Red Robin Serves Up Can-Crafted Cocktails

Visitors to gourmet burger chain Red Robin’s more than 400 locations this summer can experiment with the chain’s new Can-Crafted Cocktails, mixed drinks that use beer as the base, NBC News reports. 

The cocktails are stirred up with either Blue Moon or Coors Light, and are served with straws and fruit slices in aluminum cups that look like beer cans. “I wanted our customers to know at first sight that they were looking at a beer cocktail, and the cans help to do just that,” Donna Ruch, master mixologist for Red Robin, told NBC. “People get it right away.”

The Coors Light cocktail also contains ginger liquor and lemonade and is topped with fresh-squeezed lemons while the Blue Moon drink mixes the wheat beer with SVEDKA Clementine Vodka, orange juice and fresh limejuice.Continue reading...

MillerCoors Apologizes to Puerto Rican Community Over Beer Can Graphics

The National Puerto Rican Day Parade isn’t until June 9 in New York City, but there is already a lot of emotion in the air. Unfortunatley for the folks at Coors Light, which is a sponsor of the event, it isn’t all good.

Many in the Puerto Rican community were incensed that Coors Light placed what appeared to be the Puerto Rican flag on beer cans commemorating the event. The outrage has inspired MillerCoors to apologize and pull further cans from being sold. “We apologize if the graphics on our promotional packaging inadvertently offended you or any other members of the Puerto Rican community,” Nehl Horton, a spokesman for MillerCoors, wrote in a letter to the Boricuas group, according to The New York Times.

MillerCoors has sponsored the event for seven years, but not without incident. Two years ago, MillerCoors had to discontinue its Puerto Rican Day ad campaign that used the word “emborícuate,” which means “make yourself Puerto Rican.” But the play on words in the ad was on “emborráchate,” which means “get drunk.” Not a smooth move.Continue reading...

Ford joins European car-sharing sector as demand surges.

KKR lands former general David Petraeus for private-equity firm.

Nasdaq to pay $10 million fine for botched Facebook IPO.

Airbus and Boeing split a $17-million widebody-jet purchase by Singapore Airlines.

Apple shifts supply chain away from Foxconn to Pegatron.

Associated Press and New York Times resist meeting with US Attorney General Eric Holder on leaks investigations.

BMW will recruit trainees from Spain's pool of young jobless.

Carnival Cruise Line launches ad-agency review.Continue reading...

Puerto Rican flags are seen pretty much everywhere you look when New York City celebrates Puerto Rico Day, but one place the community doesn’t want to see a flag (or even a suggestion of one) is on a beer can. The folks at MillerCoors are learning that the hard way.

Coors Light is the official beer of this year’s National Puerto Rican Day Parade on June 9. To commemorate that, the brewer placed an image on the beer’s cans that combines an apple, a star, and the colors of the Puerto Rican flag. This has not gone over well, despite the company and the organizers of the parade both saying that the image is not the Puerto Rican flag, NBC Latino reports.

“This is an insult to our culture, history, and flag,” says Lucky Rivera, of Boricuas for a Positive Image, according to the site. “We will not allow Coors to insult us.”Continue reading...

You'll never know how much you miss something until it's gone, right? Well, that seems to be the case for the NHL, who, after spending months fiddling around with contract negotiations and delaying the start of the season, is seeing record viewership numbers for televised games. 

The abbreviated season finally got under way in January (after Nike reminded the big wigs at the NHL who's really the boss). But NBC Sports had a few tricks up their sleeve to ramp up excitement in a shorter amount of time. 

Viewership during the regular season went up 18 percent over last year, Forbes reports, making this the most-watched regular season in 19 years. Seven of the top eight NHL telecasts of the season came during NHL Sports Network’s new Wednesday Night Rivalry, which featured games between some of the league’s longest and feistier rivals. It drew some of the larger sponsors, too, including Discover and Verizon.Continue reading...

Everyone wants a piece of the craft beer industry, from big beer brands to major league ball clubs. But these days, it's getting harder and harder to tell a true craft brew from ones just made to look the part. 

The most recent faux-craft siting occured at Yankee Stadium, where a vendor operating as "Craft Brew Destination" was in fact selling "craft" beers made by MillerCoors. Blogger Amanda Rykoff sounded off about the misinformation, noting MillerCoors beers (whether they're labeled craft or not) don't exactly fit into the Brewers Association’s definition of a craft brewer, which limits production to six million barrels or less and demands independent ownership. As NPR notes, the Yankees have been shamed into renaming the stand Beer Mixology Destination, a collection of words that mean pretty much nothing other than “Beer Here!”Continue reading...

Gun Company Fires Back at Tommy Guns Vodka

Chicago mobsters back in the days of Al Capone favored a submachine gun known as the Tommy gun, which was then glorified in plenty of films and books about the era. But Tommy guns aren’t some relic of history. Saeilo Enterprises still makes them, and the owners aren’t very happy with Alphonse Capone Enterprises and its Tommy Guns Vodka, which is sold in a bottle shaped like the famous gun.

In fact, they are so annoyed that a lawsuit has been filed, the Chicago Tribune reports. Saeilo wants all of the Tommy Guns Vodka that is left to be turned over so it can all be destroyed. (Consumption counts as destroying, right?)Continue reading...

MillerCoors Selling Gear Via Mobiles

Whether you are high in the Rockies, out on a fishing boat, or at a party at somebody’s house, if the mood strikes you to purchase some MillerCoors-branded gear, it won’t be hard to do (as long as you can get your Smartphone working).

MillerCoors has unleashed a mobile site to sell merchandise for its brands, according to Mobile Commerce Daily. “MillerCoors wanted a fast, stable, integrated mobile commerce site that could harness the real-time data of their ecommerce site, but also be a separate, distinct channel for engagement and sales,” said Wilson Kerr, vice president of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, Boston, which created the site, according to MCD.

Beware of drinking and shopping, of course.Continue reading...