Interview: Southern Glazer’s CEO Wayne Chaplin

Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits is the largest wholesaler of wine and spirits nationally with projected 2025 revenues of $25.3 billion. After its acquisition of New England-based Horizon Beverage last year, Southern Glazer’s footprint now covers all U.S. markets except New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia, and Wisconsin. SND executive editor Daniel Marsteller recently spoke with Southern Glazer’s CEO Wayne Chaplin to get his unique viewpoint on where the market is headed as 2025 moves along. 

SND: What are your thoughts on overall conditions nationally at this point?

Chaplin: There’s a lot of noise in the system and everyone’s looking to put their finger on one particular cause for why we’re not seeing consistent growth. But I think we do have to go back and really take a hard look at a couple of things. The main one is that we have to go back to where we were before Covid, look at what happened during Covid, and then determine what a normal growth rate over historic business would look like. And I think we are coming back to that level sometime later this year or sometime next year.

So we will get to leveling that out and then I think we’ll start to see a little bit of a different situation. But we do have these other outside macro effects as well. The biggest one really is the economy and disposable income for our consumers. With disposable income being tight, I think we’re starting to see a little more stress on beverage alcohol purchases, especially in the on-premise and especially at the higher end.

SND: How are you adapting your approach to address the realities of the market currently?

Chaplin: When I look at the wine business and I look at the spirit business, there still are winners, right? There still are brands that are doing well, that are trending, and I think it’s up to us as distributors and brand owners to really focus on the consumer, because when we do give the consumer a proposition that they’re interested in, not only does the consumer react, but those brands are growing and gaining share.

Now there’s a bunch of them, and those brands that are attracting the consumer’s attention are doing it through suppliers’ efforts on activation, social media, standard media. And then through us they’re gaining distribution on wine lists, gaining drink list activation in accounts. So I think we have to get back to the basics, which will help us get out of this little dip and get us growing again.

SND: Trade inventory levels have been a key topic in recent years. Where are we with that situation?

Chaplin: There’s been a lot of conversation about inventory at home, inventory at retail, and yes, I think that ties in with the economy and disposable income. But I do think we are pretty much past all that now. I do think a lot of that excess inventory has been pushed through the system already.

SND: Are there any special areas of focus for Southern Glazer’s this year?

Chaplin: We are putting a lot of resources in the C-store channel as there’s a lot of growth in the RTD category. That is something that we want to continue to focus on. RTD and also our opportunities around beer are going to create a lot of momentum in the C-store channel.

But it’s really about getting back to basics. Building brands in the on-premise has always been our forte, whether that’s in bars, restaurants, hotels, or national on-premise accounts. We believe refocusing on the on-premise, which has always been Southern Glazer’s bread and butter, is going to be super important for us to make sure these brands are front and center with the consumer to get their attention.

SND: The hemp THC category continues to make headlines as an up and coming area. What’s Southern Glazer’s take?

Chaplin: There’s momentum around that category. We are still on the sidelines waiting based upon our opinion that, with our federal basic permit, getting into hemp-based THC would not be something that we would be able to do at this time.

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