Seems I have been reading about the demise of craft beer since around 2015. So far, none of the prognosticators have been correct. Right now, for the past 2 or 3 years there has been a modest decline in craft sales, but it seems to be in line with a similar drop in macro beer sales. I think we have reached a plateau of sorts.
What I see is a normal business cycle that occurs in a mature market. I don't see craft beer ever going away or getting into trouble. What I do see, at least in my area is more and more craft breweries producing amazing beers. In any industry a maturing market leads to increased competition and margin pressure. This naturally culls out the enterprises that are unable to adapt or compete in that environment. It's never good to see an established business close but thats just how it goes.
I’m not worried. I think the craft beer industry will continue to spin pit new awesome beers, new beer styles, and new breweries There will, unfortunately, be those that go out of business due to mediocre beer and/or bad business models —-
Yea overall craft beer numbers are in decline over the last handful of years, but that's the case for every hospitality industry, and craft beer isn't a forever staple like Italian restaurants or sports bars, it's a niche of a niche. The period between like 2015-2020 was one everbody know to be of wild oversaturation, so if some breweries start to close it shouldn't be a shock. With that era as a standard anything will seem like a downturn in comparison, but those highs were never sustainable. From what I see, many of the breweries to close or suffer or totally pivoted are from the generation who came up before the pre-haze craze era boom, which can be a shame for your favorite local brewpub or New Belgium going from a paradigm-shifting brewery to banking it all on cartoon character artificial fruit juice IPA, but those breweries who closed or pivoted did so because they were more or less replaced by other breweries or influenced by trends that exist among beer drinkers, so it's not like this would lead to anything close to a contraction from the pre-2015ish era. Worst cast scenario you'll just have different local breweries, and at least in my area plenty of them brew way more than the standard IPA/BA stouts/kettle sour/etc. type stuff, so even that angle of "omgz I can't find anything but IPA" I don't really buy.
I thought that was what this ballerina appeared to be drinking from issue #2 * (art by Arnold Roth) but I guess not. Same issue - a parody of slick food magazines, featured a quart bottle of Rheingold Ale. (* Scans from my copy, but shoulda expected they'd be online and repeated...)
Huge new big money compound in Brooklyn will include winery, distillery, and cidery....but no brewery!? Red Hook Barrel Yard is Opening on the Brooklyn Waterfront this Spring https://share.google/Ac0lDG7Ki86VSa6DW
Maybe because they couldn’t buy the rights to Red Hook Brewing? In fairness I lost track of who owns the Red Hook brand years ago, but in my mind it should always remain a PNW-centric brand.
One thing I don't understand about the business world is that if the business/industry is not continuously growing, then it's dead. Is there honestly no world in which you can make a sustainable profit without growing? There's no craft beer apocalypse. We wouldn't be here if there was. Cheers!
