It's actually illegal for booze execs to talk normally (few understand this)

In lieu of The Fingers Weekender, today is a special edition—this year’s very first installation of Buzzwords of The Week of The Quarter. But before we get to that, be sure to check out:

• My column last week at VinePair summing up the beer industry’s M&A-crazed Q1;

• My column last week here at Fingers about why it’s so tough to unionize hospitality businesses;

• A few photos from the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild’s annual conference, where I delivered the keynote address this past Friday;

And that’s about it. As ever, if someone forwarded this to you, buy a subscription to get next Sunday’s edition straight in your inbox.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that 2025’s Buzzwords of The Week of The Year competition could have gone a bit more smoothly. The annual reader’s-choice runoff of asinine beverage-alcohol phraseology was supposed to be administered in a series of four quarterly votes, culminating with the four-way battle royale for top (bottom) honors (shames) for the year. I held the first-quarter vote around this time last year, then just kinda forgot about the rest, setting up a rapid-fire vote-o-rama in early 2026 to get everything sorted out. Oops.

However! The Fingers Fam rose to the occasion, eventually crowning “a lot of concern about the whole immigration question”—that old chestnut from outgoing Constellation Brands chief exec Bill Newlands—as Fingers’ 2025 Buzzwords of The Week of The Year. But this year, I’m determined to do better. I put reminders in my calendar and everything.

Which brings us to Fingers’ Buzzwords of The Week of Q1 2026, the first of what will be four quarterly polls to identify the best (worst) palaver to be proffered by the publicists and poobahs of the bev-alc trade and the broader CPG and hospitality industries. Let’s get to it.

🗳️ Cast your vote for The Buzzwords of The Week of Q1 2026

This year, for the first time in Buzzwords of The Week history, each entry is totally free to read with or without a subscription. Entries are published Friday on the site and on social media, with a link in the following Sunday’s Weekender. You can read them all here, or below.

That said, only paying friends of Fingers are eligible to cast their ballots to elevate (denigrate) their favorite (least-favorite) Buzzwords of The Week candidate for quarterly and/or annual recognition.

🤦🏻‍♂️ Get reacquainted with all last quarter’s corniest corporatespeak

Because the only thing I cherish more than my deleterious Summer of Loko is an informed participatory democracy, I’ve linked each of the nine Buzzwords of The Week entries from the previous three months for your review. Reappraise thyself of the florid rhetoric and bloodless boardroom equivocation below.

Again, Buzzwords of The Week are now free for all to read, and publish each Friday on the site. Read the archive here.