Andy Moschea

General Mills is closing three manufacturing plants in Missouri as the cereal and snacks company aims to make its supply chain more competitive. https://lnkd.in/geT95-vd

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FROM THE MAGAZINE 💡 In the latest installment of the Last Word column, Brian Zellmer, CEO of Minneapolis-based Rise Baking Company, shares his thoughts on growth through #acquisitions and the best measures to align operations. Read more ➡️ https://bit.ly/44wD42o

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Four players now own two-thirds of U.S. wine & spirits wholesale revenue and consolidation will continue well into 2027. For suppliers, the real issue now is attention. The bigger and more automated national distributors get, the thinner local execution and dedicated resources stretch. That's the opening for mid-sized, regionally-focused wholesalers like us. At Handcrafted Wine & Spirits, we distribute in five states (OR/OK/KS/MO/NE) with local leadership and attention, not a shared layer spread thin across a national footprint. As the graphic states, distribution isn't the scarce resource. Attention is. #WineAndSpirits #Distribution #BevAlc

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Anheuser-Busch is closing two breweries and selling another. The closures follow the company's announcement earlier this year that it would invest $300 million in U.S. #manufacturing, Read more: https://brnw.ch/21wYjRi

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MGP just put its own name on a bottle of bourbon. For anyone who knows this industry, that sentence carries real weight. MGP Ingredients has been distilling whiskey in Lawrenceburg, Indiana since 1847 — through the Seagram's era, through Prohibition, through decades of supplying bulk spirit to hundreds of brands that put their own names on liquid MGP made. The roster of brands that have sourced from MGP over the years reads like a who's who of the American whiskey boom. Templeton Rye. Bulleit. Angel's Envy. Michter's at various points. Yellowstone. George Remus. Countless others. If you have had a sourced American whiskey in the last twenty years, there is a meaningful chance it came from Lawrenceburg. MGP Chapter One: Out of the Shadows is a 10-year-old straight bourbon, 111 proof, built on the distillery's historic LBSV high-rye mash bill — 60% corn, 36% rye, 4% malted barley — selected and blended by Master Distiller Ian Stirsman from barrels in Rickhouse G. Cherry, goji berry, dark molasses, brown butter, clove, dark chocolate. This is a whiskey made by people who know exactly what they have and finally decided to say so under their own name. The timing is not accidental. MGP just reported a 59% drop in brown goods sales. Their contract customers are sitting on excess inventory and not ordering new make. Two Kentucky facilities are dark. And yet, here they are launching a namesake brand and renaming the Indiana facility back to MGP Distillery — signaling that they believe the value of the MGP name in the consumer market is worth building now, even in a down cycle. And honestly, this is the correct call and it is long overdue. The whiskey enthusiast community has known for years what MGP makes. The secret has been an open one in collector and reviewer circles for a long time. What has changed is that MGP now believes its own name is an asset worth owning publicly rather than a fact worth obscuring. For the brands that have been built on sourced MGP liquid without disclosing it — and there are many of them — this launch is a quiet but meaningful moment. The source is now a brand. The distillery is now a competitor, at least at the collector level. And the consumer who knows what MGP is now has a way to buy directly from the people who actually made what they were drinking all along. The best kept secret in American whiskey just introduced itself. #AmericanWhiskey #Bourbon #BeverageAlcohol #IndustryInsider #TheBarBook #Spirits #MGP

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