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

March 8, 2024 | Julie Rhodes

“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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