Get Ready for Cannabrews
Businesses are angling to offer more marijuana ingredients in beverages in 2019.
Brian Athaide was at his desk in Grimsby, Ont., when news broke in October 2017 that Constellation Brands Inc., maker of Corona beer, was investing in Canopy Growth Corp. in a deal valuing the cannabis producer at about $2 billion. Athaide, who was chief financial officer of wine and beer company Andrew Peller Ltd., realized he was in the wrong business. “My phone started ringing off the hook from different cannabis companies wanting to do similar deals,” he recalls. “Do I want to be in a declining industry? Or do I want to be where the growth is?”
Athaide chose growth. Now he’s chief executive officer of Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd., a Mississauga, Ont.-based company that plans to make pot drinks. Although Green Organic’s products have yet to hit store shelves, its shares are already worth more than C$1 billion ($757 million). The company’s success is a result of the traditional beverage industry’s surging interest in cannabis drinks as more jurisdictions move toward legalizing pot.