of Wine on staff. Their services also include Other services it offers include wine investment, wine storage, a wine club, tutored tastings, wine events and educational courses.

Royal Warrants

Berry Bros. & Rudd has been the official wine supplier to the British Royal Family since King George III and received its first Royal Warrant of Appointment in 1903 from King Edward VII. Queen Elizabeth II granted the company her royal warrant in 1952, while Prince Charles, now King Charles lll, granted his in 1998.

Despite being 324 years old in 2022, Berry Bros. & Rudd remains at the forefront of wine and spirits innovation. Their current range of over than 4,000 wines is sourced from over 25 countries.

Berry Bros. & Rudd seems to embrace progress, and at the same time value their traditions. Still run by members of the Berry and Rudd families and they also continue to supply the British Royal Family, since King George III.

Women of Berry Bros. & Rudd

Berry Bro & Rudd has been run by the same two families for centuries; It has survived world wars and pandemics, but there is a fleet of female leaders who have shown, and now show that this historic business can and emerge stronger than ever.

The family firm began life as a grocery store in 1698, founded by a woman now known as “Widow Bourne.”

Elizabeth Rudd “Lizzy” is the current Chairman, who is currently planting the seed for the next generation with her ambitious sustainability plans and creating affordable wine investments.

Emma Fox, Chief Executive Officer, was appointed July 2020.  She has been an independent director of the firm’s board since October 2017.

“Over the past few years as a director, I have got to know BB&R very well, I share its values and am passionate about a culture where people flourish and have fun,” Fox said.

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Winechain (wiNeFT) Partners with CMA CGM Group for Logistics of Fine Wines 

Winechain the NFT platform (wiNeFT /Winechain NFT name) designed to create direct links to new generations of wine consumers around the world, has today announced the partnership with the CMA CGM Group. This global player in sea, land, and air logistics solutions will take a minority shareholding in Winechain alongside its founders.

Winechain is the fi­rst independent NFT platform for ­fine wine estates. This wine-meets-technology project has been designed to create direct links with new generations of wine consumers around the world has now raised over €1 million in backing from top international wine estates and others.

The initiative was launched in April 2022 by three Frenchmen: Xavier Garambois, former head of Amazon Europe, Guillaume Jourdan, CEO of VitaBella, Paris, and Nicolas Mendiharat, CEO of the San Francisco Palate Club.  The plan is to go live by the end of 2022 with the issue of the ­first wiNeFT (Winechain name NFT).

Xavier Garambois, joint founder of Winechain states:

“Although the acquisition of NFTs will be the first thing that enthused buyers will do on Winechain, the day will come when the owner of the wines will want to have them shipped to their homes, wherever that might be in the world, and in the very best conditions. Apart from enabling access to rare wines, Winechain also takes care of logistics to ensure that the wines arrive at their final destination in perfect condition. This worldwide partnership with the CMA CGA Group is a mark of confidence in the future and our strategy that enables us to look to the long term. We will be able to benefit from the expertise and experience of CMA CGA and the major support that they can bring in terms of sea and air transport and logistical services.”

 

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US E-Commerce Alcohol Sales Surpass $6bn in 2021

According to new data released by Rabobank their 2022 Alcohol E-commerce Playbook Report looked at the US alcohol e-commerce market and how it has grown since the start of the pandemic. The report forecasts that the online channel is set to be the biggest driver of industry growth for years to come.

The report predicts online alcohol sales in the US will grow an additional 3.4% in 2022 and has noted that the average size of e-commerce teams at US alcohol companies has jumped by 117% since 2019.

“E-commerce will be the number-one driver of industry growth over the next decade and a critical component of brand building, awareness, and trial, both online and in-store,” said Bourcard Nesin, a Rabo Research F&A beverages analyst, and author of the report.

“Companies that fail to proactively invest in their e-commerce teams will struggle to remain relevant and retain market share.”

Analysis of Major Channels
Online sales now represent about 4% of all off-trade alcohol sales in the US, an increase of nearly 1.9% in 2019.

The online grocery and marketplace channels grew 271% in two years and are now nearly four times larger than they were pre-pandemic.

Online alcohol sales in the grocery channel increased 238% in 2020 and 9% last year. Rabobank states the increase is due to a large number of retail locations offering alcohol online.

The report further said online alcohol marketplaces increased by 274% in 2020, with the channel predicted to grow by 15% in 2022.

Rabobank said companies such as Drizly and Instacart obtained millions of customers and added thousands of stores to their retail networks. Together, the two companies have an 86% market share of sales in the channel.

The channel’s success resulted in major merger and acquisition activity, including Uber’s US$1.1 billion purchase of Drizly last year, Rabobank noted. In November 2021, e-commerce platform Reserve Bar agreed to acquire Minibar Delivery.

Meanwhile, specialty alcohol retailers, which include large chain stores, state-owned retailers, and independent shops with an online offering, increased by 151% in 2020. Rabobank said growth was driven by operators offering local delivery and curbside pick-up for the first time.

#wine #onlinewine #winemarkets #winenews #ecommerce #rabobank #winelovers
#instawine #drizly #uber #alcohol #winedelivery #winetrends

Wine Industry Predictions for 2022 – Wine Intelligence

Wine Intelligence, a global leader in wine consumer research and insights has come up with five predictions for 2022.

Firstly, beverage alcohol has proven to be one of the most resilient product categories in the world in the Covid era, in part due to the industry’s ability to innovate and pivot from a largely restricted or closed channel (the on-premise) to more accessible channels such as e-commerce and convenience retail, where regulation allowed.

The challenges that face the wine industry in 2022 will be similar to those facing beverage alcohol as a whole and consumer goods generally: keep costs down while persuading consumers to trade up; improving the substance as well as the image of the category in light of increasing demands from governments for a step-change commitment to environmental and social responsibility; and making the product relevant to the next generation of legal drinking age consumers.

Here are Wine Intelligence’s five predictions for 2022:

1. Global wine will get serious about ‘light-weighting’ – reducing glass packaging weight

Despite many worthy efforts over the past 3 decades, the wine industry has yet to find a way of peeling consumers away from their love of a 75cl glass bottle. Part of the problem is that glass bottles work so well from a consumer point of view: they seem more environmentally friendly than plastic, they convey reassurance by reflecting the values, tradition, and quality of wine, and they look good on a table. Last month, we reported consumer research that showed 55% considered glass to be a ‘sustainable’ form of wine packaging, compared with 35% who thought that a bag-in-box was sustainable.

Why does this matter? A standard glass wine bottle, with a typical dry weight of 500g, accounts for 29% of a wine’s carbon footprint, according to a 2011 study by PE International for the Wine Institute of California. However, there are many bottles for still wine out there which tip the scales at substantially more – with a dry weight of nearly a kilo in some cases, which pushes packaging’s share of wine’s carbon output to close to 50%, and the total carbon output up by around 10%, according to the same PE study. A lightweight bottle reduces packaging’s share substantially – by roughly 1g of carbon per gram of glass, depending on the proportion of recycled glass used, and that’s before any transportation saving. Remove the aluminium foil capsule, throw in a natural cork (and count the full benefit of carbon sequestration in a cork forest, as calculated by a study from EY, commissioned by cork manufacturer Amorim in 2019), and you have a product who’s packaging is almost carbon neutral.
Why will this change in 2022? Influential figures in the wine industry, such as Jancis Robinson MW and Tim Atkin MW, have long campaigned against heavy wine bottles. Now this powerful group of influencers is rallying a growing coalition to their cause. Crucially, this now includes major retailers, who will use their buying power (and the need to meet their own carbon reduction targets) to strong-arm suppliers into committing to lightweight glass where possible (sparkling wine will still need heavier glass to cope with gas pressure). More pragmatically, strains on the global supply chain, in terms of raw material cost increases, rising fuel and transportation costs, and retailer reluctance to pass costs on to consumers, will force producers to seek out savings wherever they are available. Unnecessary packaging will seem an obvious place to start.

2. Luxury wine will need to burnish sustainability credentials

What does luxury mean today? Chewing over this topic at a gathering organised by upscale Provence wine producer Chene Bleu in London’s Linley Gallery a few weeks ago, Lucia van der Post, the leading style guru and Financial Times columnist, was unequivocal: “luxury will have to show that it is sustainable to appeal to younger consumers”. Her thesis, and that of Xavier Rolet, co-owner of Chene Bleu and former CEO of the London Stock Exchange, was that luxury brands will need to work out how to align their values, and actions, with those of the next generation of consumers. In practice this means committing as much to acting sustainably – both in human and environmental terms. The challenge for luxury brands in general, and luxury wine in particular, is to do this while not compromising the quality of the product itself.

How will this play out in 2022? Around the world, wine drinkers are trading down in volume, and trading up in quality (see also Prediction 3, below), and luxury wine is currently one of the main beneficiaries of this trend. However, when the tide of disposable income starts to ebb, as it surely will when inflation starts eating away at household incomes and travel reopens fully in the next year, consumers are likely to become more discriminatory in how they spend their money. The usual quality-and-heritage pitch will no longer be sufficient.

3. The premiumization train will keep on rolling in 2022

One of the most notable silver linings of the pandemic for the wine industry has been consumers’ willingness to transfer the budgets they would have spent in going out and travel into higher quality food and beverages for the home. After an initial blip during the first period of lockdown, the premium and super-premium price categories of wine, which in the US context means wines selling for USD 10-20 and over USD 20 per bottle respectively, have bounced back by +2-4% in volume terms in the first 6 months of 2021, according to IWSR data. At the very top end, the Liv-Ex Fine Wine 100 Index, which measures the prices of the most sought-after fine wines in the secondary market, hit an all-time high in October, capping an impressive 17 month run of increases.
The trend to spend a bit more has of course been with us since well before Covid and is closely linked with the trend to drink less volume of wine.

Wine Intelligence data shows that 39% of consumers in key consumption markets around the world are actively moderating their wine consumption, rising to over 50% in markets such as Netherlands and Switzerland. Wine producers have also been innovating and promoting their premium offerings assiduously, as the profit margins on these products are orders of magnitude higher compared with low-priced wines, thanks largely to the impact of fixed value taxes that are levied on alcohol by volume.

Three factors will fuel the wine premiumization train in 2022: the reluctance of some consumers – particularly the Boomer cohort –to re-engage with the on-premise and travel, which will reserve more of their budgets for at-home entertaining; the increasing influence of Millennials within most wine markets, who have been the biggest drivers of the drink-less-but-better movement; and a nasty inflationary crunch in the supply chain, combining the disastrous northern hemisphere wine harvest of 2021, which the OIV estimates reduced wine volumes by an estimated 18%, and rising energy, dry goods and transport costs.

4. Wine in cans will become low-alcohol wine RTDs in cans (and small bottles)

Canned wine made huge strides in 2021, both from a technical and a sales point of view, and this will continue in 2022. However, the big innovation will come from industry building new product sub-categories in wine that hit both of the growing trends of the 2020s: wine in a portable, single serve format, with a low-alcohol formulation that turns it from wine to a wine-based sparkling drink. The continued growth of RTDs, especially in the US, is being led by an unprecedented bout of innovation in the category, and remains on course to grow substantially in 2022, according to forecasts from the IWSR. More astute RTD manufacturers are looking for ways in which they can premiumize their offering (tapping into the same trends as discussed in Prediction #3, above), which at the moment is largely focused around spirits-based beverages, using premium branded whiskies, rums and gins to drive consumer demand up the price ladder. There is also an increasing focus on flavour, according to the IWSR’s in-house market experts, which will see a shakeout of poorly formulated, low-value RTDs. Eventually, we think, the same logic of successful RTD innovation – marquee brands, better flavours – will be applied to premium wine products. We expect the first movers here will be the sparkling wine producers, especially Champagne houses with an eye on extending their reach into the low alcohol / single serve space.

5. Wine industry needs to do battle for global talent
Most of the wine industry would agree that it is a fun place to work. Unlike most other industries, wine can offer a unrivalled mix of intellectual challenges. What other industry requires its leaders to be part-farmer, part-chemist, part-production expert, part-salesperson, and part-marketing guru? In recent years it has attracted talented, well-educated, and passionate people from the Millennial generation, drawn by its vast complexity, heritage, and multifaceted work challenges, as well as the romantic notions of working in harmony with nature that wine still manages to conjure.

That’s the good news. The more troubling news is that there are now many other exciting things for the next generation of global talent to work on. The war for their services is taking on a new dimension, driven primarily by the rise of global technology giants backed by vast quantities of investment cash. True, working for TikTok may not offer time in a field, bottling line or upscale retailer, but the financial rewards can be astounding. For the moment, the battle for talent is being fought in other sectors – global accountancy and financial services firms are finding their conveyor belt of talent picked apart by the top technology firms, who can offer starting salaries of well over USD 100,000 per year, according to research published by Payscale.

In on-premise, a field much closer to the wine industry, a corresponding re-valuation of talent is already happening. A survey of its own job postings released in June 2021 by Reed, the largest recruitment agency in the UK, found that hospitality and catering staff jobs were being advertised with salaries 18% higher on average in May 2021 compared with the previous year. The most eye-opening number in this survey was the 43% increase in salaries offered for restaurant kitchen staff.

While wages are obviously important to workers, they are not the only thing that matters. Surveys of younger workers from the Millennial and Gen-Z age cohorts focus on consistent requirements from employment: being part of an ethically sound business, transparency and fairness in the workplace, purpose, autonomy, and opportunities to develop. As with many other industries, wine is going to need to up its game in 2022, not just in terms of money, but also in its ability to offer more holistic rewards to its workforce.

So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you have anything else to add?

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#wine2022 #winetrends

Drinks E-commerce to grow exponentially in three years – IWSR Report

The total value of the e-commerce sector in headline markets is expected to grow at an unprecedented rate between 2022-2025, according to IWSR.

Over the next five years e-commerce sales of alcohol across key global markets are predicted to expand by +66% to reach more than US$42 billion, according to a comprehensive strategic study published by IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

Among the 16 focus markets examined in the IWSR report (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States), e-commerce value increased by about +12% in 2019, and then by almost +43% in 2020 during the height of the pandemic.

The report states: “Looking ahead to 2025, e-commerce is projected to represent about 6% of all off-trade beverage alcohol volumes, compared to less than 2% in 2018. The greatest forecast e-commerce value growth will come from the US, thanks to average annual growth in the country of about +20%, which will see it become the top global market for online beverage alcohol.”

The newly released IWSR study also found that online business models for alcohol sales are becoming more diverse, leading consumers to increasingly shift between channels and retailers according to their specific needs at any given time.

“In general terms, the online beverage alcohol space can be perceived as two distinct, but overlapping, worlds: more ‘traditional’ e-commerce – often omnichannel or online specialists – accessed via websites and used by older consumers seeking good prices and known brands and who are prepared to wait for delivery; and more ‘modern’ app-driven e-commerce – often on-demand or marketplaces – used by younger legal drinking age consumers willing to pay for rapid delivery and looking for interesting/premium brands,” the report states.

Guy Wolfe, strategic insights manager, IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, commented: “Given the pandemic and overall changing consumer shopping behavior, it’s certainly not surprising that alcohol e-commerce is growing very quickly. But what’s interesting is to see the significant variations that have developed both across and within markets in how different consumer groups shop via e-commerce and what their priorities are.

“E-commerce has clearly become engrained for many consumers, cementing its place as the third sales channel for beverage alcohol purchase,” confirms Wolfe.

 

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