Hello and welcome to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of The Boston Beer Company, Inc. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. At the end of the meeting, we will have a question-and-answer session. You can submit questions or comments at any time during the meeting, including prior to the start of the Q&A session, by clicking on the message icon. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Jim Koch, Founder and Chairman. Mr. Koch, the floor is yours.
Welcome everybody. I'm Jim Koch. I am hereby calling the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Stockholders of The Boston Beer Company, Inc., to order. Not that you've been disorderly, but it's my job to be the sheriff here, I guess. It's a little unfortunate, but because of COVID-19, we have to hold our annual meeting virtually again this year. I hope you and your family and friends and coworkers are all staying safe during these challenging times. As some of you may remember, we'd originally planned to hold our 2020 meeting in person at our new Samuel Adams Tapr oom in Downtown Boston. We had that same hope again this year, but it kind of looks like maybe we're a month or two early.
So hopefully by Memorial Day, or at least the 4th of July, the country will be open and people will be gathering and drinking and celebrating. And we're certainly very much looking forward to talking with you personally and sampling new beers as we do every year. But we determined that it was best to keep the meeting virtual this year to keep our stockholders and our coworkers safe at the tail end of this pandemic. We're very thankful to you, our stockholders, for your continued faith in us. And hopefully we can all get together in 2022 and celebrate enough to make up for the two years where we weren't able to meet in person. I'll begin my remarks this afternoon with a few introductory comments, including some notes about our two newest board members.
Then we'll have a discussion of our response to the COVID pandemic and an overview of how our brands are doing. Then we'll take care of the business portion of the meeting, mainly led by Fred Grein. Please remember that you may vote your shares online at any time prior to the close of the meeting. And to cast your vote, you click this graph icon on the top information bar in the virtual meeting platform. And hopefully you can find it because I can't see it on my screen, but hopefully you guys are more capable of finding those things. And we've reserved some time to answer questions after the business portion of the meeting is concluded. And please don't hesitate to add any questions that you might have to the chat. You can do so at any point during the meeting, including before we start the Q&A session.
Please note that I'll answer questions as I historically have done at the annual meeting. Also available to take questions are Jean-Michel Valette, the Chair of the Audit Committee, and Meghan Joyce, the Chair of our Nominating and Governance Committee, as well as Brendan Houghton, a partner from our independent registered public accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche LLP. It's my understanding that our full board of directors and executive leadership team are also in attendance at this meeting. To start, I want to take a moment to welcome Sam Calagione, our newest Sam, and Michael Lynton. They are the two newest members of our board of directors. They were formally appointed as Class B directors by the full board in October 2020. Both are candidates for reelection as Class B directors this year.
As you probably know, if you've been following craft beer, Sam and Mariah Calagione kind of need no introduction. They founded Dogfish Head in 1995 and have been leaders in the craft brew industry for 26 years now. They joined Boston Beer Company in 2019 when we merged with Dogfish Head. And Sam has already proven to be an invaluable member of our board and our leadership team. He's not just leading the Dogfish Head brand. He's sharing that innovative and slightly off-centered spirit for each of our brands and across the Boston Beer Company organization and keeping alive our nature and character as a small entrepreneurial, innovative, agile company. Michael Lynton is currently the Chairman of Snap, a social media and camera technology company that maintains apps that you probably know, especially Snapchat, but also Spectacles and Bitmoji. And he has had a very impressive, illustrious career.
He previously served as Chairman of Sony Entertainment from 2012- 2017, overseeing Sony's global entertainment businesses. He also served as Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment from 2004- 2017. And prior to joining Sony, he worked for Time Warner from 2000 to 2004. During that time, he served as CEO of AOL Europe, President of AOL International, and President of Time Warner International. From 1996 to 2000, Michael served as Chairman and CEO of the publisher Penguin Group, based in New York City. And from 1992 to 1996, he served as President of Disney's Hollywood Pictures. Overall, Michael has more than 30 years of experience in consumer marketing, traditional and digital, and new media, and the adoption of new technologies. He also has broad public company governance experience.
So I'm very excited for the new perspectives that Michael has brought and will continue to bring to the board. His input has already helped shape our overall marketing, business, and governance strategies. Now, let me have a beer. I'm going to look back at 2020, which was a great year for Boston Beer Company, despite the challenges that we faced and that we continue to face. We believe that our 2020 achievements resulted in large measure from the strong foundation that we've built over the last 37 years. As the world slowly reopens, that foundation will allow us to continue to grow our businesses by maintaining our focus on operating our businesses safely and working hard to continue to innovate and meet customer demand. I'm proud of how Boston Beer Company acted decisively and worked to control what we could control over the last 15 months.
It's certainly been a crazy time, an unprecedented and unexpected time for all of us. And in the early days of the pandemic, we were able to act quickly and put in place many safety protocols at our brewery. And the reason we were able to do that so quickly and effectively is due in part to one of our newer board members, Julio Nemeth, who is the head of the supply chain for Procter & Gamble and had already dealt with these issues at his factories in China. So he was a couple of months ahead of the curve and brought his playbook to Boston Beer Company, told us the things that we were going to need to do. And we were able to get ahead of the curve with our safety protocols.
We were able to act quickly to get hundreds of thousands of masks out of China at a very difficult time. I'm greatly in Julio's debt, as is the rest of the company, for putting us ahead of the curve in adopting the appropriate safety protocols, including health screening, temperature checks, face masks, physical distancing, additional cleaning, additional separation during shift changes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We also put in place travel restrictions on everybody to keep them off of airplanes. We temporarily closed our hospitality locations. We shifted in a matter of two days, so 48 hours notice, we shifted all our office and sales coworkers, over 700 people, to a remote work environment and didn't miss a beat.
Once we knew that we'd addressed our safety needs, we're very fortunate to be in a position to help others by supporting the communities in which we work and live. That's been one of our key values, and I've always remembered that our business got its start in bars and restaurants. And we realized very quickly that this pandemic was going to have a devastating effect, not just on the restaurant businesses, but on all of the workers there who, again, with no notice, no warning, many of them just got laid off in a matter of days, so I'll just tell you about some of the initiatives we got off the ground that we believe helped make a difference. The first one was in partnership with The Greg Hill Foundation, a local foundation here in Boston that is already set up and is able to move really quickly.
We established the Sam Adams Restaurant Strong Fund, and to date, we've raised over $7 million, dispersed virtually all of that to support bar and restaurant workers who were impacted by pandemic-related closures and had, in many cases, just immediate needs that were not met by any of the pandemic packages that came months later. We were dispersing funds from that foundation within 48 hours of its announcement. Also, to support our internal needs and local hospitals, we produced hand sanitizer at the Dogfish Head Distillery in Milton, Delaware, and we were able to get extra masks out of China, which enabled us to donate 200,000 masks to hospitals and healthcare facilities in our brewery communities at a time when PPE shortages, especially mask shortages, were a major problem. More recently, we launched a program called Shot for Sam, where we encouraged our drinkers and our consumers to get vaccinated.
The program bought a beer for the first 10,000 people who participated. And we also ran a national television ad and social media ad featuring Your Cousin From Boston, our kind of signature character for Samuel Adams, getting vaccinated in the hopes of breaking down some of the vaccine hesitation that's out there. And we're also extremely thankful to our outstanding coworkers, our distributors, and the retailers for their focus during COVID-19 and their diligence to continue to operate breweries, distributors, and retail accounts that helped us grow our business during 2020. We're also incredibly proud of the growth that we've been able to maintain in these crazy, challenging times. Our depletions grew 37% in 2020. In cases, it was the biggest growth year that we've ever had. And our revenues grew 39%. Despite all the closures of on-premise, we were still able to grow.
In the first quarter of 2021, our depletions grew 49% from the first quarter of 2020, while our revenues increased even more. I'll talk a little bit about our brands. Truly continues to grow way beyond our expectations. When we launched it in early 2016 and really got the ball rolling on this whole seltzer category, we thought it was going to be a million cases. We were happy with that as a small company. That was a meaningful thing. We thought we could grow that slowly like we did Twisted Tea. It certainly exceeded all of our expectations and everybody else's expectations. For the last five years, it's really been the hottest category and one of the hottest products in all of alcoholic beverages. We've been keeping the fire going. Earlier this year, we launched Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer.
And we're in the process of launching Truly Punch. These new launches have helped us more than double our volume of Truly since last year, demonstrating our leadership in innovation within the hard seltzer category. We've been able to continue to grow market share despite dozens, in fact, more like a couple of hundred new entrants, and all of this increased frenzied competition in the hard seltzer category. Twisted Tea continues to generate double-digit growth, significantly above 2020 rates so far this year. And as a result, we expect that 2021 will be the 13th year of double-digit growth for the Twisted Tea brand. We also believe that Twisted Tea is on its way to being the number one FMB by the end of the year. Our beer and cider brands have been more deeply impacted by the shutdown of our on-premise business.
They are kind of roughly 30% of their volume is on-premise. And we've had weeks since COVID started where not only did the growth go to zero, it went negative because we were taking back more kegs than we were selling. So that 30% of volume for Twisted Tea and for Sam, I mean, for Angry Orchard and Sam Adams, just kind of went away. It is coming back. And we continue to work very hard on regaining our previous distribution as the on-premise businesses not only open but begin to fill with customers. For Sam Adams, we're optimistic that we will certainly grow our on-premise business in 2021 in a major way as restrictions are slowly lifted across the country.
We're excited about the response to the introduction in early 2021 of several new Sam Adams beers, including our new Wicked Hazy IPA and Wicked Easy, as well as our first non-alcoholic beer, Samuel Adams Just the Haze, which is not like any non-alcoholic beer you've ever had the displeasure of being exposed to. It is a beautiful, delicious beer that took two years of research, innovation, experimentation, trial and error by a dedicated team of brewers. It is, to me, the first non-alcoholic beer that does not require you to give up flavor and taste. I'm very proud of being able to do something that is new and unique. With Sam Adams, we have also had very positive reaction to Your Cousin From Boston, our ad campaign.
So we are hoping to grow the Sam Adams brand this year, despite the fact that the on-premise has not been fully opened yet, and we're five months almost into the year. Our Dogfish Head beer is now distributed in all 50 states. And in 2020, enjoyed high single-digit growth in the measured off-premise channels. The brand continues to be an innovation leader. And in 2021, we're launching a new line of Dogfish Head canned cocktails. Dogfish Head has been one of the original craft distillers in the United States that began distilling almost 20 years ago and have perfected their craft, I think. They make delicious canned cocktails. It's a new place for us to go. But those who've been long-term shareholders, it's part of our heritage to just keep pushing the boundaries.
Dogfish Head has also launched some wonderful new beers, especially Hazy-O!, which is a hazy, juicy New England style IPA that uses some oats and oat milk to make a really silky mouthfeel and flavor. Dogfish Head has also launched its own non-alcoholic beer using the same techniques. It's Just the Haze to make a thirst-quenching and delicious non-alcoholic beer called Lemon Quest. Despite being down overall in volume in 2020, primarily due to the on-premise closures, Angry Orchard continues to lead the U.S. cider market with a share of almost 50%. In 2020, our flagship style, Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, grew high single digits, a testament to the power of the lead style. We're also continuing to innovate to regenerate growth with Angry Orchard by introducing two fruit ciders this year, Angry Orchard Strawberry and Angry Orchard Peach Mango.
And we can't forget about our 11 hospitality locations. We now have not just taprooms, but brew pubs, restaurants, an orchard, and even a small inn in Delaware. In 2020, we just got the new Boston Taproom overlooking the statue of our namesake, Samuel Adams, in downtown Boston. Just got it open in time to shut it for COVID. But we will be fully reopening it very soon, hopefully by early June. And right now, construction's underway to rebrand our Miami-based taproom to become Dogfish Head Miami. And we've also remodeled and added a tasting room to the Angry Orchard Cidery in Walden, New York. Overall, we're confident in our ability to innovate and build strong brands that complement our current portfolio and help support our mission of long-term profitable growth.
More specifically, we see significant growth opportunities for Truly, for Twisted Tea, for Dogfish Head, and for Samuel Adams and Angry Orchard, and pursuing these opportunities is our top priority for 2021. We will now proceed with the business of the meeting. Here virtually with me is Fred Grein of Nixon Peabody, our long-serving general counsel for the past 37 years. He will attend to the matters set forth in the notice of meeting. Then, when we are finished with the matters set forth in the notice, we'll adjourn the meeting, and I'll answer some questions. Turning it over to you, Fred. Thank you.
Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. I think those of you who have attended meetings in the past understand what we're going to try to accomplish pretty quickly here.
First, I can report that the company has in its possession an affidavit of mailing furnished by Computershare, the company's registrar and transfer agent, confirming that the notice of the meeting was duly given to all Class A stockholders of record as of the March 22, 2021, record date. A copy of the notice, which was contained in the proxy statement, made available to all stockholders as of the record date and as of the affidavit of mailing will be incorporated into the permanent record of the meeting. I've been advised that according to the preliminary tabulation, an excess of 80% of the outstanding shares of the company's Class A Common Stock are represented either by proxy or here at the meeting virtually, and accordingly, a quorum is present.
If there's anyone present who wishes to vote their shares during the meeting and has not yet done so, I encourage you to vote online now. To cast your vote, click the graph icon on the top information bar in the virtual meeting platform prior to the close of the meeting. Any additional shares being voted at this meeting, not included in the preliminary tabulation, will be added to the final tabulation and included in the permanent record of the meeting. Jim has informed me that he has appointed Boston Beer's associate general counsel and corporate secretary, Mike Andrews, and Dan Glennon of Computershare as tellers, both of whom are present at this virtual meeting, and they will take charge of the proxies and the ballots. We'll now proceed to attend to those matters that were set forth in the notice of the meeting.
Similar to last year, I will not be asking for a formal voice vote on each proposal, as all voting will be performed electronically or by proxy. We have a preliminary tally of the votes, which I will indicate. Following the meeting, the tellers will do a final tally of all the votes, and the report of the results will be entered in the formal record of the meeting. The first order of business then is to attend to the matters for the Class A stockholders, beginning with the election of Class A directors. The first order of business to come before the Class A stockholders is the election of three Class A directors to serve on the board of directors for a term of one year and until his or her successor is duly elected and qualified.
The nominees listed in the Proxy Statement for election are Meghan Joyce, Michael Spillane, and Jean-Michel Valette. It is my understanding, based on proxies in hand, that each of the nominees has been reelected. The next item is the so-called Say-on-Pay vote, which is an advisory vote on executive compensation. And the adoption of this resolution states the following: resolve that the compensation policies and procedures followed by the company and the Compensation Committee of the company's board of directors and the level and mix of compensation paid to the company's named executive officers, as disclosed pursuant to the compensation disclosure rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the compensation discussion and analysis, compensation tables, and narrative discussion resulting from such policies and procedures are hereby determined to be appropriate for the company and accordingly approved.
That's the same Say-on-Pay vote that we've been addressing in prior meetings. And it is my understanding that based on the proxies in hand, the proposed resolution has been duly approved. Now we're going to turn to the matters to be voted on by Jim as the holder of all the voting rights to the outstanding Class B stock. The first matter is the election of Class B directors. And the nominees for Class B directors, as listed in the proxy statement, to serve for a term of one year expiring at the end of the 2022 annual meeting are David A. Burwick, Samuel A. Calagione III , Cynthia A. Fisher, C. James Koch, Michael Lynton, and Julio Nemeth. And I have been informed that Jim has duly voted all of his Class B shares for the reelection of those six Class B directors.
The final matter to be voted on by the Class B stockholders is the ratification of the appointment by the Audit Committee of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the company's fiscal year ending December 25, 2021. I'm also advised that Jim has voted all of his Class B shares to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche. That concludes the business to come before the formal portion of the meeting. And the formal portion of the meeting will be hereby adjourned. And Jim will now entertain some questions. As was noted in the introductory comments at the beginning of the meeting before Jim spoke, if you would like to ask a question, there is a messages button on your screen, and feel free to push that and ask a question if you would like.
Mike Andrews, who was one of the tellers and the Corporate Secretary, and Director of Communication Jessica Paar, will be going through the questions, and Jessica will be the one posing those to Jim so that Jim knows what questions have been asked and to answer, and thank you for your attention, and I'll now turn the meeting back over to Jessica and Jim.
Thanks, Fred. Jim, we've had a couple of questions pre-submitted. This first one is from our original IPO shareholder, Anthony, and Anthony asks, "Old Fezziwig Ale was conspicuous by its absence from the Winter Variety Pack this year. Why was it left out, and will it be back next year?
Anthony, thank you for hanging with us for these 25 years, and I'm very happy that the faith you showed in Boston Beer Company back in 1995 has been justified. It's been a great ride for all of us, and it's a very good question. Old Fezziwig is one of my favorite beers. It's actually the sort of brainchild of one of our, in fact, after me, I guess, our longest-serving employee. He started delivering beer, and now he's one of our brewers, Gene Giannokostas. He came up with a formula and named it after Scrooge's kindly boss in A Christmas Carol, and it's a heartwarming beer. We rotated it out in 2020 to make way for some new beers, including our new American IPA that we wanted to put in there, but it will come back.
I don't know what year it will be, but it is one of our favorites. Maybe it might replace the Holiday Por ter this year. So we're going to look at that. And part of being a brewer and responding to consumer desires for new interesting beers is losing some of our old favorites. But we continue to brew a lot of them, like Old Fezziwig, at the brewery in Boston and have it on tap in our taprooms here in Boston and sometimes package it and sell it out of the brewery. So Old Fezziwig was gone this year, but not forgotten.
Thank you, Jim. Second question: what were the biggest challenges that had to be addressed, and how did you address them in the past year of the pandemic?
The biggest challenge was obvious. In March of 2020, we realized that we were not just making business decisions, but potentially making life-and-death decisions. Nobody knew how serious this pandemic was going to be. Nobody knew how it was transmitted. Nobody knew when it would be over. We just entered this new and scary world. And the biggest challenge was to keep all of our people safe. And we needed to continue to run our breweries. We couldn't just stop doing everything for a year. So we knew that we were going to be bringing a lot of coworkers together, sometimes in close quarters and in large numbers. And I think the biggest challenge was that we set for ourselves we had a goal, a standard. We wanted for coming to work every day, coming to work, we wanted to be the safest part of our coworkers' day.
We couldn't control what happened to them outside of the brewery. But we wanted coming to the brewery and doing their work to be the safest part of their day. And we think we accomplished it over the last 15 months with close to 1,000 coworkers coming to work every day, making beer every day. We found no significant instances of spread to coworkers within our breweries. The masks that we implemented very early on, the social distancing, the extra hygiene, the extra ventilation, and many of the other practices that we put in place were able to fulfill that promise. And so far as I know, we haven't had any really very, very serious cases of hospitalization and near-death kind of things that you read about. As far as we know, we haven't lost a single of our 2,500 coworkers.
The serious cases that we did have were actually picked up outside of the brewery. Somebody who decided in the end of October, "Well, I'm going to take my kids to a Halloween party." Those kind of things were the spread that resulted in some serious cases for us. Everybody is still alive and has gotten through this. That was clearly the biggest challenge of 2020. Nobody goes into business with the expectation that with very little warning, you're going to have to make life-and-death decisions with very little information. We were fortunate enough to get through this.
Thank you, Jim. A bit of a follow-up question: what, if any, are the challenges that you feel like we'll need to address this year as we're coming out of the pandemic?
One big one is this question of what does work look like outside of the breweries and somewhat outside of the sales force, but for people who come to an office, what does that look like? We want to get that right. Again, there's no real guidance. So we will go on our basic values of making sure that we do the right thing for all of our constituencies, our people, our customers, our shareholders, and our communities. But that's going to be, I mean, to me, it's going to be fun. I mean, we're going to rethink how do we do that work. We will also rethink how do salespeople do their work in this post-COVID environment when people are used to working remotely. So we're going to be rethinking how the sales force works. So those, I think I'm very excited about those.
It's not often after 37 years of doing things one way that you get a chance to just completely reinvent it. So it's a great challenge and a great opportunity. And I think we're going to take advantage of it and come out of it better.
All right, and you touched on it a little bit earlier, but can you tell us more about your new non-alcoholic beer and how the response has been so far?
Yeah. The response has been very good. And how I measure that is, again, does it meet our standards? Our goal in making Just the Haze was to create a non-alcoholic beer that would actually, in blind tastings, get taste preference over the market leaders of that style, of the best hazy, juicy IPAs out there. And that was a challenge that it took us two years to meet. So we wanted to make a non-alcoholic beer that tasted blind was actually preferred to the very best alcoholic hazy, juicy IPAs. And we were able to do that. Now, if you try it at home, you have to do it blind, and you kind of have to know that you're not tasting a non-alc IPA.
But when we did that at the central location testing facilities where these double-blind testings are done, we actually accomplished our goal of getting a slight preference over the alcoholic versions of that style. So to me, that was a great reception. We think this is a category that is new to people. Non-alcoholic beers have been around for a long time. And frankly, they just don't taste very good. And I would tell people they'd ask me, "Why don't you make a non-alcoholic Sam Adams?" And I'd always say, "Why? I don't want to make a beer that compromises on taste." Well, we were able finally, after 36 years, to make that non-alcoholic beer that doesn't compromise on taste. That's a new idea to people. It's kind of surprising to them because people who've tried non-alcoholic beers have known that they were a disappointing compromise.
Sam Adams Just the Haze is not. It's like 98 calories. It's got a full, delicious mouthfeel, a great juicy, citrusy, orange-fruit, tropical kind of hop aroma and character and that silky mouthfeel that a really good New England IPA will evidence. But it's going to take a while. It's not going to be a big volume contributor. It's just a great beer.
I agree with you, but I'm biased. We had another question that came in. Following the announcement of the merger with Dogfish Head in 2019, are there any updates you can share? And are the companies fully integrated at this point?
Yes, the companies are fully integrated. And we believe by the end of this year, over 90%, we hope, of our distributors will be fully consolidated. But yeah, it's been a very, I think, easy transition. There was certainly a lot of trepidation on the part of especially our new coworkers in Delaware. And I think what they discovered is what Sam and I knew all along, which is we are two companies, but we shared common values and a common spirit of being a little off-centered, doing cool things, and having fun doing it. So it's been a very successful merger integration.
Great. At least one more question. And just so everyone knows, we're having a slight technical difficulty when you're submitting questions via the web. So we would just ask, if you have a question that you want to share, send an email to bod@bostonbeer.com. Again, that's bod@bostonbeer.com. Today, Jim, there seemed to be a pretty exciting announcement about the Truly brand that you've announced a new award-winning artist to help celebrate in the advertising. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Sure. This is a big step for Boston Beer Company and certainly for our Truly brand and really highlights the magnitude of the opportunity with the Truly brand. It is really the first product that has broken out of any kind of niche. Our CEO, Dave Burwick, talks about it being a mega brand, and Dave has a background. He originally started his career at Pepsi, so he has seen important brands being created and has done that himself with the Mountain Dew brand 20 years ago. So he's brought an experience and a perspective that we didn't have, and part of stepping up and creating a brand of the magnitude of Truly is becoming a part of American culture, so under his guidance, we have partnered with a woman named Dua Lipa.
She has an interesting cultural background, I think, Kosovan, Albanian, who grew up in London and now lives in L.A.. She speaks many languages. But I guess more to the point, she is the number one artist on Spotify. I think her last couple of albums have had 5 billion with a B, billion, times they've been played. So she's a very rising, ascending, very interesting, essentially pop star. And just knew we're going to see how it works. We're excited about this learning opportunity. My 20-something daughters told me it was a great move. So we're going to and so far, the partnership's been very good. She's been great to work with. So we're going to see where it takes us.
Wonderful. A few more questions have come in. One from shareholder Thomas. What are your thoughts on share buybacks given current share price?
We've sort of paused the buyback program in part because we've been able to put the money to work. We feel quite productively in expanding capacity. We've more than tripled our total capacity internal and through our co-manufacturing partners, especially City Brewing, where we've invested very large amounts of money, over $100 million by the end of next year, and then hundreds of millions internally. I think our capital requirements are $250million-$350 million a year for the last few years, so we put that on pause, and I really have no educated opinion about the share price. That's Wall Street, and God love them.
But we have in the past found the share buybacks to be a very cost-efficient way of essentially returning cash to the shareholders by buying shares back, which, of course, increases the price of everybody's shares without any tax rates, without having to pay taxes on that increase. So we will probably continue that in one way, shape, or form. But right now, we are more focused on reinvesting that cash in the business to grow it. And hopefully, we'll continue to grow our volumes and need more capacity.
Great. And I should say that Tom is also an original shareholder, as is Angus, who submitted the next question. What is the current thinking on stock splits and impact on our share value?
Every once in a while, we look at the stock splits. The problem is it costs a bunch of money, and it takes up some time and some effort without really adding any value. It's like today, you have a $20 bill, and tomorrow, you have two tens, and you had to pay a little bit to turn that 20 into two tens. And at this point, a very large majority of our shareholders are various institutions, pension funds, etc. And it's not an issue for them. So right now, and certainly in the next few months, we don't see true value being generated by taking a $20 bill and turning it into two tens.
Great. And I think we have time for probably two more. So this one comes in from David. What is being done to bring Boston Lager back to the forefront?
It's a really good question. Obviously, Boston Lager is not only near and dear to my heart, but pretty much every day, it becomes part of my very body. So I mean, it's what's in my refrigerator, and specifically, what we're doing is with the reopening, we've had a major push from our salespeople to get all of our draft lines back for Sam Adams and, in fact, to grow it. We are spending significantly on the ad campaign featuring Your Cousin From Boston that's been quite successful, kind of entered the culture. You know when you get your own four-minute skit on Saturday Night Live that people are paying attention to you. There was a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal on our "Super Bowl" ad that we ran in Boston and New York.
So we have a very good brand management team that their sole job in life is to grow Sam Adams again. And I'm actually very optimistic. I believe Sam Adams will grow in 2021 and I believe in 2022.
Thank you, Jim. I think we have time for one more, and I would say thank you to everyone who submitted some great suggestions for fun swag coming out of the pandemic year, Ramblers. We saw a lot of fun ideas come in for point of sale. One question that came in. Apologies, so I think there's a lot of excitement around the potential of visiting the taproom. Kathleen said, "Are stockholders going to have first dibs at the reopening of the Boston Taproom?
I hope so. But it's a big place. So I am hopeful that we will be able to accommodate everybody there. There's, oh, like over 200 seats in all. So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to accommodate everybody. I don't think we have any mechanism or provision for separating out stockholders from our passionate fans and drinkers. So hopefully, we can bring everybody together and share a beer and celebrate the end of this dreary, depressing pandemic and leave it behind us and have the summer of 2021 be celebrated as the summer of our independence from COVID. And Sam Adams, I think, would raise a glass to that kind of independence. So thanks, everybody. Thank you for being shareholders. Thank you for your loyalty. And next year, we will have this meeting at the beautiful taproom overlooking the statue of our namesake, Samuel Adams, the brewer and patriot.
Cheers.
This concludes the meeting. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.