Samuel Adams Beer May Show Best Growth In 5 Years

In the midst of the coronavirus, Boston Beer’s flagship Samuel Adams brand is surging, pushing sales into positive territory for the first time in years. And ironically it is likely that COVID-19 is the primary reason for the beer brand’s newfound life.

The second largest craft brewer in the country, Samuel Adams has seen itsbeer fortunes decline over the last decade. Besieged by new and uber-local brewing upstarts, the heritage brewer is saddled with an enormous 50 state distribution network at a time when consumers were migrating away from the more national craft beer brands.

In fact Boston Beer’s continuing sales growth in recent years can be credited almost entirely to the emergence of hard seltzer segment in the US and the publically held company’s Truly Hard Seltzer brand.

But the coronavirus has temporarily rearranged the craft beer landscape. Bars, brewpubs and taprooms are now largely shuttered, effectively bringing on-premise sales to a standstill.

And with a nation preparing for what might be a prolonged period of sheltering-in-place, retail beer sales showed record-breaking growth. And one of the brands that benefitted most from the pre-shelter-in-place surge-shopping that almost wiped out the nation’s toilet paper supply, was Samuel Adams, craft beer’s most widely-distributed brand.

Data from industry analysts at IRI showed that over the four-week period ending March 22, sales of Samuel Adams Boston Lager surged 22.3% from the same period last year, with sales up 2.3% year to date.

Not surprisingly due to the pandemic all off-premise craft beer sales grew over that same period with retailers like package goods stores and supermarkets reporting a 15.2% increase in dollar sales.

As Motley Fool’s financial beer analyst Rich Duprey correctly noted Samuel Adams wasn’t the only brewery that benefited from the last minute shelter-in-place retail surge…

“Other brands besides Samuel Adams have also seen their sales prospects reverse course over the past month.”

“ Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is up nearly 11% and New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale has risen almost 13%, but their year-to-date sales remain in negative territory, which is why Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams performance is all the more noteworthy>”

But Duprey also warns of some caveats that accompany Samuel Adam’s reversal of fortunes…

“The IRI data is only measuring off-package premise sales. It doesn’t take into consideration restaurant and bar sales, which were among the first casualties of the pandemic as they were the first establishments forced to shut down to help control the spread of COVID-19.”

“The data is also measuring dollar sales, not volume sales, so pricing will play a more important role than production.”