You've Got Beermail 📬 10/29/23
It’s time to open up the comments and DMs for a new recurring mailbag segment featuring questions that come in through Substack (1st priority), E-mail, Instagram, TikTok, and perhaps even “X”. If you submitted a question that didn’t make the cut for this first mailbag, it should still be in the queue for future rounds. Keep’em coming and without further ado…
Are Chicago craft buyers different from buyers in other well known beer cities? Or is a big beer city craft buyer largely indistinguishable from another? Interested in anything that comes to mind, but will add it seems like we really don’t like bitter beer as much as elsewhere. (@colintj on X)
Chicago craft beers fans are indeed different that many other markets, which all comes down to local influence and their timing of adoption. Chicago had Goose Island in the 1990s and 2000s putting a Herculean effort into diversity of beer styles and the education around them, even having an “MBA” program (Beer Appreciation) to encourage this well-roundedness. Three Floyds came next, and in addition to many other styles, timed the wheat beer boom perfectly with Gumballhead in an otherwise Blue Moon dominated market in the mid-late 2000s.
Metropolitan launched in 2009, championing lager and kölsch, and even Half Acre was known originally for Gossamer (Golden Ale) and Over Ale (Brown Ale) before Daisy Cutter took the world by storm. And when Revolution opened it’s doors in 2010, there were no IPAs on tap. So while the IPA boom hit Chicago hard like everywhere else, Chicago had more early adopters than most who were influenced by non-IPA styles and still to this day put them ahead of IPA. A high percentage of Chicago and Chicagoland breweries have a unique and specific point of view that is less IPA dominant compared to markets whose craft beer scene developed post-2013.
Will beer prices ever go down? Will we pay $13.99 for a six-pack of Anti-Hero in 2 years? (@beergezus on Instagram)
I don’t think we’ll ever experience deflationary pricing, so no I don’t think Anti-Hero will ever go down, aside from when stores put it on sale. Anti-Hero tends to have an every day price of $11.99 at chains these days. That was $9.99 when it debuted in cans in 2012 and stayed there all the way until about 2019 when we needed to get it up to $10.99. The pandemic related inflation pushed it up to $11.99 as us, our distributors, and our retailers needed more margin to work on to help combat our mutual rising costs. If you look at inflation from 2012 to 2023, you should find that a 20% rise in that time frame is actually very reasonable.
One thing to take note of though is that while $11.99 may be the new $9.99 with national or regional 6-packs, most are still trying to keep those 12-packs at the magical sub-$20 price, making the value proposition even stronger for bigger pack sizes. Watch for the National and Regional brewers to see declines in 6-pack momentum in exchange for explosive 12-pack trends. Less margin and more volume, which is a trade-off that the “big guys” are usually content with.
When should the brand calendar be done for the following year? How many times can it change? Is a revision or two a good sign? (@wadebeg on Instagram)
At the Craft Brewers conference in 2018, Firestone Walker’s co-founder David Walker said that if you aren’t working on next year in May, you’re already behind. That shook a lot of people in the room, but rang true at the same time. If a brewery relies on any chain business, they need to be pitching new brands in late Summer if they hope to see them on the store shelves by the following March during Spring resets. Working on that new liquid should be happening in the Winter and Spring, so that all the artwork, supporting graphics, and ideally sample liquid can be shared in those presentations which tend to begin around August (give or take).
At the same time, there’s nothing “less craft” than telling your people in May that this is all that we’re doing the following year, meaning that any new ideas will have to wait a minimum of 18 months to ever see the light of day. This is where taproom exclusives and small batch releases come into play and where I recommend that breweries intentionally leave slots for new ideas or collaborations. Sharing these holes proactively with the team along with any accompanying goals signals to the team that they should never take the foot off the gas with innovation, but gives them a starting point for where to focus their ideas.
From an on-premise perspective, how do breweries best attract customers in todays market? We see different segments tending to stick to their mainstay styles, or going for the 'hot new thing'. But, is there a methodology to help sway customers towards specific beers, styles, or breweries? (@matts_beer_adventures on Instagram)
I could go a few different directions with this question, depending on how long of a time horizon or budget I have to see the impact. A more short term strategy that doesn’t involve too much cost, more so time, is bartender education. Those efforts should include hosting key accounts at the brewery to see where the beer is made, go on a tour, and meeting the people actually making it. By going the extra mile to ensure that the bartenders selling and serving your beer have all the information on its backstory, accurate descriptors, and characteristics of the customer most likely to enjoy it, the more confidence they’ll have recommending it to their patrons and the more often it’s likely to get suggested. That deeper knowledge will lead to more enthusiasm in the on-premise, more value provided to customers, and potentially better tips for the bartender due to the enhanced connection and conversation that can be offered to patrons.
Comment below with any feedback on these topics, or questions you’d like to see answered in a future mailbag 📬 . You can also e-mail me at doug@beercrunchers.com anytime 🍻