Diversification has been a key path to success for many beverage operations in today’s ultra-competitive market. That’s been true for Boston’s Night Shift Brewing, which, in 2016, launched a separate distribution business. A year later, it diversified even more when it became the wholesaler for a number of other craft brewers. Then, it took a step further when it expanded beyond the beer category.
“We [initially] went into it thinking we were [just] a beer distributor,” says Night Shift co-founder and President Rob Burns. “[We said] ‘We were a brewery, we’re beer guys, we know beer, we know how to sell it, so let’s do beer only.’ But as we got into it, we saw that other kinds of small producers were having the same challenges.”