Welcome back, today is Wednesday, August twelfth, and we begin with Brewbound's read on the latest Circana weekly scans. Off-premise beverage alcohol dollar sales fell two point two percent year over year, to one point four five two billion dollars, in the week ending August second. That is Brewbound, reporting Circana's latest weekly scans across total U.S. multi-outlet and convenience channels. Losses in beer and wine continued to drag the total, and that account puts the rut as likely to last until Labor Day, a call that reaches straight into the back half of the summer selling window suppliers and buyers are still trying to make. This follows our earlier report on beer weakness being too much for the rest of the category to overcome. Industry reaction leans cautious on demand narratives in either direction, and a recurring read in the trade treats the softness as long visible in the data rather than newly arrived. Also today, a question about tequila's run. Yahoo Finance argues the category's decade-long boom is not over so much as waning in its current form, and builds that case on Diageo's preliminary fiscal twenty twenty-six results: U.S. tequila net sales down twenty-one percent, with Don Julio off nineteen point two percent a year after posting growth above forty percent, and Casamigos down twenty-seven point seven percent. That read also cites NielsenIQ data showing the top twenty U.S. tequila brands down one point five percent in twenty twenty-five, while craft, additive-free labels grew twenty-eight point five percent. The argument, then, is a mix shift rather than an exit, which is the version that hits shelf sets and planograms hardest. It follows our earlier coverage of Diageo's soft fiscal year. Kentucky's route to market now has a second suitor inside a week. KEG One River City has signed a letter of intent to acquire Republic National Distributing Company's Kentucky assets, the companies announced, per BevNET and Brewbound. That reporting puts the book at roughly two million cases a year, and has the move following Breakthru Beverage Group pulling out of its deals for RNDC's Kentucky and Indiana operations late last week. It is a letter of intent, not a closed deal. This continues our earlier reporting on RNDC's Chapter Eleven filing and the buyer interest the company confirmed as the case opened. For suppliers still on those books, a second bidder this quickly is the difference between an orderly handoff and another gap in coverage. Staying with Diageo, and a plan now attached to the numbers. The company's core U.S. spirits business saw sales decline eleven point five percent in the twelve months through June, and its new North America chief executive and president has laid out a recovery plan to analysts, according to Shanken News Daily. That summary is the extent of what has been reported; the plan's specifics are not detailed there. Following our earlier coverage of guidance placing a U.S. spirits recovery roughly two years out, this pairs that horizon with a stated route, and it is that route distributors and retailers will be asked to execute against. Separately, in Washington. Two U.S. representatives have filed a bipartisan bill that would regulate hemp-derived THC beverages along the same lines as alcohol, according to Just Drinks and Brewbound. That reporting frames it as an effort to build a federal framework under which hemp drink brands can operate legally. It has been introduced, not passed, and neither account carries an effective date. A framework of that shape would fold a fast-growing competitor into the same three-tier plumbing bev-alc already runs on. Industry reaction leans skeptical that a beverage-only lane can hold, with some arguing it splits the hemp coalition by leaving edibles outside it, and a recurring procedural doubt that rival bills and a thin calendar leave no single vehicle to rally behind. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. The National reports Diageo has said one hundred seventy-two Scottish distillery jobs are at risk, with thirty-eight proposed for removal, as the SNP presses Labour to cut whisky duty. And finally, Heineken UK is paying farmers a premium for regenerative malting barley, targeting close to half its malted barley supply by twenty twenty-seven, per AgNavigator.