Welcome in, today is Friday, September fourth, and we begin with Just Drinks reporting a fresh round of Diageo job cuts in New York. Diageo is cutting three hundred and five jobs at its North American headquarters in New York, Just Drinks reports, as the group presses ahead with its turnaround. That account puts the cut at the New York office itself, and figures vary between three hundred and three hundred and five across accounts. It follows our earlier report on the fall of one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two in average full-time-equivalent headcount across fiscal twenty twenty-six. What is new is the site. This moves the restructuring from a group total to the office where U.S. commercial coverage is set, which distributors and retail partners will feel directly. Industry reaction leans skeptical that cost cutting can substitute for demand, a recurring view being that a leaner base flatters margins before the underlying business recovers, and that the fix runs through mainstream volume brands and commercial service. Some observers also point to reported union strike ballots at UK production sites over the wider redundancy programme. Also today, Brown-Forman's ready-to-drink portfolio grew twenty percent in organic net sales in the fiscal first quarter, against a one percent decline for the group, per The Drinks Business. Outgoing chief executive Lawson Whiting told Just Drinks the U.S. business is improving, in his word, slowly, and that read sits behind the reaffirmed profit outlook. Nasdaq's account fills in the detail. New Mix posted double-digit growth in Mexico and now ranks eighth in the RTD category on Nielsen data while selling in only nine states. Jack Daniel's Tennessee Blackberry contributed more than two points of U.S. value growth and is now in more than thirty international markets. Gross margin widened forty basis points to sixty point two percent. Read together, that is a supplier signalling innovation, not base volume, is carrying the recovery. The Drinks Business also reports shareholder pressure on the board, with the shares down sixty percent over five years. Separately, the U.S. House votes this week on delaying the scheduled November hemp THC ban by one month, according to Shanken News Daily, which reports the Senate has already approved that path. That summary is the extent of what has been reported. A one-month slip leaves the compliance clock unsettled for a category competing for the same off-trade shelf and cooler space as beer and RTDs. Industry reaction leans toward treating the delay as procedural relief that misses the binding constraint, with some operators reporting that payment processors, banks and card platforms are already closing hemp-THC accounts ahead of the original federal deadline. A recurring contrarian read is that the endgame is either an effective ban under a very low per-container THC limit, or another delay into twenty twenty-seven or twenty twenty-eight. Also today, Bloomberg reports that younger drinkers are moving away from carbonation, with vodka waters replacing vodka seltzers at bars and campus parties, and tequila mixed with water rather than soda. That reporting puts the cause simply, that fizzy drinks make young people feel unwell, and says companies from startups upward are building for it. If the pattern holds, it reaches mixer sourcing, hard seltzer and RTD format bets, and how brands spec a signature serve. Some in the trade push back on the framing, reading carbonation as a proxy for tighter budgets, health awareness and broader moderation, and pointing to canned cocktails as the format absorbing the shift. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Brewbound reports FIFCO USA, also known as CCR American Holdings, has been acquired by a private equity group led by its former chief executive. Shanken News Daily reports Martignetti Companies has agreed to acquire fellow Massachusetts distributor Girardi, a fourth-generation Anheuser-Busch house, for an undisclosed sum. Per that same outlet, most of the twenty RTD labels named Impact Hot Brands this year still show rapid retail momentum two-thirds through twenty twenty-six. And finally, BevNET reports Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario is partnering with Sazerac on Mr. Fancy, a canned sparkling wine.