Interview: Southern Glazer’s CEO Wayne Chaplin

Despite a challenging operating environment, leading U.S. wine and spirits wholesaler Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits is expecting to carve out growth this year, with company revenue projected to climb 3.2% to $26 billion, accounting for a market share of approximately 36%. SND executive editor Daniel Marsteller spoke with Southern Glazer’s chief executive Wayne Chaplin to hear about the distribution giant’s outlook on growth categories, retail destocking, e-commerce, national accounts, and where the business is headed in 2024.

SND: What are you seeing in the wine and spirits categories respectively so far this year?

Chaplin: The first quarter’s been challenging, but we’ve seen some bright spots around certain categories, such as American whiskey and Tequila, especially at certain price points, and in wine between $15 and $25.

The challenges are coming from a couple different areas. One, obviously we’re still cycling some pretty good-sized business from prior years. And we’re also seeing retailers continue to reduce in-store inventory, size of displays, backroom stock, and that continues to result in depletions that are softer than consumer takeaway figures. A lot of retailers now have a “clean-store” mentality, where we’re seeing either smaller displays or no displays. Plus, increased interest rates have caused retailers to keep lower stock on hand.

On-premise—which can be 25% to 30% of the business, depending on the brand—is faring a bit better, especially in fast casual and high-end dining and resorts. But it’s not enough to offset what we’re seeing in the off-premise channel.

SND: Where are you focusing investment this year?

Chaplin: We’re really investing heavily behind the C-store channel, which is showing faster growth than the balance of the off-premise market. We continue to invest in our resources, route to market, and C-stores because we believe that can add significant value in both the short term and the long term, especially in the ready-to-drink segment.

SND: How is the e-commerce side of the business progressing?

Chaplin: We continued to have very strong growth in 2023 around our Proof platform. Our target for 2024 is to cross $4 billion in revenue through SG Proof. In this past year we hired Alan Wizemann to be our chief digital officer. Alan brings lots of great experience from prior engagements with Lululemon and Target, and he’s bringing some incredible out of the box thinking to our industry and to our company that I think is really going to take our lead in the digital space to the next level.

SND: National accounts continue to gain in importance. How are you positioning for growth in that segment?

Chaplin: There’s no doubt we continue to focus on national account players. We’ve built a very strong team, led by Chris Williams (a 20-year veteran of AB InBev). We’ll make sure that we’re a very important partner with our national accounts that continues to provide value not only with the headquarters, but in each individual store as well. It is a huge piece of the business and I think long term for us to be successful for our suppliers, we need to win with national accounts.

SND: How do you view the emerging hemp THC beverage segment?

Chaplin: It’s something that we are currently not representing anywhere. There’s a lot of noise around the legality, and how that market is going to look long-term. So we’re staying on the sidelines at the moment. Others have jumped in and it’s doing well.

Tagged : Southern Glazer's

GET YOUR FIRST LOOK AT 2025 ESTIMATES AND 2030 PROJECTIONS FOR THE WINE AND SPIRITS INDUSTRIES. ORDER YOUR 2025 IMPACT DATABANK REPORTS. CLICK HERE.