InvestBev: ‘No bad year for Bourbon’

[Erik Owens]

https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2025/01/investbev-no-bad-year-for-bourbon/

08 January 2025By Georgie Collins

Brian Rosen, founder and chairman of private equity firm InvestBev, discusses the spirits sectors he believes demonstrate the most resilience in times of economic hardship, and explains why the US will never have another Prohibition.

Chicago-based Rosen has the spirits industry in his blood. “My family was given the very first liquor license ever handed out in Chicago after Prohibition in 1933,” he says. “We turned that license, over the course of 40 years, into the largest independent liquor retailer in America. It was called Sam’s Liquors.”

The retailer went on to win numerous awards, including Liquor Store Retailer of the Year, and became the first website to sell booze, as well as the first liquor store to have a glassware, cigar, and cheese shop all in the same store, “kind of like a Harrods model, but better, and all booze,” he explains.

“I grew up in that business. When I was in my 30s, I sold that business to private equity. From there, I went on to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) in New York and created for them the adult beverage practice, which is now a US$700 million billable-hour business.”

From there, Rosen says, he moved back to Chicago and founded a company called BevStrat, which became the largest sales company in the US for beverages, before selling that to private equity in 2019.

Prior to that, however, is when he founded private equity firm InvestBev, which now manages “about US$250m AUM (assets under management), with another US$100m in private credit”, while also owning “at least US$100m of raw whiskey distillate” making it “the largest adult beverage private equity firm in America. I created that business in 2015, and so that, I guess, would put me in the expert category,” he confirms.

Not fair trade

At the top of our conversation, which takes place just before the US election in November 2024, Rosen speaks of the issues the alcohol beverage industry is currently facing, specifically in his home country, where direct-to-consumer shipping is a constant battle for US brands.

“The US is like 50 different countries, and all these fuckers want to get their own share of tax dollars and to the detriment of the consumer – the consumer is invariably hurt by it all. It’s not fair trade. The US is run by distributors. I travel all over the globe, and the US puts itself out there as this progressive leader of capitalism. And the reality is, yes, it is, if you’re willing to hurt someone else in the process.”

He notes that, for example, Tito’s Handmade Vodka “doesn’t make a new drinker. It steals share from another brands. And so the more the distributor network pushes Tito’s into bars and restaurants and homes, the less space there is in the wallet and in the back bar for [for example] Brian’s vodka. Brian’s vodka could be better, but if distributors don’t get behind it, it’s never going to make it. The only person that gets rich in the liquor business here is the distributor. That’s it. Everyone else struggles – 5% of the brands account for 95% of the SKU velocity.”

Whether this will change under the incoming Trump administration, Rosen is not optimistic, branding the president-elect a “fucking lunatic”.

“He’s going to put tariffs on the goods I need to export – China, Asia, Australia, Japan, whatever. And it’s all bullshit, because he has no idea the effect [it will have].”

Since our conversation, Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported into the US from Canada and Mexico, which will have a significant impact on America’s second biggest-selling spirit, Tequila, and could result in US$5 billion in lost tax revenue.

https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2025/01/investbev-no-bad-year-for-bourbon/