Coming soon to store shelves: ‘Upcycled' barley milk from beer companies

Bars and beer aisles have long been the battleground for beermakers Anheuser-Busch InBev and rival Molson Coors — but they may one day be rumbling in coffee shops and dairy coolers with competing packaging on store shelves.

Molson Coors' recent introduction of Golden Wing, a non-alcoholic, plant-based barley milk, joins AB InBev's Take Two brand as pioneers of a nascent sub-category in the fast-growing alternative milk field, with each product utilizing byproducts of their main business — the barley used in brewing — to diversify their portfolios and hedge a slow-growing beer business.

Golden Wing debuted at 50 Sprouts Farmers Markets locations in California in April and is launching at Whole Foods Markets stores in Southern California this month. Take Two Foods, a Portland, Ore.-based company, quietly launched a barley milk brand in 2020 out of AB InBev's ZX Ventures accelerator. Its brand, known as Take Two, is currently available in more than 1,300 stores, mainly in the Pacific Northwest.

Take Two uses recycled PET for its packaging, supplied by Merrimack Valley Plastics LLC, a subsidiary of Envases USA, according to a report from Packaging World.

The big brewers are far from the point at which they're in direct competition. Each is involved instead in raising awareness of their young brands and their points of difference in the larger alt-milk category where consumers have already familiarized themselves with a variety of soy milk, oat milk, almond milk and rice milk names. The companies are also taking decidedly different approaches to that challenge.

Brian Schmidt, marketing manager, non-alcohol for Molson Coors, said initial marketing plans for Golden Wing would focus on generating awareness and trial while positioning it as a bold and edgy brand with appeal to "badass" consumers — or health-conscious men — not a typical target of its alt-milk peers.

"For Golden Wing, we're looking to shake up the plant-based milk category with a bit of a bolder, edgier tone and target: consumers who care enough about their bodies to know their food preferences, and are badass enough to drink whatever they want," Schmidt said in an email. "Our target is designed to appeal to a subset across genders; however, when compared to competitive products in the category today, we are targeting men more aggressively than other brands have done to date."

This positioning is supported by a package design that's a clear departure from the pastoral farm imagery marking many alternative-milk brands. Golden Wing's design instead draws from motorcycle culture and Molson Coors' beer heritage. The black-and-gold bottle features barley leaves, a hawk, feathers and wings that reference the "high elevation barley" grown in the Rockies used in its creation.

"We want to invoke curiosity in consumers when they see our packaging and our bold voice, and ultimately get them to try our great-tasting product," Schmidt said. "Longer-term, we want Golden Wing to unlock barley milk as the next big thing in the plant-based milk category, and we believe it can do just that."

Take Two's approach to barley milk is based on eco-friendly benefits as an "upcycled" food, Holly Feather, head of marketing, said in an interview. Feather, who arrived at the company in 2021 after brand marketing stints with Philips, SC Johnson and Kimberly-Clark, said a major element of her plan to market Take Two was based on educating consumers not just about the unfamiliar product, but the idea of food made of byproducts of other foods.

"Your biggest challenges as a marketer are to change someone's behavior, and to teach them something new — and we had to do both," she said. "That was a bit of an exceptional challenge."

Partnerships with advocacy groups like the Upcycled Food Association have done a good job of raising awareness of upcycled benefits, as has the brand's work with a specialty PR agency called Trent & Co. AB InBev produces about 8 billion pounds of spent barley every year, Feather said, "and all that's been removed is the sugar and starch. All this wonderful protein and fiber is still there." The brewer moves much of that to commercial farms; Take Two grew out of attempts by its founders to find other uses for it, including protein powders and supplements, and a protein shake that became the base recipe for the milk.

The brand is active on social channels "just being ourselves and talking to people like us," Feather said, with a message that "saving the planet doesn't have to be so serious. You can have a good time and do something good in the mix."

Sampling programs at retail stores and in coffee shops — including some cafes in the Pacific Northwest where Take Two will buy a latte for consumers who have theirs with barley milk — have been especially effective, Feather said. And in a truly circular promotion, a well-regarded restaurant in Portland known as Eem is now serving a specialty cocktail made with Take Two's barley milk, returning the ingredient to the alcohol business for which it was born.

These programs sparked a tenfold sales increase this March vs. last March, Feather said. She declined to share specific sales figures.

Feather said consumer taste panels run by the brand indicate barley milk as having a very similar taste to cow's milk, with the most notable difference being a golden hue unique to barley milk. "You can probably also taste a little bit of a cereal note with barley milk," she said, "which makes it nice with cereal, obviously."

Both brands cite the overarching health and wellness trend and the related mainstreaming of plant-based foods for opportunity to win a share of a dairy category reshaped by those trends in recent years. Plant-based milks have gained 5 percent in dollar sales since 2016, Molson Coors said, citing IRI figures, and within the category, grain-based milks are growing share, gaining 18 points vs. seed- and nut-based milk over the same period.

In the meantime, cow's milk and soy milk have lost 6 points of share to plant-based alternatives, Molson Coors said.

Golden Wing's health message is carried through a simple, five-ingredient formulation — barley milk (water, barley and barley malt), along with sunflower extract, calcium carbonate, pink Himalayan salt and shiitake mushroom extract. It boasts 50 percent less sugar, 60 percent more calcium, and twice the vitamin D3 as 2 percent milk.

Take Two makes a point of superior protein and calcium when compared to other milks.

Golden Wing launched in April on the "innovation shelf" at Sprouts, the natural foods chain keen on exclusive, first-to-market products.

"We'll be talking a lot about what sets the category and brand apart from the rest of the plant-based milk category through our marketing plans," which include targeted paid digital, social and influencer marketing for the brand as it initially rolls out across California, said Schmidt.

"We also want to get liquid to lips, so we're working with local coffee shops in California to bring in Golden Wing, sampling at retail and showing up at strategic events, like Vegan Street Fair and Beachlife Festival," he said.

The brand did not disclose what it was spending on the launch. Its marketing is all in-house at this time.

Expanding "beyond beer" is one of five tenets underpinning a 2019 revitalization plan underway at Molson Coors which among other things aims to transform the company from a brewer to a beverage company. (It went so far as to rename itself Molson Coors Beverage Company in 2020.) The effort has already produced a ready-to-drink 4.2 percent alcohol-by-volume coffee beverage called La Colombe Hard Cold Brew Coffee, and ZOA, a nonalcoholic energy drink with backing from actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

As it had with ZOA, Molson Coors worked with the beverage incubator L.A. Libations — in which it owns a stake — to develop Golden Wing. L.A. Libations has strong relationships with retailers across California that prioritize innovation, Schmidt noted, while Molson Coors can leverage its distribution strength to grow further availability.

"While we have made a lot of progress in a short amount of time, we know there's a lot of work ahead of us too," Pete Marino, president of emerging growth at Molson Coors, said in emailed remarks. "From energy drinks to RTD coffees to dairy alternatives, we are looking across a variety of categories where we think we can partner or build our own brands that we believe can be successful."