Expanded Distro A Bad Thing For The Movement?

Breweries from abroad? Written like a true New Yorker. Are you in the boroughs?
But to answer your question, I don't want every brewery to be available in my area. It takes the fun out of asking friends and family who travel to pick up something for me and takes the adventure out of beer hunting when I travel. I also like the idea of being able to get beers locally that are not available everywhere and provided they produce a good product, I like to support local breweries. Bottom line - I don't need instant gratification now for every beer I read about. I can wait.

 

My view from working in a liquor store for a couple years is this, the market has room for X amount of large breweries with full national distribution, it then room has X amount of regional breweries, and then to state wide and down to locals.

This in my opinion is how things will shape out in the next 10 years as the people drinking high quality craft beer goes up. The national battle will be the most observed by on lookers and will probably be the most interesting. keeping the beers fresh and up to date with the trends will be the biggest battle and some companies will slip and fall and some will grow with the expanded distribution, more beer means more cost, meaning sales can not decline. To answer the major question, the market will never be to the point where every single beer will be on every single shelf the market will never support that, so you will always have people hunting for beer or trading.

As for enthusiasm I think the market has its max but its not going to be seen in the next 10-20 years.

 

"im sure the day is coming where almost all breweries are attainable by almost everyone in the country."

Larger breweries maybe, but some of the biggest do not get to the rest of the country. Bells is not on the west coast yet. Firestone Walker is not where I live, and I wish they were. Founders is in more states than Bells, even though they are smaller, and that is only about half the states. Kuhnhenn is expanding production, but in reality they are moving from miniscule to small, but they already send some stuff to NYC. Russian River? Only if Vinnie decides on taking on big debt, which is not his style.

I do like the diversity of breweries, beers and styles one finds as they travel around the country.

Of course, trading makes the quote above possible today.

 

The weak links in distribution are the wholesalers who sit on certain beers until the prior release/seasonal is gone & or the retailers who won't mark down old crap. Oklahoma/Arkansas seems to draw a lot of d or c list breweries (Cisco,Liljah & SouthHampton) who make a nice initial foray in to the market & then their stuff just languishes on the shelf... Likewise Capital outta Wisconsin makes some good beers, they just don't sell any of those here.
The only good point to our ******ed laws/rules about getting beers listed in state; it has allowed a few promising new breweries some initial traction, since there are less brands to compete against...

 

Close enough. Good to know my spidey-sense is still working though.

 

The problems I see with widespread expansion of distro are:

1. Stores still only have so much shelf space, so they aren't going to carry everything. It will all come down to which regional/local distributors they want to do business with and what those distributors carry.
2. (and this can be directly related to one) Freshness is going to take a hit. There's no avoiding it. Sure, there are some hyper-popular beers that will sell quickly, but the wider the selection, the more beer is inevitably going to sit on shelves. While there are certainly beers I'd love to have regularly available (or even get to try once, for that matter), I don't want to do it at the expense of quality. And speaking of expense, I have trouble keeping up with my buying habits as they are. Double my options and I'm living in a refrigerator box by April (drinking warm beer).

 

Consider how 'loyal' most craft drinkers are. Brewers don't make a lot of money off those among us who are constantly trying new beers, and never sticking with one or two and frequently buying them, and never turning away from it (like your uncle, the one who's had a fridge full of Miller High Life in his garage since before you can remember). Just consider what this says about how far craft brewers (*all* craft brewers) can take their product. Some will find great success, and then lose favor among the snobs. Others will never get huge, but will maintain a steady fanbase. And all points in between. There will always be diversity - in fact, there will be more diversity in the future - which is both good and bad to some but not all craft brewers and mega-brands alike.

 

IF every 1 distro here I would try to try them all. Now the question is if that could happen would it over flow the market? I have no idea. then the question is do we get all of what they make, or bottle/can. most of the time here we still do not get every beer. but whales(sic) would take a hit I bet.

 

sadly though if you live where there is no local, or the locals are so poor compared to the rest. Then it sucks to be in that area. demand exceeds supply.

 

Great!

I think it is great that there is greater distribution because it will increase competition and over time (hopefully) it will also mean that the better beers have a broader presence. It is the biggest thing I'm cheering for to realistically counteract the locavorism movement that is spreading so much, because often the local breweries aren't very good. Try that local IPA against Founder's, or Odell, or Firestone Walker, or Stone, or Russian River.

Increased distribution helps more people to find what tastes best.

Drink what tastes best, regardless of where it came from!

 

yea if every beer was everywhere, not possible but if it was many WOULD die overnight. IMHO.

 

I'll be honest, I hate the fact Surly is going to begin distro out of state soon to Chicago and when the new brewery opens, most likely other states because I like having Surly in MN and no where else. On the flip side, the distro will be great for Surly and grow their fan base. Double edge sword.

 

I can dig honestly but WHY does it bug yea?

 

No, I don't think so. It will only help the movement as BMC lose shelf space and craft beers takes over. This is a very good thing in the long run. I'd love to see more European beers here as well. It's good for our country's culture too.

 

It results in a lot of stale out of area beer and good local breweries/brands that get shutout of local stores. Due to years of not having really strong craftbreweries in the area and being a target market by any brewery looking to hit the craftbeer lottery by expansion or needing to dump excess stock quickly, it has created a ticker culture - so beers get noticed when they first come to the market, sell out fast, then the next delivery sits around getting dusty until it is replaced by the next new brewery of the day. Not really sustainable long term unless a brewery is serious about maintaining sales with in area representatives.

 

It's the idea that no one else can get Surly outside MN without trading or people driving through picking it up for friends and the trades will diminish on behalf of the MN people who really rely on Surly to get other beers.

 

Prices may not have "gone down", but you can almost certainly bet that increased competition has kept them from increasing faster, at least among the larger regional or "almost national" brands. For example, Widmer, Sierra Nevada, and Deschutes are pretty much the "Big 3" that you'll find in every grocery or convenience store in this area, so they tend to act as anchors because breweries and distributors know that if you want volume you have to compete with them on pricing.

Looking back through our POS system I was able to find the prices we paid for those brands in 2007 (which is as far back as our database goes), and all 3 of them have increased by 15.5% in the last 6 years. This amounts to 2.58% per year, which means their prices have increased at (or slightly below) the inflation rate for the same time period.

 

Patience, grasshopper. We'll start seeing price reductions around the 4,000-brewery mark.

Seriously though, I don't have any facts at my disposal, but I'd guess that beers from the most widely distributed craft breweries (SN, BBC, New Belgium, Stone) have probably had a below-average increase over the long term. They've probably kept right in line with inflation or even dropped a little (relative to inflation) over the last 20 years.

 

Yes. I'm at ground zero in Boston (aka the craft beer dumping ground). Tons of overpriced, stale beer from afar at stores around here.