Be Afraid…Be Very afraid – Craft Beer is Not Going Away

They’re more scared than they’re letting on….And with all the data coming out lately, they damn well should be.

The bad news for Big Beer keeps coming -you’ve been reading it everywhere. Sales of craft beer continue to soar. According to the Boulder-based Brewers Association, sales in the first half of 2012 rose 14 percent over the same period in 2011. Production’s up by 12 percent! Guest Metrics, a proprietary database that tracks transactions from restaurants and bars has just released a report that reveals that “Anheuser-Busch InBev, MillerCoors, and Heineken USA all lost share to craft beers in on-premise during 2012.” That’s a two share on-premise loss to craft beer. Big beer can’t be loving that!

They’re more scared than they’re letting on…..and they should be.

Any way you look at it, Big Beer is losing their hold on the industry. They’ve watched their once commanding market share slowly erode, losing out to tiny craft brewers, who are in it for the art as well as for the commerce. At first they most likely adopted lives of corporate denial – they figured that if they ignored these petulant upstarts, maybe they’d just go away…That didn’t happen.

For a while Big Beer probably hoped that craft beer would show itself to be a fad – (people will lose interest eventually – they’ll come back to us.)… But that didn’t happen either.

Arrogance might have played a part early on. Maybe, these global giants thought that they were so powerful and so savvy that they could put an end to this fledgling industry by sheer force of will. (Don’t you realize who you’re playing with kids? You’re way out of your league. We own distribution and you’ll never be part of the club – Best you go home before you hurt yourselves.)

But the small craft beer brewers paid little attention to the big boys and they certainly didn’t flinch. They were too busy doing something that they loved – learning and growing – getting better day by day. And eventually they attracted an army of believers who were passionate about this new kind of beer and a movement was born.

Big beer would reject that they’d ever try to deceive the consumer into thinking that they are craft beer too – (Craft vs. Crafty anyone?) They’d vehemently refute accusations that they were trying to co-opt the craft beer industry in any way.

Big beer might deny that they are threatened by craft beer’s growing influence and popularity. (After all, they’re still hugely dominant and they still command a massive market share!) But their actions of late speak otherwise…

Like we’ve said, they’re more scared than they’re letting on…..and they should be.

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