2025 was an incredible year of expansion across many cruise lines for Southern Glazers Travel, Phillip Jarrell, Vice President Travel Retail, Cruise & Key Accounts, SGWS, tells TMI.
“Our brands performed very well in 2025, and the outlook for 2026 seems promising,” says Jarrell. “Our goal has been to simply listen to the cruise operators and tailoring to their individual program. Each beverage operations program has such a different need state for supply chain costs, activation, product mix, itinerary, etc. That uniqueness of each allows us to get creative with how we approach our existing portfolio, but also steers us in the right direction of how to partner with new brand opportunities.”
One competitive advantage for SGWS is the way it simplifies the supply chain, says Jarrell.
“One of our exciting new tools is our own Free Trade Zone (FTZ) based in Miami Gardens. We used a great 3PL for many years, but we grew to a point where managing that internally became a competitive advantage. The self-owned FTZ allows us to more quickly answer the needs of our Chandlers, Cruise Line F&B Operators and Duty Free Retailers, in addition to our normal export markets throughout the Caribbean and Latin American region,” he says.
SGWS’ diverse portfolio of brands, including “portfolio pillars”, new brands, wine, and mixers all experienced a good year on cruise in 2025, says Jarrell.
“We see traditional portfolio pillars like Disaronno, Tia Maria and Whistlepig continue to gain more volume as cruise lines expand with new ships and broader menu programming opportunities. We see newer spirit brands for us like Chinola really expand nicely with their line extensions covering Passion Fruit, Mango and Pineapple meeting so many different beverage program needs. Wine is performing very well also as we started with brands from Hampton Water, Jordan Wines, Trinchero Family Estates, Louis Latour and more,” he says.
“We also saw great success in the premium mixers categories with broad growth across the Fever Tree portfolio, and our new egg white replacement, AquaFab from Australia. We have high expectations for AquaFab as we simplify and make safe the opportunity to bring back properly made classic cocktails like Disaronno Sours, Barsol Pisco Sours and Whistlepig Piggyback Sours.”
Luxury consumer experiences remain the greatest areas for expansion on cruise, says Jarrell.
“Consumers really embrace the opportunity for discovery when they are on board. One of the programs we’re most excited about is the continued expansion of the Whistlepig Private Barrel program. More and more cruise operators want unique consumer experiences, and Whistlepig and other whiskey brands in our portfolio help make that possible. Celebrity and Holland America have been the most active in this category, but we believe many others are likely to pivot to the opportunity also.
“Another fascinating program has been around our partners at Komos Tequila. We’ve launched an interesting luxury tequila and chocolate pairing program with Royal Caribbean featuring Komos and boutique chocolate producer, Seahorse out of Bend, Oregon.”
SGWS is always looking for opportunities to simplify the supply chain, list world class brands, and activate the best possible consumer experience, says Jarrell.
“Some of the most recent additions to the portfolio include wines like Hampton Water Jean-Luc Colombo, and Louis Latour all from France. Our U.S. wine portfolio continues to pick up steam with great additions like Fre Non Alcoholic wines and fun brands like Joel Gott and Menage a Trois from Trinchero Family Estates. Jordan Wines Paul Hobbs, and Stoller of Oregon also provide some great, highly sought after wines that really help any wine list stand out to the discerning guest.”
Beyond Cruise, SGWS has partnered with the Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas for the Nassau Paradise Island Wine & Food Festival for the fourth year in a row.
“Nassau continues to be such a destination for a world class Food & Beverage experience. We host the event in conjunction with Food Network stars like Tom Colicchio, Rachel Ray, Michael Symon, JJ Johnson, Antonia Lafaso, Michael White, Aaron Sanchez, and Jose Andres. Our brands have incredible coverage there, and we’re doing some very fun events March 11-15, 2026 with some newcomers like the wines of Colgin, Darioush, as well as, Paul Hobbs and many others.”
