Not having much knowledge of the industry, do any brewers rotate distribution regions of their beers whether seasonal or annual changes? For example, either sell all of their beers for a year period in one region of US then, next year sell them only in a whole different region? Or sell only some of their beers in one region and others in another region then switch them up at some point in time (annual)? I just thought this would be a possible business strategy to keep the fickle craft beer drinkers from getting bored with a certain brewers year round/staple beers, better ensure freshness on shelves, while not having to expand operations/financial risks involved to produce more volume for larger distrobution area.
To put it another way, would it make any more sense for a brewery instead of doing an annual special release beer to a full US/world wide distribution to instead brew a particular special release beer all year around but change regions of distribution each season? The brewery can commit equipment to the one beer all the time without having to change up brewing equipment and such. Is there no sense to doing that or does that strategy have potential?
I don't think Stone rotates distribution region of Enjoy By's. They pump them out every 3 months then send to everywhere they plan to distribute it I think.
No, I agree. Stone's Enjoy By is very similar to what the OP describes... each Enjoy By goes to a different set of markets... aka rotating distribution for it...
Everybody gets some Enjoy By during the year at this point but right now I think the northeast is getting the current iteration of it.
Gandhi Bot was in RI two summers ago, but it wasn't here this past summer (as far as I know, perhaps it was and I was too slow). In the meantime, I have seen Sea Hag and Neighbor of the Beast on occasion.
Whatever sells the slowest in one region is collected by the wholesalers for return to the brewery and later re-distributed when the brewery enters a new region or market. It's called: "rotating the furniture." (wink, wink )
Yeah I guess Enjoy By does do exactly what I was thinking about. Well I live in MD and said they should have arrived on 1/15, so I need to start looking around. I've never seen previously releases in bottle shops in my distribution area.
