With dozens of breweries now producing more than 100,000 barrels per year and employing dozens if not hundreds of employees, we’re on the precipice of a new era of competitiveness.
From the initial stages of business planning onward, brewery owners are forced to make difficult decisions that affect the direction of their business. Successfully navigating these choices relies upon having a clearly defined vision and strategy.
But what’s driving us nuts lately are those who expect your support simply because they’re “craft” and “local.” But how many local brewers actually support their locale?
On a recent visit to the Dogfish Head brewpub, the BeerAdvocate team got to talk shop with Calagione. The consensus? “Ask not what beer can do for you, but what you can do for beer.”
American craft brewers remind me of students just completing their sophomore years of college. Having secured their footing, they understand how things work, but remain unsure of what their futures hold; excited to experience the wider world, but still nervous about making their mark.
These are good times for craft brewers, to be sure. But history should caution and guide those who now seek to enter this already crowded and competitive marketplace.
Craft beer will never be the same again, so enjoy this golden era. Yet, even with the inevitable advance of major change, one thing remains clear: Great, local craft beer isn’t going anywhere.
Let’s face it: Beer is business. And those who can’t separate the beer from the business will be in for a very rude awakening in upcoming years, as the industry continues to mature and the natural evolution of business comes into play.
It’s our duty as BeerAdvocates to criticize the entire beer industry, not just the mass-producers of the world, and anyone who claims to care about the beer industry should be doing the same.
Some of the world’s largest brewery companies appear relaxed about their falling sales in established markets because of increasing sales in emerging ones. The trifling fact that even big brands are showing signs of implosion is an inconvenient truth, best left unmentioned. It is just “fluctuations.”
Many great breweries started on an extremely small scale, and there are many nanos that make quality beers. But as with many homebrews, there is no replacing professionally brewed beers.
Burger King to serve beer at new concept; the fight for world’s strongest beer continues; F.X. Matt Brewing rescues Flying Bison; and British pubs to get new, safer glasses.
The complaints and expectations about beer are reaching whole new levels. And the snobbery and superiority factors among craft beer lovers over macro drinkers are becoming shameful and embarrassing.
The phrase “recession proof” is a heavy one, but it’s been following beer and the beer industry around for generations. The only problem with this is that the beer industry isn’t buying it.
It’s pretty amazing these days to see how far women have come in the “male dominated” beer industry. There are more female brewers, homebrewers, sales people and overall fans of beer today than ever before.
