Agreed 100%. This is the problem with most breweries, especially small ones that self-distribute. They look at skipping the middlemen as a portal to being able to survive, not as a reason to make their product more affordable, as most small breweries wouldn't be solvent financially without that significant cost v. price difference that they take advantage of with on-premise sales.
Or brewery owners who are barely scraping by in an industry that is a sinking ship and bleeding red in every possible way should cut their margins because people want to pay less for their beer and times are hard and thats the right thing to do or something
If your business couldn't make it with normal margins, i.e. 3-tiered system margins, why would you have entered into the industry in the first place? Or something.
I have to wonder if we're not seeing a Pennsylvania perspective on distribution here. I don't feel that most of the smaller, self distributing breweries in my area are gouging their customers in any way. You can choose to believe me or not, but I'm still going to buy from my fave because they brew damn good beer.
Hubris last 15-20 years it has become dangerously affordable and easy to take your pension or equity in your house to build a brewery strong economy led to banks making loans they never should have made hedge funds and money people thought beer was an amazing new revenue stream and falsely inflated perceived brewery values, see $1B for ballast point 80% have no idea how to be professional brewers and 90% of those have even less clue on how to run a business so failure is inevitable people are vane and entitled have dozens more but heading to the beach to enjoy my veterans day thank you all for your service
So, you're in favor of a middleman getting their cut. I buy CDs from artists at the shows, or right from their website, so that they get the full amount I pay. I'll grab a sixer when I'm getting groceries, but I prefer to grab the same sixer at the brewery, even if it is the same price.
Hell yes. Sierra Nevada has somehow become one of the only large, privately-owned craft Brewers to retain so much culture and high quality product while still being efficient and geared toward sustainability. When you go to the Mills River Taproom, not only is the beer and food great, but the staff are genuinely happy to be there to provide you with good service and they've got everything dialed in to give everyone a great experience. I'm sure some folks may leave unhappy every so often if they're super slammed, but every experience I've had there has been A+.
Agreed. Unfortunately, it's not. At least not where I live. I would add that it's the same with wine. Invariably you're going to pay top dollar at the winery... almost any place else will sell the same wine for the same price as the winery or less.
Uh huh. That is precisely it. Sure. I honestly don't think you understand this as much as your word count is implying.
I'm from Illinois, and I remember how New Glarus got yanked around enough to decide to never play by that 3 tier game with their beer, and they just pissed away $60m on a new brewery expansion. Which will continue to keep their beer inside the state of Wisconsin.
Bell's went through a similar situation with distros in Illinois and pulled their beers for a while. IIRC it took court intervention to free up Bell's from underhanded distributor control.
If you leave that brewery not totally excited about craft beer, there's something seriously wrong with you.
If you self distribute to places in your town you'd be nuts to undercut the price that the stores charge for to-go beers. You might lose a customer. I'm guessing this may not be so true for keg customers, but your tap prices likely shouldn't be too far different from the bar/restaurants.
Absolutely not. I wish the system was different. However, it is not. The reality of beer distribution is that the price increase that is inherent in the 3-tiered system creates expectation. It creates an acceptable range of beer pricing in any given area. The problem, as I see it, is when business owners see that pricing as a reason to set their prices commensurately when they are not involved in that system via self-distribution. This, again maybe just to me, is greed, not fair play. A possible analogue is when brewery or bar owners look at pricing in another area and adjust their pricing to match it, not because they had an increase in overhead, but because they know that if enough people do it in their locale, that it will eventually become acceptable. All this does is leads to ever increasing pricing with little to no benefit to the consumer. That's quite possible. Not probable, mind you, but possible. Distributors, like any other business, is full of unfair and illegal practices. Pay to Play being a big one. It's a reason to start a more friendly distribution business, as has been done in many states, not to eschew the process altogether.
I wouldn’t be anything lower for bottles/cans but could probably be 50 cents lower for tap beers. But the tap beers could be a money maker because your brewery taproom is likely a destination business to your customers and you can get away with charging more because of the 'charming' environment. Take the opportunity to increase your profits.
