Michael Waskewich Jr. writes about the business of beverage alcohol, from trade policy and producer finances to brand storytelling and consumer discovery. The posts also describe The Bar Book’s flavor-matching approach to helping people discover spirits.
14.7K followersBased on 16 posts · latest Sep 2026
Useful for trade-literate commentary on beverage alcohol business, finance and consumer discovery.
Best for
Consultancy campaigns on beverage alcohol finance and consumer discovery for trade audiences.
Not for
Consumer brand campaigns seeking broad U.S. awareness through short-form video or lifestyle content.
Key takeaways
Flavor matching can help people choose unfamiliar spirits instead of defaulting to a known label.
Producer liquidity and predictable payment terms, not demand, are what break producers.
Trade disputes should be read through the costs they create on both sides.
Check first: Confirm audience survey results, recent comparable results, and partnership terms before contacting Michael Waskewich Jr.
Main ideas
The industry fixed production and distribution, but not the moment a shopper chooses · Liquidity and predictability, not demand, are what break producers · Trade disputes should be read through the costs they create on both sides
Michael Waskewich Jr. writes about the business of beverage alcohol, connecting industry news to the economics, production choices and cultural context behind it.
Their posts range from producer cash flow and trade disputes to non-alcoholic drinks, spirits technology and brand storytelling.
A recurring focus is consumer discovery: in a post about The Bar Book, they argue that flavor matching can help people choose among unfamiliar spirits instead of defaulting to a known label.
Other posts examine what makes a market or brand work, including the financial pressures facing independent breweries, the infrastructure behind dealcoholized wine, and the role of heritage in bourbon marketing.
Follow their work for an industry-focused interpretation of beverage news that looks beyond the headline to how products are made, financed, distributed and discovered.
Waskewich’s distinctive strength is linking specific business developments to wider questions about how the beverage industry works.
They use concrete details—a payment discount and shortened payment cycle in a Telangana dispute, the equipment and capacity involved in a dealcoholization acquisition, or the production method and distribution partners behind a non-alcoholic agave launch—to explain why a story matters beyond one company.
They also consider the people and experiences affected: producers waiting for payment, shoppers faced with too many choices, and communities losing a local brewery.
Waskewich writes about the beverage alcohol business from an insider's position, returning to several themes: the industry has modernized how it makes, tracks, and ships products, but not the moment a shopper decides what to buy; producer finances and payment terms constrain growth more than consumer demand; trade fights should be judged by the operating costs they create on both sides of a border; export dominance comes from cultural embedding, not logistics; premium spirits must justify their prices through transparency and consumer education; non-alcoholic drinks have grown into industrial-scale production; and craft spirits build lasting loyalty by creating a place worth visiting, not just a product.
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They typically open with a news event and specific numbers, then widen to a structural claim, with a focus on independent producers, the discovery moment, and predictability across the value chain.
The industry fixed production and distribution, but not the moment a shopper chooses
Waskewich argues that spirits technology has become sophisticated in inventory management, cask-level tracking, compliance reporting, and cross-border distribution, but the front of house—tools that let brands speak with consumers rather than advertise at them—remains largely unbuilt.
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A shopper facing 200 bottles with no way to choose represents a lost sale, not a sales opportunity.
The brands that lose out are emerging craft producers, veteran-owned distilleries, and those without national marketing budgets.
Waskewich proposes flavor matching: consumers enter their preferred profiles, notes, and occasions, and the system surfaces products that fit.
Customers who discover a product through genuine flavor alignment come back; those reached by advertising alone drift away.
Waskewich describes The Bar Book's flavor-matching architecture, developed over years to match drinkers with products by taste.
They say they have presented on this gap at the American Distilling Institute conference and the James B.
Beam Institute at the University of Kentucky.
The post cites a Spirits Business feature and guest James Triffo's observation that the market lacks front-of-house solutions that let brands speak directly with consumers—a point Triffo makes, not Waskewich.
Liquidity and predictability, not demand, are what break producers
Waskewich returns to the idea that a profitable company can still fail when payments arrive too slowly, and that supply chains depend on trust and predictability as well as margins.
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This is acute in alcohol, where products require months or years of production planning, regulatory approvals, excise obligations, and complex route-to-market partnerships.
Rising input costs, aging inventory, distributor consolidation, and tighter capital add pressure.
They apply the same reasoning to independent breweries: growth phases reward expansion—more taprooms, SKUs, and markets—while mature markets reward sustainability.
Operators now need to master hospitality, experience design, marketing, financial discipline, and operational efficiency as well as brewing.
One post covers Indian alcohol industry associations opposing a Telangana state beverage corporation plan to shorten payment cycles to 15 days while automatically deducting a 2% to 2.75% early-payment discount.
The associations argue that such discounts were traditionally voluntary arrangements negotiated between buyers and suppliers, and that applying them automatically while balances remain outstanding changes producers' economics.
Another post reads the auction of Great Marsh Brewing Co. in Massachusetts—its waterfront facility, equipment, and furnishings—as evidence of a maturing craft market rather than an isolated failure.
It distinguishes that from craft beer disappearing: consumers still value authenticity and local experience.
Trade disputes should be read through the costs they create on both sides
Rather than argue for one government's position, Waskewich traces who pays.
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They say the beverage alcohol industry is caught in a dispute it did not start and cannot resolve, taking damage on both sides: American distillers have lost Canadian shelf access, American bars and restaurants face higher import costs, and consumers in both countries pay more.
They also point to a detail they say most coverage missed: a 50% tariff on Canadian glass bottles hits American producers that source glass from Canada.
Waskewich identifies a zero-for-zero framework as the practical route back, requiring both governments to want it more than they want to win.
The post reports that talks collapsed Friday night, 50% tariffs on Canadian wine and spirits took effect at midnight on August 22, and Canada confirmed matching measures from September 8.
Crown Royal, at $2.4 billion in U.S. retail value, and Fireball, produced in Canada and valued at $1.45 billion, both face the tariff.
Eight of ten Canadian provinces have kept American wine and spirits off government-run shelves since 2025; California wineries are absorbing close to $1 billion in annual losses; and American distillers have been shut out of Canadian retail for over a year and a half.
Waskewich quotes the Toasts Not Tariffs coalition, comprising 59 beverage alcohol organizations including DISCUS, the American Whiskey Association, and the American Craft Distillers Association.
The coalition says it recognizes the administration's intent to restore market access and warns that a 50% tariff will hurt U.S. hospitality businesses.
Export dominance comes from cultural embedding, not shipping capability
Waskewich treats the biggest export success stories as identity plays.
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They argue that Corona and Modelo won the United States not through advertising alone but by embedding themselves in American food, occasion, and hospitality culture over decades.
The best beverage export strategies, they say, are identity strategies, not logistics strategies.
They also challenge the common framing of Mexican beer as a recent trend, pointing to a brewing history that predates most European nations associated with beer.
The post opens with 2025 export values: Mexico at $6.3 billion, Belgium at $1.8 billion, the Netherlands at $1.6 billion, and Germany at $1.4 billion.
Mexico's total exceeded those three combined.
It traces the history from the first recorded beer brewed in Mexico in 1541 to a modern industry built in the 19th century by German, Austrian, and Swiss immigrants, whose lager traditions still show up in Modelo Negra and Victoria.
Cervecería Modelo was founded in 1922 and Corona launched in 1925.
The post also notes that Modelo held the title of best-selling U.S. beer in 2023 and Michelob Ultra reclaimed it in 2025, framing their competition as a contest between serious operations.
The North American World Cup is the payoff on a long investment in cultural relevance.
Premium spirits earn their price through transparency and consumer education
Waskewich compares the spirits category with whiskey's premiumization playbook.
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They explain that rum has resisted age statements at scale for practical reasons: blending without disclosure protects flexibility, simplifies production planning, and avoids confusing consumers unfamiliar with how tropical aging differs from Scotch.
A 15-year Caribbean rum matures differently, with a higher angel's share and faster evolution.
Waskewich argues that the industry has used this complexity as an excuse to avoid transparency rather than an opportunity to explain it.
Whiskey built its premium story by educating consumers about why age matters, not by simplifying labels.
They apply the same standard to cultural moments: heritage storytelling works only when it feels real, and consumers quickly reject it when it feels overly commercialized.
On rum, Waskewich notes that Mount Gay has operated continuously in Barbados since 1703—323 years on the same island, using the same coral aquifer water and aging under the same tropical conditions—and reports Rémy Cointreau's launch of the Mount Gay Exceptionally Aged Collection.
They quote Managing Director Antoine Couvreur, speaking from Barbados, saying limited Master Blender releases have consistently outperformed expectations in market.
On bourbon, Waskewich reads Evan Williams' officially licensed America 250 commemorative releases as part of a wider moment in which history, craftsmanship, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, and national identity converge.
They predict anniversary-linked distillery experiences, historical collaborations, travel partnerships, military tie-ins, restaurant activations, and tourism campaigns to follow, and warn that the industry is entering a more competitive phase in which premiumization alone no longer guarantees attention.
Across two posts, Waskewich applies the same standard to different categories: their argument for transparency and education in rum age statements becomes a caution about authenticity when heritage is used to sell a national anniversary campaign.
Non-alcoholic drinks have become an industrial-scale business
Waskewich argues that the no-and-low category has moved beyond niche status and is building its own supply chain, processing infrastructure, and vertically integrated production model.
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A facility that strips alcohol from wine and converts it into vodka base is, in their framing, no longer a non-alcoholic company but a full-spectrum beverage processing platform.
The window for producers to build a credible non-alcoholic program without proprietary infrastructure is closing: brands that move now gain access to award-winning process and recipe development support, while those that wait pay more later.
On the brand side, they see the combination of a premium importer, national distribution, and a globally recognized athlete as deliberate positioning.
One post reports that Strategic Beverage Services acquired BevZero's U.S. operations in Santa Rosa.
The facility traces its roots to ConeTech's 1991 pioneering of vacuum distillation for alcohol removal in Sonoma County.
Its spinning cone columns strip alcohol under low heat while preserving volatile aromatics.
Eight of the top ten U.S. wine companies are already customers, and BevZero-US won two of four Double Gold medals at the International Non-Alcoholic Competition in June.
The acquisition includes the Thomas Allen Vineyards winery in Lodi—45 acres, 60,000 square feet, built in 2019, with 1.8 million cases of bottling capacity and 500,000 gallons of storage—along with plans for canning, sparkling wine, more dealcoholization capacity, and 190-proof ethanol from the removal process within three to four months.
The other post covers Almave, a non-alcoholic blue agave spirit backed by Lewis Hamilton, imported by González Byass USA and distributed by Southern Glazer's.
Agave is traditionally milled, cooked, and distilled in Jalisco and Puebla; Almave omits fermentation rather than removing alcohol afterward, producing a drink under 0.5% ABV.
Casa Lumbre's Dr.
Iván Saldaña designed the process.
The range includes Blanco, Ámbar, and Humo, a smoked expression made with Espadín agave pit-roasted at the foot of Popocatépetl.
NielsenIQ figures cited—92% of non-alcoholic beverage buyers also purchase alcohol, and 47% of on-premise guests mix alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks within the same occasion—support Waskewich's argument that Almave is built for the non-alcoholic Margarita occasion, not as a tequila replacement.
Craft spirits earn loyalty by building a place worth going to
Waskewich argues that the best craft spirits operations do more than make a product: they build a destination, and location carries meaning before the first bottle is poured.
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In their reading, pairing a distillery with a cultural center is a community decision, not just a marketing one. It creates a destination that can generate genuine loyalty rather than occasional foot traffic.
Waskewich describes Puerto Rico Distillery opening in a century-old building in Brunswick, Maryland, which previously housed clothing factories, an umbrella factory, and a woodworking shop.
The distillery now produces pitorro, a traditional Puerto Rican distilled spirit, aged for the first time in a bourbon barrel.
For the opening, founder Ángel Rivera released Clandestino Añejo: 218 individually numbered bottles from one bourbon barrel, priced at $75 each.
The name nods to the underground homemade pitorro tradition that predates legal distilling on the island.
The distillery shares the building with Cultura Plenera, a Puerto Rican cultural center.
Visitors can learn Puerto Rican rum history, watch traditional distilling, attend guided tastings, and join cultural programming in the same space.
Waskewich quotes Rivera saying the project was never just about making rum but about preserving traditions and creating a place to experience a piece of Puerto Rico in Maryland.
Start here for the clearest statement of what Michael Waskewich Jr. argues for.
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The post lays out the thesis that runs through much of their other work: the drinks industry has modernized how it makes and moves products, but not how shoppers choose them.
Waskewich responds to a Spirits Business feature on spirits and technology, agreeing that back-of-house systems — inventory, cask-level tracking, compliance reporting and cross-border logistics — have become genuinely sophisticated.
They point to a gap identified in the article: James Triffo’s observation that front-of-house tools enabling brands to speak with consumers, rather than advertise at them, are largely missing.
Waskewich says they have presented on this gap at the American Distilling Institute conference and at the James B.
Beam Institute at the University of Kentucky.
They also describe their work on The Bar Book, which uses flavor matching: consumers state their preferred profiles, notes and occasions, and the system surfaces matching products instead of relying on brand recognition.
A shelf with 200 bottles and no decision framework, Waskewich argues, means a lost sale — often for an emerging craft, veteran-owned or unbudgeted brand.
For brands planning a campaign
A thought-leadership partnership could focus on consumer choice and discovery economics rather than generic brand-awareness content. The production-versus-discovery asymmetry offers an unusual, defensible hook for a finance-and-discovery brief.
This is the strongest example of how Waskewich handles trade policy: they name the mechanism, the numbers and the losers on each side instead of cheering for one side.
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Useful for judging whether a trade or policy assignment would suit them.
Waskewich reports that talks collapsed and 50% tariffs on Canadian wine and spirits took effect at midnight on August 22, with Canada confirming matching measures from September 8.
They anchor the piece in figures: Crown Royal at $2.4 billion in U.S. retail value and Fireball, produced in Canada, at $1.45 billion, both facing the tariff; eight of ten Canadian provinces keeping American wine and spirits off government store shelves since 2025; California wineries absorbing close to $1 billion in annual losses; and American distillers shut out of Canadian retail for over a year and a half.
Waskewich quotes the Toasts Not Tariffs coalition of 59 beverage alcohol organizations, including DISCUS, the American Whiskey Association and the American Craft Distillers Association.
They also highlight a detail they say most coverage missed: a 50% tariff on Canadian glass bottles affecting U.S. producers who source from there.
The piece ends with negotiations suspended and no timeline, and points to a return to the zero-for-zero framework.
For brands planning a campaign
Shows trade-policy fluency and a willingness to hold two uncomfortable facts at once.
A good fit for a policy explainer or market-access commentary series.
Re-check any statistics against current data before publication.
Read this for the finance side of Waskewich’s work, which the consultancy specifically asks about.
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It makes a structural argument — that liquidity, not demand, is the binding constraint for many producers — that recurs across other pieces.
Waskewich covers Indian alcohol industry associations pushing back on a Telangana state beverage corporation payment mechanism that would shorten payment cycles to 15 days while automatically deducting a 2% to 2.75% early-payment discount.
They frame the dispute as a question of who bears the financial burden: industry groups argue early-payment discounts were traditionally voluntary arrangements negotiated between buyers and suppliers, and that applying them automatically while outstanding balances remain unresolved changes producer economics.
Waskewich broadens the argument: beverage companies balance growth against liquidity amid fluctuating raw material costs, rising marketing spend, aging inventory, distributor consolidation and tighter capital.
Alcohol also requires months or years of production planning, regulatory approvals, excise obligations and complex route-to-market partnerships.
Supply chains, they conclude, run on trust and predictability, not margins alone.
For brands planning a campaign
The clearest example of Waskewich’s financial-pillar focus. A partnership could pair producer liquidity with route-to-market analysis or make payment terms a recurring column angle.
Read this to see whether Waskewich goes beyond category noise to explain how products are made.
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The piece examines equipment, capacity and byproducts at the facility level rather than offering trend commentary.
Waskewich reports that Strategic Beverage Services acquired BevZero’s U.S. operations out of Santa Rosa, tracing the facility to ConeTech’s 1991 pioneering of vacuum distillation for alcohol removal in Sonoma County.
The process uses spinning cone columns to strip alcohol under low heat while preserving volatile aromatics.
They note that eight of the top ten U.S. wine companies are already customers and that BevZero-US won two of four Double Gold medals at the International Non-Alcoholic Competition in June.
Waskewich also details the acquired Thomas Allen Vineyards winery in Lodi — 45 acres, 60,000 square feet, built in 2019, with 1.8 million cases of bottling capacity and 500,000 gallons of storage — and plans for canning, sparkling wine, more dealcoholization capacity and 190-proof ethanol from the removal process within three to four months.
A facility that turns removed alcohol into vodka or RTD base, they argue, is no longer a non-alcoholic company but a full-spectrum beverage processing platform.
They add that the window to build a non-alcoholic program without proprietary infrastructure is closing.
For brands planning a campaign
Supports a partnership theme on category maturity and capital intensity in no-and-low. It also models the close, facility-level analysis a sponsored research piece could deliver.
Read this to see how Waskewich handles a high-profile launch: they separate the celebrity headline from the production choice and distribution structure that make the product viable.
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Waskewich covers Almave, a non-alcoholic blue agave spirit backed by Lewis Hamilton, imported by González Byass USA and distributed by Southern Glazer’s.
They highlight the production distinction: agave is traditionally milled, cooked and distilled in copper stills in Jalisco and Puebla, with fermentation omitted rather than alcohol removed afterward.
The result is under 0.5% ABV with agave aromatics intact.
Casa Lumbre’s Dr.
Iván Saldaña designed the process, and the range includes Blanco, Ámbar and Humo, a smoked expression from Espadín agave pit-roasted at the foot of Popocatépetl.
Waskewich cites NielsenIQ data showing that 92% of non-alcoholic beverage buyers also purchase alcohol and that 47% of on-premise guests mix alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks on the same occasion.
They argue that the combination of a premium importer, national distribution and a globally recognized athlete reflects deliberate positioning.
For brands planning a campaign
A good template for data-anchored launch analysis. Verify and update the cited NielsenIQ figures before reuse, since category mix data moves quickly.
Read this for the category-strategy side of Waskewich’s work.
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They make a premiumization case from production conditions — climate, angel’s share and aging behavior — rather than marketing language.
Waskewich notes that Mount Gay has operated continuously in Barbados since 1703, giving it 323 years of production on the same island, using water from the same coral aquifer and aging under the same tropical conditions.
They report Rémy Cointreau’s launch of the Mount Gay Exceptionally Aged Collection and quote Managing Director Antoine Couvreur from Barbados saying limited Master Blender releases have consistently outperformed expectations.
Waskewich explains why rum has resisted age statements at scale: blending without disclosure protects flexibility, simplifies production planning and avoids confusing consumers unfamiliar with how tropical aging differs from Scotch aging.
A 15-year Caribbean rum matures differently, with a higher angel’s share and faster liquid evolution.
Waskewich argues that producers have used this complexity as an excuse to avoid transparency rather than an invitation to explain it, while whiskey built premiumization by educating consumers about why age matters.
For brands planning a campaign
A ready-made angle for a premium spirits or trade-education partnership, and evidence that Waskewich can build a category-level argument on production facts.
A look at how Waskewich frames global trade through brand history rather than logistics.
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The piece argues that export dominance comes from cultural embedding, not shipping capability.
Waskewich opens with 2025 export values: Mexico at $6.3 billion, Belgium at $1.8 billion, the Netherlands at $1.6 billion, and Germany at $1.4 billion, noting Mexico's total exceeded those three combined.
Waskewich argues Mexico is absent from most conversations about great beer nations and lays out the history: the first recorded beer brewed in Mexico in 1541, a modern industry built in the 19th century by German, Austrian, and Swiss immigrants who brought lager traditions, which explains Vienna lager styles still present in Modelo Negra and Victoria; Cervecería Modelo founded in 1922 and Corona launched in 1925.
Waskewich points to Modelo holding the best-selling U.S. beer title in 2023 and Michelob Ultra taking it back in 2025 as legitimate competition between serious operations, and cites North American World Cup hosting as the payoff on long investment in cultural relevance.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for cross-border brand and market-entry storytelling, and a sample of the historical context Waskewich brings to trade topics.
Read this to understand the community-and-discovery side of Waskewich's work.
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It is the clearest case of Waskewich arguing that location and context, not product alone, create loyalty.
Puerto Rico Distillery opened in a century-old building in Brunswick, Maryland, which previously housed clothing factories, an umbrella factory, and a woodworking shop.
It now produces pitorro, a traditional Puerto Rican distilled spirit, aged for the first time in a bourbon barrel.
To mark the opening, founder Ángel Rivera released Clandestino Añejo: 218 individually numbered bottles from one bourbon barrel at $75 each.
The name nods to the underground homemade pitorro tradition that predates legal distilling on the island.
The distillery shares the building with Cultura Plenera, a Puerto Rican cultural center, where visitors can learn Puerto Rican rum history, watch traditional distilling, attend guided tastings, and join cultural programming.
Rivera says the project was never only about making rum.
Waskewich concludes that the best craft spirits operations build a place worth visiting, generating genuine loyalty rather than occasional foot traffic.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong material for a hospitality, tourism, or destination-branding partnership, and a concrete example to compare with larger brands' experience investments.
Read this for Waskewich's treatment of small-operator failure.
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It is the clearest statement of Waskewich's view that mature markets reward sustainability while growth phases reward expansion.
Waskewich discusses Great Marsh Brewing Co. in Massachusetts closing, with its waterfront facility, equipment, and furnishings going to auction, citing the Boston Business Journal.
Waskewich lists the pressures independent breweries now face: rising ingredient costs, labor pressure, more competition, changing consumer preferences, distribution challenges, higher interest rates, and shifting alcohol consumption patterns, noting that individually they are hard and combined they create an unforgiving environment for small operators.
Waskewich argues breweries are more than manufacturers — community gathering spaces, tourism drivers, local employers, and venues for fundraisers and milestones — so a closure costs a community part of its local identity.
Waskewich also distinguishes the market maturing from craft beer disappearing, saying consumers still value authenticity and local experience but that operators now need hospitality, experience design, marketing, financial discipline, community engagement, and operational efficiency.
For brands planning a campaign
Relevant to a finance-and-survival editorial angle for producers, and a useful counterpoint to celebratory brand-launch content.
Read this for how Waskewich evaluates a cultural moment as a commercial opportunity.
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It is useful for judging whether Waskewich can write about campaign timing and heritage positioning without sounding like an ad.
Waskewich reports that Evan Williams Bourbon is joining America 250 with officially licensed commemorative releases tied to the nation's 250th anniversary, and argues the trend is about more than collectible packaging.
Waskewich says bourbon connects history, craftsmanship, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, and national identity, and that few product categories can authentically tie themselves to America's story, which becomes valuable during milestone cultural moments as consumers buy products connected to heritage, place, storytelling, and shared experience.
Waskewich predicts commemorative bottles will be joined by distillery experiences, historical collaborations, special releases, travel partnerships, military and veteran tie-ins, restaurant activations, and tourism campaigns, notes the industry is entering a more competitive phase after years of explosive growth where premiumization alone no longer guarantees attention, and warns that consumers reject heritage storytelling that feels overly commercialized.
For brands planning a campaign
This shows Waskewich can assess a campaign window and its risks. Well suited to a sponsored piece on heritage marketing, anniversary timing, or authenticity guardrails for premium spirits brands.
Waskewich reads trade disputes through the operating costs they create for producers, distributors, and hospitality businesses.
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In a post about collapsed talks and 50% tariffs on Canadian wine and spirits, they name specific exposure: Crown Royal at $2.4 billion in U.S. retail value, Fireball at $1.45 billion, and California wineries absorbing close to $1 billion in annual losses from provincial shelf bans.
They then widen the lens to the glass-bottle supply chain, a cost most tariff coverage left out.
The argument is that the beverage alcohol industry is caught inside a dispute it did not start and cannot resolve, and that the practical path back is the zero-for-zero framework that built the bilateral spirits trade.
Anchors the argument in named, dollar-quantified products and trade bodies, then adds a supply-chain detail that sets the analysis apart from general tariff coverage.
For brands planning a campaign
For a beverage-alcohol consultancy commissioning thought leadership on trade and market access, this is the strongest topic to brief. A partnership could support explainers that translate policy headlines into cost, shelf-access, and margin consequences for producers, importers, and on-premise operators on both sides of a border.
International-market strategy as cultural identity, not logistics
Waskewich treats major international-market success stories as identity plays rather than distribution wins.
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A post on Mexican beer sales abroad—$6.3 billion in 2025, more than Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany combined—argues that Corona and Modelo won the U.S. market by becoming embedded in American food, occasion, and hospitality culture over decades, not through advertising alone. The piece also corrects a common framing: Mexican brewing dates to 1541 and inherited lager traditions from 19th-century German, Austrian, and Swiss immigrants, so the category's success is not a recent trend.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for brands pursuing cross-border growth or category repositioning. Campaigns can focus on cultural embedding and occasion ownership rather than shipping and listing milestones—a less crowded thought-leadership register.
Producer liquidity and the economics of independent operators
Two posts converge on the same underlying claim: supply chains and independent producers run on cash flow and predictability, not margins alone.
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One covers a dispute in India over a state beverage corporation's plan to shorten payment cycles to 15 days while auto-deducting a 2% to 2.75% early-payment discount.
It then broadens the point to producers worldwide facing rising input costs, aging inventory, distribution consolidation, and tighter capital.
The other reads the auction of a Massachusetts craft brewery as evidence of a matured market where hospitality, experience design, marketing, financial discipline, and operational efficiency matter as much as brewing quality.
Takes a single operational news event, names the structural forces behind it, then draws a broader conclusion about how the industry functions.
On the India payment dispute, the post presents both sides as simultaneously true rather than assigning blame—a useful signal for brands seeking balanced policy commentary.
For brands planning a campaign
A natural fit for financial services, trade credit, insurance, or business-services brands that sell to independent beverage producers. The angle is concrete and operational—payment terms, inventory cycles, and what a profitable but illiquid company looks like—rather than general growth advice.
The non-alcoholic category as scaled industrial infrastructure
Waskewich covers no-and-low as a category that has moved beyond niche status and begun building its own supply chain.
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One post details the acquisition of BevZero's U.S. dealcoholization operations out of Santa Rosa, the spinning-cone technology tracing back to 1991, and a plan to sell 190-proof ethanol recovered from alcohol removal as a base for vodka and RTD production—turning a byproduct of non-alcoholic wine into an input for spirits.
The other follows Lewis Hamilton's non-alcoholic agave spirit Almave through González Byass USA import and Southern Glazer's national distribution.
It uses NielsenIQ figures (92% of non-alcoholic buyers also purchase alcohol; 47% of on-premise guests mix alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks in one occasion) to argue the brand is positioned for the non-alcoholic Margarita occasion rather than as a tequila replacement.
The posts make the category's industrial scale clear; before commissioning a capacity-focused brief, ask for evidence that consumer demand can support the added capacity.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong topic for non-alcoholic brands, processing and ingredient suppliers, and RTD or spirits companies evaluating category entry. Briefs can focus on infrastructure barriers, occasion-based positioning, and the difference between removing alcohol after fermentation (Almave) and dealcoholizing a finished beverage.
Two posts examine how premium spirits categories justify higher prices.
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One covers Rémy Cointreau's Mount Gay Exceptionally Aged Collection and the argument that rum has avoided age statements at scale for practical reasons—blending flexibility, simpler planning, and consumer confusion about tropical versus temperate aging—while the whiskey industry built its premium story through education rather than simplification. The other reads Evan Williams' officially licensed America 250 commemorative releases as part of a broader bourbon moment where heritage, place, tourism, and national identity converge, and premiumization alone no longer holds consumer attention.
Compares the spirits category with whiskey's premiumization playbook, then applies the same transparency argument to rum and a cultural-moment campaign.
The America 250 post warns that consumers reject heritage storytelling when it feels overly commercialized, applying that limit to the premiumization case rather than ignoring it.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for premium spirits brands, heritage and anniversary marketers, and tourism or distillery-experience operators. The clear angle is transparency as a commercial choice: what a category gains or gives up when it puts age, origin, or history on the label.
Waskewich argues that spirits technology has modernized production, compliance, and distribution while underinvesting in the moment a consumer chooses a bottle.
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Citing a Spirits Business feature and James Triffo's point about missing front-of-house tools, the post describes a shelf of 200 bottles with no framework to guide consumers and presents The Bar Book's flavor-matching system as a direct answer—matching on taste rather than advertising or brand recognition. A second post reads Puerto Rico Distillery's move into a century-old Maryland building, sharing space with a Puerto Rican cultural center, as an example of a distillery building a discovery ecosystem rather than just a production site.
Builds on a category gap identified in trade press, adds a first-person account of presenting on the same gap at the American Distilling Institute and the James B. Beam Institute, then closely examines a single distillery opening as a model.
For brands planning a campaign
The most distinctive topic for partnership purposes: discovery technology, retail shelf strategy, and destination-based distillery experiences. A brand could commission work on how consumers find products without a national marketing budget or what makes a distillery visit convert into repeat purchase.
Waskewich’s posts connect them directly to The Bar Book: they describe its flavor-matching approach to consumer discovery in the first person and record presentations on the same subject at two industry institutes.
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The posts discuss Mount Gay, Rémy Cointreau, Evan Williams, Almave, Puerto Rico Distillery, BevZero, Great Marsh Brewing, and trade groups cited on tariffs as subjects of industry commentary, not as relationships.
The Bar Book
Disclosed partnership
Waskewich writes in the first person about The Bar Book’s flavor-matching technology for consumer spirits discovery, saying, “we spent years developing and refining that matching architecture,” and tags posts across the reviewed period with #TheBarBook and #IndustryInsider.
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The posts don’t clarify whether the connection is employment, ownership, or another arrangement. Ask Waskewich to clarify the commercial relationship before assuming an ongoing contract.
Waskewich says they presented at the American Distilling Institute conference about the gap in front-of-house technology that lets brands speak directly with consumers.
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The post describes the appearance as professional background, not a sponsorship, fee, or contract.
James B. Beam Institute at the University of Kentucky
Mention
Waskewich lists the James B.
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Beam Institute alongside the American Distilling Institute as a venue where they presented on consumer discovery in spirits. No sponsorship, employment, or fee is described.
Start with the trade-policy and producer-finance posts for Waskewich's operating lens: tariffs, payment terms, cash flow, and why profitable producers can still get squeezed.
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Then read the non-alcoholic infrastructure posts, which track dealcoholization capacity, distribution deals, and the byproducts of alcohol removal.
For a shorter route, read the post on The Bar Book's flavor matching to see the consumer-discovery idea that connects much of the work.
Use the topic tags to follow trade policy, producer finance, non-alcoholic beverages, premium spirits, and consumer discovery.
The through-line is structural rather than promotional: Waskewich typically opens with a news event and specific figures, then broadens the discussion to how the beverage-alcohol value chain works.
Patrick writes from inside a non-alcoholic beverage retail business and treats customer education as a design problem: newsletters, quizzes, in-person coaching, and welcoming people into an unfamiliar category.
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That overlaps with Waskewich's argument that non-alcoholic drinks need explanation and discovery support, not just shelf space.
Patrick focuses on local retail operations, instructional design, and community building, with an emphasis on being a good neighbor and small-business owner. Waskewich focuses on category strategy, trade policy, producer finance, production infrastructure, and discovery technology.
Luby writes about marketing and revenue for a drinkware brand serving spirits and wine, while working to define the modern marketing leadership role.
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He focuses on how consumer brands earn attention on platforms they do not control, how to read advertising patterns, and how discovery and conversion work. That connects to Waskewich's interest in the moment consumers choose a product and how brands become embedded in buying occasions.
Luby's work focuses on operator-level digital marketing: ecommerce, feed strategy, creative testing, short-form video, and landing pages. Waskewich covers industry structure, including trade disputes, payment terms, production infrastructure, and spirits technology, rather than campaign execution.
Goldman writes about consumer packaged goods, supply-chain resilience, AI moving from experimentation into execution, and the data layer that makes AI useful.
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Waskewich also connects product categories to supply-chain realities and technology, especially in non-alcoholic production and spirits discovery tools. Both explain structural change to business readers.
Goldman covers broad CPG transformation: AI architecture, personalization, traceability, and enterprise data strategy. Waskewich focuses on beverage alcohol, including trade, producer liquidity, premium spirits, craft distilling, and the moment consumers choose a product.
Placement decision: this is a concentrated B2B beverage-alcohol audience, not a broad consumer audience.
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The measurable signal is a LinkedIn following of 14,727 observed on 8 October 2026.
Posts from 29 May to 15 September 2026 focus on alcohol-industry business topics — trade policy, producer cash flow, premium rum age statements, non-alcoholic processing infrastructure, bourbon heritage marketing, and consumer discovery — suggesting an audience of producers, distributors, trade-policy watchers, brand and hospitality operators, founders, and category strategists.
The page is best suited to campaigns seeking trade-literate reach in beverage alcohol, such as thought leadership on industry finance and discovery.
Audience geography, age, gender, employer type, occupation, and seniority are not established; ask whether Michael Waskewich Jr. has audience survey results or another documented source.
Before committing, request recent results for comparable topics, depth, and formats — for example, a policy post, a single-brand analysis, or a category explainer.
Michael Waskewich Jr.'s posts do not specify sponsor disclosure, a media kit, rate card, or published partnership terms.
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They offer commentary on beverage-alcohol business; brands mentioned, including Crown Royal, Fireball, Evan Williams, Mount Gay, Almave, Puerto Rico Distillery, and others, are news subjects, not announced commercial partners.
Recurring tags point to The Bar Book, the flavor-matching discovery platform they write about from the inside, not to third-party sponsors.
Before committing to a paid thought-leadership placement, a consultancy should confirm scope, rights, disclosure language, and cost directly.
The posts show what a partnership would build on: steady LinkedIn commentary, usually pairing one industry development with an operational lesson.
Their topics include producer cash flow and payment terms, tariffs and export access, premiumization and age statements, non-alcoholic production and distribution, and how drinkers find a product on a crowded shelf.
A partnership focused on those themes fits what they already publish.
Strong fit for a consultancy campaign on beverage-alcohol finance and consumer discovery.
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Waskewich’s posts cover both directly.
On finance, they argue that producer liquidity, payment terms, and cash flow constrain the industry more than consumer demand does, citing cases such as Telangana’s 15-day payment cycle with an automatic 2% to 2.75% early-payment discount and the pressures behind a Massachusetts craft brewery auction.
On discovery, they argue that spirits technology has improved production, compliance, and distribution but underinvested in the moment a drinker chooses a bottle.
Their practical example: the 200-bottle shelf and flavor matching.
That combination is unusual and maps closely to a consultancy seeking thought leadership across industry finance and consumer discovery.
The audience signal also supports this campaign.
The one measured audience signal is a LinkedIn following of 14,727 observed on 8 October 2026.
Waskewich’s posts point to an audience of producers, distributors, trade-policy watchers, brand and hospitality operators, founders, and category strategists.
That concentrated B2B beverage-alcohol audience suits a consultancy selling expertise to the trade.
The posts show a repeatable method: one industry development paired with an operational lesson, usually anchored in specific numbers, named companies, facilities, or products.
That approach suits explainer commentary, policy translation, and category analysis better than generic brand-awareness content.
There is one clear commercial gap: Waskewich’s posts contain no sponsor disclosure, media kit, rate card, deliverable list, or published partnership terms.
Brands featured in the posts are news subjects, not announced commercial partners.
Ask directly about scope, rights, disclosure language, and cost before committing.
When to choose a specialist
Poor fit, based on Waskewich’s posts, for a consumer brand seeking broad U.S. awareness through short-form video, recipe demonstrations, unboxing, retail shopper offers, and lifestyle influencer content.
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The mismatch is audience, format, and commercial information.
Audience: the measurable signal is a LinkedIn following of 14,727, while post themes point to a trade audience of producers, distributors, operators, founders, and policy watchers.
Waskewich’s posts provide no TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or other consumer-platform audience data, nor consumer demographics, geography, age, or shopping behavior.
A consumer activation cannot be planned from this information.
Format: Waskewich’s posts are written LinkedIn commentary.
They include no video, transcript, or short-form visual format; a video title is not a transcript.
The posts analyze industry structure, payment terms, tariffs, production infrastructure, premiumization, and distribution—not recipes or lifestyle.
A discovery angle could be adapted for a consumer-facing campaign if scope and terms were confirmed, but the posts do not demonstrate that format.
Commercial: Waskewich’s posts provide no documented partnership formats, rate card, deliverable list, rights terms, or inquiry route.
A consumer campaign budget cannot be built from this information.
Ask directly whether Waskewich would take on consumer work and what the terms would be.
A worked campaign example
Campaign need: a beverage-alcohol consultancy wants a thought-leadership partnership on industry finance and consumer discovery, aimed at producers, distributors, and on-premise operators.
Campaign angle: own the link between producer cash flow and whether a drink gets found. The through-line is that the industry has modernized how it makes and moves alcohol but not how a drinker chooses it—and cash-flow pressure determines which producers can afford to close that gap.
Part one: the payment-term problem is a discovery problem.
Open with the Telangana payment dispute: a state beverage corporation shortening payment cycles to 15 days while automatically deducting a 2% to 2.75% early-payment discount, with significant outstanding balances unresolved.
Explain how that ties up producers’ working capital.
Then connect it to discovery: a producer with cash tied up in receivables and inventory cannot fund consumer-facing tools that turn a shelf browser into a buyer.
Use the named figures from Waskewich’s post and update them before publication.
Part two: the 200-bottle shelf.
Use the discovery post’s central scene: a shopper facing 200 bottles with no decision framework, defaulting to a familiar brand, a label, or a safe price.
Explain flavor matching as an alternative: profiles, notes, and occasions instead of advertising or brand recognition.
Note that Waskewich has presented on this gap at the American Distilling Institute and the James B.
Beam Institute, and that The Bar Book was built around flavor matching.
Keep claims tied to what the post actually says.
Part three: what changes when producers act.
Show two models from Waskewich’s posts.
First, non-alcoholic infrastructure scaling from BevZero’s Santa Rosa dealcoholization operation to a plan to sell 190-proof ethanol recovered from alcohol removal as a base for vodka and RTD production.
Second, Puerto Rico Distillery opening in a century-old Maryland building that also houses a Puerto Rican cultural center.
Tie both to capital and discovery: infrastructure lowers category entry barriers, while a destination distillery builds loyalty beyond occasional foot traffic.
Contrast these models with the Great Marsh Brewing auction as the cost of getting operations and discovery wrong.
Part four: close with the operating question.
Give the consultancy audience a practical test: can a producer fund consumer discovery without sacrificing payment terms and liquidity?
What would a flavor-led or destination-led discovery program need to show before a brand scales it?
End with a working-session or diagnostic offer, not a generic brand-awareness line.
Format: a four-part LinkedIn commentary series, one post per part, each leading with one industry development and ending with one operational lesson.
That is the pattern Waskewich’s posts already show.
Ask directly whether longer explainers, webinars, or sponsored research reports are available; the posts do not document them.
Measurement: Waskewich’s posts provide no post-level engagement metrics or audience demographics.
Measure the campaign through the consultancy’s own qualified leads, brief downloads, and sales conversations.
Do not treat follower count as proof of campaign reach.
Commercial terms: Waskewich’s posts provide no rate card, deliverable schedule, disclosure language, or rights terms.
Confirm scope, cost, approval process, disclosure, and usage rights directly before committing.
Do not present unconfirmed commercial features as functioning controls.
Choose Patrick for a campaign about non-alcoholic beverage retail and customer education, rather than alcohol-industry finance.
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The posts show direct operating experience running a non-alcoholic beverage retail business alongside a public-education career.
They explain customer education as instructional design—newsletters, interactive quizzes, and in-person coaching—and describe a community-led local retail model that celebrates local customers and business owners.
For a consultancy seeking thought leadership on how non-alcoholic drinks get discovered and adopted at retail, and how to teach consumers about an unfamiliar category, Patrick offers a retailer-and-educator view that Waskewich's macro trade analysis does not.
The scope is narrower and more local.
The posts cover customer education, retail operations, and community in one U.S. market, but not producer cash flow, payment terms, tariffs, export data, production technology, or on-premise discovery infrastructure.
A consultancy campaign centred on alcohol industry finance and global trade would lose that analysis.
With only two posts, confirm terms, formats, and audience reach directly before committing.
Choose Luby for a campaign that needs a consumer-product marketing operator rather than an industry analyst.
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Their focus includes DTC and ecommerce growth, creative testing, short-form vertical video, landing-page production, and the emerging 'Chief Marketer' role, which combines earning attention on platforms you do not control with market-sizing and distribution decisions.
The posts describe running marketing and revenue at a drinkware brand for spirits and wine, scaling it from low six figures to an eight-figure business, and reading competitive ad libraries to see what is working.
For a consultancy whose client wants a partnership on demand generation for a beverage-adjacent product, Luby's operating detail is more directly useful than Waskewich's trade-policy and category-structure commentary.
The subject is marketing execution for a drinkware and CPG brand, not beverage-alcohol finance or how a drinker chooses a bottle.
The posts do not address producer liquidity, excise and payment terms, tariffs, three-tier distribution, or the 200-bottle shelf problem.
A consultancy campaign on alcohol industry finance and consumer discovery would lose that specificity.
With only two posts, confirm commercial availability, rates, and audience reach directly.
Choose Goldman for a campaign about the technology and supply-chain side of consumer packaged goods: AI moving from experimentation to execution, demand forecasting, supply-chain resilience, personalization, and the data architecture—such as a context layer, retrieval-augmented generation, and governance—that makes AI useful.
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The posts frame CPG trends a beverage producer or distributor would recognise in their planning stack, and the second explains how to ground AI securely in company data. For a consultancy seeking thought leadership on how beverage companies should build data and AI capability, Goldman's operational and technical framing is closer than Waskewich's market commentary.
The analysis is category-generic CPG.
The posts do not name alcohol-specific constraints such as excise, three-tier distribution, state beverage control, trade tariffs, or on-premise discovery, and they do not cover producer cash-flow pressure.
A partnership aimed at alcohol industry finance and consumer discovery would need that beverage-specific context; the two posts provide no alcohol case detail.
Ask for relevant alcohol case studies, audience reach, and commercial terms before committing.
Michael Waskewich Jr.'s ten LinkedIn posts cover beverage-alcohol finance and payment terms, trade policy, craft brewery closures, non-alcoholic production and distribution, premium spirits, global beer exports, spirits technology, and destination distilleries.
The posts do not include dates, so the work is grouped by argument rather than presented as a chronological timeline, and the set is a sample rather than a verified full record of the posts.
The posts here do not include a video, podcast, transcript, or long-form published article by Michael Waskewich Jr.; a video title is not a transcript.
The comparison includes three potential comparators, Kristin Marley Patrick, Kevin Luby, and Dani Goldman, with two LinkedIn posts for each; it rests on written posts only and may change with more material.
The one measured audience figure is a LinkedIn following of 14,727 observed on 8 October 2026.
Figures, statistics, historical claims, and company details inside the posts are the author's own and were not independently verified; statements attributed to named third parties, such as trade-coalition positions or quoted executives, are attributed to those people and organizations rather than presented as Michael Waskewich Jr.'s views.
The posts connect Michael Waskewich Jr. directly to The Bar Book's flavor-matching work and to presentations at two industry institutes; other brands appear as news subjects, not as relationships.
No sponsor disclosure, rate card, deliverable list, or published partnership terms appear in the posts here; that absence is a gap in what the posts disclose, not a conclusion that no commercial arrangements exist.
