Lulie and Felicity are back to talking about the drinks news! And the news is big. Diageo's new CEO Sir Dave Lewis (also known as “Drastic Dave”) has delivered his first major investor presentation, outlining many of the problems facing Diageo, including a portfolio overweighted at the expensive end of a market. Felicity and Lulie dig into what Lewis's blunt assessment reveals about the state of premiumisation as a strategy — and whether the industry's dominant narrative of the past decade has been quietly masking structural decline.
But not every brand is struggling. Beatbox, the brightly coloured Texan party punch that sells for around $5 a carton, has just passed $300 million in annual US retail sales — and it got there by ignoring almost every convention the drinks industry holds dear.
Add to that Jägermeister's quietly impressive 2025, built on a fruit extension that has sold five million bottles in under a year, and a picture emerges of a market fracturing along price and purpose lines. The episode also touches on resealable Tetra Paks, drink spiking, the unit-of-alcohol economics that explain why cheap drinks are winning, and why someone in Belize is mixing whisky with local rum and calling it Risky.
Meet Your Hosts:
Lulie Halstead founded and led international consumer research and strategy consultancy Wine Intelligence, and led it to a successful PE exit. Today she is a renowned global beverage alcohol and wine sector specialist, focused on consumer behaviour, strategy, retail and hospitality. An accomplished keynote speaker, she has spoken at more than 70 international events over the past 20 years.
Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.
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