Von Dutch enters F&B market with new liquor, soda, and water ranges; cafés to come
The Los Angeles-based brand, acquired by White Space Group (WSG) in 2024, has signed a global licensing agreement to form Von Dutch F&B, as the early 2000s apparel outfit looks to become a complete lifestyle brand.
The new food, beverage and hospitality venture, led by a newly appointed CEO Joe Wallace, kicks off with the launch of organic, plant-based mocktails and healthy sodas created in collaboration with Flavor House. The brand will also launch liquor products including vodka, tequila, beer, and spiked seltzers, followed with the debut of Von Dutch Water.
Finally, the brand has plans to rollout Von Dutch Cafés, or café-lounge hybrids, set to open in New York and Los Angeles in the next 12 months. Visitors can expect a space that shifts from daytime coffee and snacks into an after-hours haven made up of mocktails, cocktails, and live entertainment.
'We're building more than a food brand - we're creating a whole empire. Von Dutch will be about entertainment, hospitality, wellness, authenticity, and bringing in new energy," said Wallace, an executive that has raised millions in startup capital and led several first-to-market innovations across food tech, hospitality, and consumer goods.
'This partnership marks a powerful step forward for Von Dutch as a cultural force. Joe brings not only the entrepreneurial fire, but the values and velocity to translate this brand into entirely new verticals," said Jack Cheika, CEO of WSG, which purchased the Californian brand from the French Royer Group, in June last year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Local France
2 hours ago
- Local France
US tariff tussles stuff of nightmares for Bordeaux winemakers
In southwestern France, around the Bordeaux region's famed vineyards, months of talk on what US President Donald Trump will decide on tariffs have been the stuff of nightmares for producers as they look on helplessly. The United States is by far the top export market for Bordeaux's wine, accounting for €400 million worth of annual sales - or about 20 percent of the total. China lags behind with €300 million ahead of the United Kingdom with €200 million. Sunday's announcement of a trade deal between the United States and the European Union did not clear up what tariffs European wine and spirits producers will face in the United States. Advertisement While Trump said European exports face 15 percent tariffs across the board, both sides said there would be carve-outs for certain sectors. EU head Ursula Von der Leyen said the bloc still hoped to secure further so-called "zero-for-zero" agreements, notably for alcohol, which she hoped to be "sorted out" in the coming days. Philippe Tapie, chairman of regional traders' union Bordeaux Negoce, which represents more than 90 percent of the wine trade in the Bordeaux area, is worried by the uncertainty. "One day, it is white, the next it is black - the US administration can change its mind from one day to the next and we have no visibility," he told AFP. In mid-March, Trump had threatened Brussels with 200 percent tariffs on alcohol in response to a proposed EU tax on US bourbon. Then in April he brandished a new threat of 20 percent across the board on EU products, a threat ultimately suspended. Since then, the level first held at ten percent but, in late May, the US leader threatened to revert to 50 percent before pivoting to 30 percent starting August 1st, the deadline for the negotiations with the EU that led to a preliminary accord after Trump and Von der Leyen met in Scotland on Sunday. "At 10 percent or 15 percent, we'll find solutions. At 30 percent, no. End of story," Tapie warned just ahead of the announcement as he criticised a "totally unpredictable American administration". To export wine, "there's a minimum of 30 days by boat. If you go to California, it's 60 days. We can't think in terms of weeks," says Tapie, who says he has "never been confronted with such a situation" in 30 years of business. Advertisement Twins Bordeaux, one of Bordeaux's leading wine merchants, also laments the tariffs' impact. "The American market represents about a third of our turnover, or around €30 million," explains Sebastien Moses, co-director and co-owner of Twins, which usually ships upwards of a million bottles a year to the United States. Since January, "our turnover must have fallen by 50 percent compared to last year," he says. "So far, we've managed to save the situation, because as soon as Donald Trump was elected we anticipated this and sent as much stock as possible to the US," explains Moses, though longer term he says this is not a "stable" strategy. As an attempted work around Twins Bordeaux even shipped cases of around 10,000 bottles by air in March. "But only very expensive wines, at no less than €150-€200 per bottle, because by air it's at least two and a half times the price of shipping by sea," he said. For Bordeaux wine merchant Bouey, the US market represents less than 10 percent of its exports. "We have long since undertaken a geographical expansion. Faced with the global chaos, commercial strategies can no longer be based on a single- or dual-country strategy," Jacques Bouey, its CEO, told AFP in April. The tariffs come with the industry already struggling with declining consumption that has led to overproduction and a collapse in bulk prices. By early 2023, a third of Bordeaux's approximately 5,000 wine growers admitted to being in difficulty. "We're starting to become world champions in terms of accumulating problems," complained Tapie.
LeMonde
2 hours ago
- LeMonde
Tariffs: EU hands Trump a political win to avoid trade chaos
Suddenly, Donald Trump leaned toward Ursula von der Leyen and extended his hand, praising, with his signature superlatives, "the biggest deal ever made." Up to that point, the European Commission president had remained still in her large green velvet chair, but she accepted the handshake. That gesture closed, on Sunday, July 27, dozens of hours of sometimes bewildering negotiations between the European and American delegations, culminating in the meeting held in the ballroom of the sprawling Turnberry golf resort, owned by Trump, on Scotland's west coast. The suspense lasted until the very last minute. At the start of the meeting, the Republican, claiming to be "not in a good mood," still estimated the odds of reaching a deal at 50%. The agreement was clinched just five days before the August 1 deadline he had previously set, after which European exports would have faced punitive tariffs of 30%. Faced with two evils, the 27 EU member states chose what they saw as the lesser: an unbalanced compromise favoring the US rather than risking a full-scale trade war with unpredictable consequences. The choice was of "stability over total unpredictability," European Commissioner for Trade Maros Sefcovic explained on a flight from Brussels to Glasgow. While German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the agreement without much enthusiasm, it was Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever who best summed up the mood among European leaders: "This is a moment of relief, but not of celebration." French Minister for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad, meanwhile, recognized the deal would bring "temporary stability" but called it "unbalanced."
Euronews
4 hours ago
- Euronews
On defence, France and Germany are inching closer but remain far apart
Germany is becoming more French - and vice versa - when it comes to defence but big differences in the state of their public finances and strategic thinking mean the so-called Franco-German engine is unlikely to be able to power a big shift in the way the EU as a whole does defence. "From a longer historical point of view, the degree of convergence (between the two countries) is arguably higher than it has been for, I would say, decades," Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank, told Euronews. Both capitals see Russia as their biggest long-term threat, and both have pledged to pour hundreds of billions of euros into their military and defence industrial base. In Berlin, this has been dubbed a "Zeitenwende" (or historical turning point) while Paris said its latest military programmation law is "the ultimate strategic move". This convergence was driven by Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which brought back conventional war to European soil, Donald Trump's return to the White House, which has put in doubt continued long-term US commitment to Europe's security, and a change of leadership in Germany. The new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, "basically took what I can only describe as a Gaullist stance", Kirkegaard said, by saying that "Europe needs to prepare for a future without a US security guarantee". 'France is converging with Germany' Yet one example of how this rapprochement in defence remains a laborious process came last week when France's Emmanuel Macron and Merz sought to diffuse tensions over a joint €100 billion project to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet. At the core of the dispute is the demand by France to secure 80% of the workshare for the new Future Combat Air System (FCAS), negating previous agreements that it would be split equally between the two countries and Spain, which is also part of the project. The French demand, however, "should not be as surprising as it seems", Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told Euronews, given that one of the major differences between France and Germany is how differently they view their military and the purpose they serve. The armed forces in France are part of the national foreign policy - as recent deployments in the Sahel attest - with the country's overseas territories and its possession of the nuclear weapon adding to its global perspective. "That's why the French military is much more comfortable with acting unilaterally or outside of EU, NATO contexts (than Germany's), and this then extends to the kinds of capabilities that the French armed forces prefer acquiring," Loss said. "Everything that relates to the French nuclear deterrent has to work when France is alone. And that means that FCAS, which is supposed to replace the Rafale fighter bombers going forward in carrying French nuclear weapons, French military and political leadership will not accept a situation where they're dependent to produce this capability because the nuclear deterrent depends on that capability." "French industry will need to be able to produce this aircraft by themselves if push comes to shove. They're willing to cooperate when strategic orientations align, but ultimately they have to produce everything independently of others. And again, that's something that many in Germany and across Europe haven't quite realised," he added. Still, Loss continued, "France is converging with Germany" with the "realisation that for the sake of European security, it needs to show that it invests in its partnerships and relationships with Europeans, especially those on the eastern flank". 'A big wasted opportunity' But the other major hurdle for the two to advance a common defence agenda at the EU level is the stark difference in their respective fiscal space. Germany's debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio stood at 62.3% in the first quarter of the year. France's was at 114.1%, well above what the bloc's rules mandate (60%). This structural divergence means that as European countries aim to significantly ramp up their defence spending and military capabilities to deter a possible Russian attack towards the turn of the decade, Germany can afford to invest heavily in defence, while France cannot. For instance, Germany has asked to make use of a proposal by Brussels to loosen fiscal rules for defence spending, something France, which is targeted by an excessive deficit procedure, cannot do. France, which has consistently invested in defence over the last few decades, has less ground to cover, so to speak, but the sums advanced by the German government (including a €500 billion fund to boost the military and the country's infrastructure) should mean it catches up quickly. But their public finances also "fundamentally place them on different sides of negotiating tables" at the EU level, Kirkegaard said. The European Commission has put forward a plan to rearm Europe that it hopes will prompt member states to invest up to €800 billion before 2030. But most of that money is expected to come from member states' coffers, which in the case of France, are quite depleted. Given the scale of the task ahead, the Commission has been asked to come up with "innovative" financing options for defence. Macron has called for one of those options to be joint EU borrowing, something Germany has flat-out rejected. For Kirkegaard, this means that the crisis ushered in by Russia's war on Ukraine, is "a big wasted opportunity" for the bloc. "This crisis, the war in Ukraine, will not lead to materially more EU institutional or fiscal integration. It will lead to an expansion of the EU with Ukraine and maybe other countries but that's a different type of change to the EU and that's also very different than the last many big crises we've had," he said.
