Shifting Lanes: How Craft Breweries Are Changing Business Structures

Times are tough for craft beer. Once the darling of the tap walls and shelf sets, double-digit sales growth and taprooms springing up on every street corner like that green and white coffee giant. Things seemed like good times would never end, but every party has a pooper, and 2024 is looking like one of the most brutal years so far for craft brewery brands since 2020.

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Bringing Culture to the Cup: NB2A Revolutionizes Craft Beer

Craft beer has always been a staple of local communities, serving as a gathering point for people to share stories over a pint. The sense of belonging and support from local patrons fueled the growth of craft beer during its peak years. However, there’s a significant opportunity yet to be fully realized—the untapped potential of Black consumers and brewers in the craft beer industry.

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Highs and Lows of the 2024 Craft Brewers Conference

With more curves than a Bart Watson data chart, the 2024 Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas did not disappoint for the 9,000-plus attendees who braved the lights and sounds of The Venetian Expo Center and cacophony of Phish fans pouring into The Sphere. (Talk about fantastic people watching!) The conference provided a sanctuary for industry professionals to discuss the myriad challenges and emerging opportunities within the craft brewing world.

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Pouring Potential | Examining the CHEERS Act

Earlier this month, two US Congressmen introduced H.R. 7577, the Creating Hospitality Economic Enhancement for Restaurants and Servers (CHEERS) Act, designed to invigorate and further support local hospitality businesses, like bars, restaurants and entertainment venues, by providing tax incentives to organizations that invest in upgrades for their draft beer systems. The bipartisan legislation aims to revitalize the On-Premise community by providing financial breaks for small businesses still hurting from shutdowns in 2020 and slogging through current economic conditions.

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Go Big Or Go Home: Can Smaller Producers Recreate 19.2 Ounces of Success?

“Where’s your bomber section?” — said no Millennial or Gen Z craft beer shopper ever in the past four years. So is the once revered 22-ounce craft beer bomber dead? In short, not really. Most consumers can find plenty of high-end, special release large format bottles from a multitude of brewers on shelves nationwide. But the format of choice, and one of the fastest growing package segments in the alcoholic beverage space, is now the 19.2-ounce single serve can, a.k.a. the stovepipe. And growth is not slowing down any time soon. The 19.2-ounce can accounts for more than 92% of craft sales in the convenience channel according to Circana, a leading industry data aggregation firm, which adds up to about $221 million in sales dollars. In a mid-year 2023 report from Bump Williams Consulting, the 19.2-ounce can was the top growth contributor to incremental dollar sales in the single serve category (Brewbound, August 2023).

So how did we get here? The simple beer can — once disregarded as a sign of lower quality has now become the shining star of the craft beer industry. The concept of single serve, once touted as the beverage that you hide in a brown paper bag is now trending in every corner of the Off Premise market. Something in our consumer base has shifted and with that comes questions from smaller producers about whether or not they should jump on the trend wagon.

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Regulation Rollercoaster: Chasing compromise between small brewers and wholesalers

With almost 10,000 operating craft breweries in the United States vying for customer dollars and craft beer sales down about 2% coming out of 2023 (IWSR, January 2024), the need for regulatory reform for small brewers has become more important than ever. 
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Distribution Dilemma: Is It Worth the Risk?

Craft brewery expansion plans are not what they used to be. Traditional paths to profitability usually go something like this: open a taproom, start selling beer to a few neighboring businesses (if that’s legal in your state), buy a packaging line, grow your footprint locally, sign a distribution contract with a wholesaler, expand to new markets and enjoy copious amounts of revenue. But this isn’t 2013 anymore.

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Rough Draft: Challenges In On-Premise Craft Beer Sales

Amongst the revelry of craft beer fans that descended upon Denver in late September for the annual Great American Beer Festival, a smaller group of beer enthusiasts gathered at Cervantes Masterpiece in Five Points for the last Brewbound BrewTalks industry event of 2023. While GABF is mainly a consumer-facing event, there are a small number of industry insider, business-focused events that occur that same week and BrewTalks is one of them.

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All Grown Up | Craft Beer is Now a Mature Market

On August 10, 2023, the Brewers Association issued a press release summarizing the craft beer industry midyear update from the Chief Economist, Bart Watson, where he expressed that things are still not great for craft beer, but also not quite as bad as they have been.

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Strength In Numbers | Strategic Planning Holds A Spotlight At The Craft Brewers Conference

Number nerds unite! This was the call to action for many brewery owners, operators, and employees during the Brewers Association 2023 Craft Brewers Conference, which took place from May 7-10 at the Music City Center in Nashville, TN. So what’s the noise about numbers and why should the craft beer community even care?

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Together Is Not Always Better: How Consolidation In the Middle Tier Is Impacting The Future of Craft Beer Brands

For most craft breweries, the trajectory of brand growth follows a somewhat traditional path – starting with taproom sales, progressing to selling in the wholesale channel, and then alignment with a beer wholesaler to grow the distribution footprint. Sounds simple enough on paper, but if you drill down into the nuances of selling beer wholesale, things get complicated very quickly. The US is unlike any other country in the world when it comes to the three-tier alcohol distribution system. Some states do not allow suppliers to self-distribute (sell directly) their products to licensed retail accounts, yielding asinine practices like selling beer to yourself for your own taproom. Some states are also dubbed “franchise” law states where if your brand aligns with a distributor you must endure a contractual arrangement that makes changing distributor partners harder than selling beachfront property in Arizona. And we haven’t even begun to address the large big beer elephant in the room and how many large beer distribution houses are aligned with one of two big players in the US beer market. For many craft brands that are just getting started or fall into the category of small to medium-sized producers, strategizing how to enter the wholesale channel is a formidable challenge, including contending with a host of other legislative, litigious, and anti-competitive issues in the middle tier that have surfaced over the past few decades. As if growing craft beer producers didn’t have enough to contend with these days in the form of rising costs of goods, labor shortages, inflation, and the squeeze from alternative beverage choices in the marketplace, woes like wholesaler consolidation, unfair trade practices, and antiquated beverage alcohol regulations are making the middle tier the next big battleground for craft beer brands. 

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No Big Deal: Why Craft Brewery M&A’s Have Lost Their Shock Value

Goose Island, Bluepoint, Boulevard, Sweetwater, Founders, Wicked Weed, Anchor, Oskar Blues, Lagunitas, Dogfish Head, Ballast Point, Cigar City, Modern Times, Stone, Bell’s, and most recently Avery Brewing – not a comprehensive list by any means, but just a sampling of formerly independent craft breweries that merged with or were acquired by larger parent companies over roughly the past decade. The difference between now and then is that craft brewery M&A’s are just not that big of a deal anymore. Back then, craft beer drinkers and superfans would be up in arms over a buyout or partnership deal of any size – suggesting boycotts, bashing brands online, and protesting festivals where “sellout” breweries would be pouring their liquid. Today, that’s not quite the case, with deals like the Bell’s and New Belgium merger or the acquisition of Avery Brewing by import giant Mahou San Miguel barely sparking a peep of controversy online. So what’s changed – the craft beer fan or the business of craft beer?

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You Can’t Spell Union Without U and I

On January 17th, 2023, the nearly 100 current employees of Creature Comforts Brewing in Athens, GA filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize under a brand new independent labor banner — BUG or the Brewery Union of Georgia. This does not mean that Creature Comforts has officially unionized their labor force, as a formal election process amongst employees must take place to solidify the new structure and then head to the bargaining table, but BUG organizers are optimistic about the vote. The discussion about unionization began earlier last summer and progressed quickly as many employees cited feeling neglected, overburdened, and unsupported by upper management, who have been busy planning the expansion of a new Creature Comforts facility in Los Angeles. BUG also believes that unionization embraces Creature Comforts’ overarching company values such as ‘“existing to foster human connection” and “building a balanced team of authentic and professional individuals.” 

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The TTB Wants Your Feedback About Unfair Trade Practices

Back in July of 2021, the Biden Administration issued Executive Order 14036, addressing competition in the beer, wine and spirits industry. The goal of the executive order is to uncover the challenges that suppliers face in entering the industry. After an extensive request for information (RFI) period open to the general public and industry members alike, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), Federal Trade Commission, Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney General of the United States determined that unlawful trade practices need to be a more prominent focus for lawmakers if they want to level the playing field for new and existing beverage brands.

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The ROI of the Great American Beer Festival

The 40th anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival marks the first time the event has been held in person and open to the public since 2019. To say that brewers and craft beer fans are excited is an extreme understatement. While participation and attendance were limited this year due to renovations to the Colorado Convention Center, the exhibitor floor was still packed with over 200 suppliers and drew over 10,000 fans to the event.

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Is Craft Beer Recession-Proof?

Yes, but also no. How’s that for a definitive answer? The intricacies of why craft beer dances between recession-proof and recession-resistant are many, but the first step in answering this complex question is to analyze the underbelly of what a recession actually is, how it affects the alcohol industry overall, and what that means for craft brewery owners and operators. Taking a look at factors like consumer behavior, unemployment rates, gas prices, syndicated retail sales data, beer supply, and market seasonality all contribute to how craft beer will fare during times of economic duress. Earning its chops as a multi-billion dollar consumer packaged goods industry over the past decade, craft beer can simply not afford to overlook a downturned economy as something that will not affect bottom lines.

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The Craft Beer Industry Has A Labor Problem

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Mark Twain

For most craft beer industry workers, this couldn’t ring more true. The idea of turning a homebrewing hobby or a passion for craft beer into a flourishing career seems like a dream scenario. The way other people’s eyes light up when someone mentions they work in craft beer is priceless. Feeling like you have a job that others outside of the industry can only wildly dream about makes beer folks feel as though they have something really special, but are things really that great, or is the beer labor force being gaslit by the false pretense of job satisfaction, security and just plain fun? As the industry matures and evolves, being one of the “cool kids” in the beer industry isn’t all backslaps and beer shots, it’s become more about workers’ rights, workplace safety, and earning a living wage.

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Sold! Sapporo USA Buys Stone Brewing

Friday, June 24th, 2022 will forever go down in the craft beer history tomes as the day that the fiercely independent, “loud and proud” antithesis to “fizzy yellow beer,” Stone Brewing, was purchased in its entirety by the internationally famous for “fizzy yellow beer” conglomerate, Sapporo USA. As malt enthusiasts rose from their slumber and checked their social media feeds, widespread media coverage of the buyout hit the wires at about 3:00 am on this morning. For anyone who has followed the business side of the craft beer industry for the last couple of decades, this was no surprise.

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The BA Publishes the 2021 Craft Beer Industry Review

Every year, the Brewers Association publishes its Industry Review issue of The New Brewer magazine, which gives craft beer industry members a snapshot of how each brewery segment of the industry has performed over the past year in terms of production and sales levels. This edition never fails to disappoint with a plethora of juicy statistics for beer data nerds to chew on and brewery ownership to postulate about the future of the craft beer market landscape. This year was not without its share of surprises, with the likes of a non-alcoholic beer brand entering the mix and even more appearances by well-known breweries now functioning as “beverage” companies enjoying success with products that go beyond the typical ale or lager. And while that sexy 8% overall segment growth rate gets industry folks all excited, it’s not without some fine print. It’s one thing to take these rankings on the nose and pass judgment on where the craft beer industry is heading, but there are some really interesting finds in this data if you learn to read between the lines.

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The Return on Investment of CBC 2022

For a vast number of current and aspiring beer professionals, the annual Craft Brewers Conference hosted by the Brewers Association is THE go-to industry conference for all things beer-related. It’s four full days of seminars, workshops, and social networking events, plus a seemingly endless trade show floor ripe with vendors enthusiastically waiting to sell you everything from gaskets and exotic hops to insurance and glycol systems. Most attendees return home with swag bags full of branded goodies and heads full of ideas. But what’s the true return on investment (ROI) of attending the Craft Brewers Conference when it comes to growing the bottom line of your brewery business? If you or your team didn’t attend the conference, this will give you some insight into what was missed and for those that did attend, some ideas for how to revisit sessions and take advantage of all that was offered to help you optimize the business side of your brewery.

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