Storm Warnings – Craft Beer Looks To Turbulent Times

breweries, Storm Warnings – Craft Beer Looks To Turbulent Times

2018 is already shaping up to be a tumultuous period for the craft beer biz (and beer in general) and unfortunately things are only accelerating…

What with more breweries online than ever before, and craft beer’s seemingly unstoppable double-digit growth having slowed to 5 percent, industry watchers are now wondering if (or when) the industry might be reaching the dreaded saturation point and recent events only add fuel to that speculative fire.

breweries, Storm Warnings – Craft Beer Looks To Turbulent TimesAs Pete Rowe astutely reflected numbers don’t lie. The overall beer market in the US has fallen by 1%. And beer majors, both craft and not, are under assault.

Last Week Molson Coors reported its sales decreased for the fourth straight quarter, with Coors Light’s decline contributing to the slump.

And AB InBev recently reported that US revenues had dropped 3.1% in the second quarter, with its two US icons, Budweiser and Bud Light, continuing to lose market share.

And although craft beer has never been more popular than ever, it’s no longer putting up double digit growth numbers. 13 out of every 100 beers sold is brewed by a small and independent brewer, but is that even sustainable?

Craft beer’s leading brands appear the most vulnerable in today’s more competitive climate… Rowe explains that “of the nation’s five largest craft breweries, four saw sales drop between 2016 and 2017, while one merely matched that previous year’s figure.”

breweries, Storm Warnings – Craft Beer Looks To Turbulent TimesD.G Yuengling & Sons (which in spite of the Brewer’s Association’s designation we’d argue isn’t even a craft brand) dropped 2 percent; Boston Beer, 14 percent; Sierra Nevada, 8 percent. New Belgium on the other hand held steady but Spoetzel (again not a craft brand as far as we’re concerned) fell 3 percent.

Other large craft breweries like Stone, who was up by 15% in 2017 and Dogfish Head are for now navigating these increasingly turbulent waters ably…But with more 6500 breweries currently online in the US, and an ongoing migration away from larger more national craft beer brands to the new and uber-local breweries, who knows how long that will last?

So as we’ve been suggesting for a while now…best fasten your seat belts, because there are storms on beer’s horizon and 2018 is only going to get more turbulent….

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