On Thursday, Molson Coors Beverage Company — the parent organization behind household name beer brands like Coors Banquet, Miller High Life, and Blue Moon — announced that president and CEO Gavin Hattersley plans to retire by the end of 2025. The move will mark the end of Hattersley’s 28-year-long career in the beverage industry and his six-year tenure as Molson Coors’ president and CEO.

“Gavin has been a steady hand at the wheel as CEO, navigating through incredible challenges that no one could ever have predicted while guiding our company to growth, strengthening our foundation, and setting us up for an even brighter future to come,” board chair Geoff Molson said in a press release. “Our business today stands on the shoulders of the many generations of the Molson and Coors families who have come before us. Gavin has lived up to their rich legacy, and he will retire having left an indelible mark on our business and the global beer industry.”

Since beginning his journey in the beer industry with South African Breweries (SAB) in 1997, Hattersley held various leadership roles at SABMiller, MillerCoors, and Molson Coors through multiple acquisitions and mergers. The company states that he played a crucial role in the creation of the MillerCoors U.S. joint venture in 2008, serving as the business unit’s first CFO before assuming the title of CEO in 2015. In September 2019, Hattersley took over as president and CEO of parent company Molson Coors, replacing former CEO Mark Hunter, shortly before corporate restructuring led to the demise of the MillerCoors brand name.

In the six years under Hattersley’s leadership, Molson Coors delivered its two highest years of annual net sales revenue as well as underlying income before income taxes. Additionally, the company has managed to reduce its net debt by nearly 40 percent since Hattersley took on the role. Molson Coors credits Hattersley as a pivotal player in turning the company from a beer conglomerate into a total beverage company, noting achievements such as the premiumization of Molson Coors’ global portfolio, forming partnerships with D.G. Yuengling and Sons and the Coca-Cola Company, and obtaining the U.S. commercialization rights to Fever-Tree.

“We have accomplished so much over the past six years and one thing I’m certain of is that none of it would have been possible without each of the 16,000 people across our business,” Hattersley said in a message to Molson Coors employees. “Whether you are on the leadership team or are just getting started in your career here, whether you work in the field, in our offices or in a brewery, whether you are in our largest market or our smallest, you are responsible for our success and you are leading Molson Coors to a brighter future.”

The beverage conglomerate’s governance committee is launching a search for the next CEO, and will be considering both internal and external candidates. The company board claims that it hopes to find a replacement that will continue to bolster Molson Coors’ core brands, premiumize its portfolio, set prospects beyond beer, and build upon the success of Hattersley’s revitalization and acceleration plans.

VP Pro Take

“A gray-haired leader releasing their grip on the levers of power on their own volition? Before death’s sweet embrace forces the issue?! Maybe it’s just that our political gerontocracy has cratered my expectations, so anything less than The Full Feinstein feels like cause for celebration, but I gotta say, I find Hattersley’s just-announced, apparently self-made decision to retire at the end of the year more refreshing than a tall schooner of Blue Moon. (Garnished with a Valencia orange wheel as Keith Villa intended, of course.) Having taken MC from the No. 2 macrobrewer in the country to something approaching the diversified ‘beverage company’ it has insisted on calling itself since 2020, the guy seems fully intent on enjoying his retirement, if the abdication of his board seat is any indication. And godspeed to him, I guess.

As for the rest of us — we get to scrutinize Hattersley’s career and suss out his overarching Hattersle(gac)y. By most measures, I think the spunky South African left MC better than he found it after half a dozen years at the helm, from shoring up its balance sheet (which he did) to pivoting the Chicago conglomerate towards the ‘total beverage’ future (which, as noted above, he kinda-sorta did.) That he only came to the U.S. in the early aughts after South African Brewing acquired Miller Brewing Company, didn’t stop him from seeing around the bend on the evolution of this country’s macrobrewing landscape: MillerCoors, the precursor corporate entity to today’s MC, was birthed in no small part because Hattersley made it so. (Of course, the fact that middle-tier brokers like Joe Thompson had been marrying up Miller and Coors distributorships across the country certainly made that outcome a lot easier to imagine. But still!) That was 2008, which would turn out to be the zenith of Bud Light’s sales arc. By 2016, when Anheuser-Busch InBev acquired SABMiller and divested the North American business units that would become Molson Coors, its dual flagships — Miller Lite and Coors Light — had already begun gathering momentum behind strong rebrands. Another eight years later, MC was poised to lock in massive gains in shelf-space and sales/volume share as ABI struggled to stop the bleeding from the Bud Light fiasco, capitalize on Coors Banquet’s surging popularity with the Yellowstone set, and reposition Blue Moon for the future.

Success on those fronts has been mixed, underscoring that Hattersley was no malt-based Meidas in his time as head honcho. (See also: ho-hum launches like Happy Thursday; the $56-million jury-trial loss to Stone Brewing Co.; that big ol’ haircut on its doomed craft-brewing buy-in; its big fumble on Leinenkugel’s; and so forth.) But for the first time in my lifetime, the company has a much stronger marketing vision than its longtime rival in St. Louis New York Leuven, Belgium; its investors are enjoying the benefits of the $2-billion stock buyback Hattersley and co. announced in October 2023; and its new-ish foe, Constellation Brands, is having border woes at the perfect time for MC to figure out how to answer the Modelo threat (with Sol, Miller Chill, or the recently acquired Cruz Blanca, or even a resurrection of the before-its-time Miller Chill marque.) Things could be a lot worse. Then again, while Hattersley had to steer MC through the pandemic and its aftermath, his successor will have to do likewise in the economic dumpster fire that the second Trump administration is shaping up to be. Talk about a good time to retire.” —Dave Infante, VinePair columnist and contributing editor

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