The Impossible Spring Seasonal
Once a brewery establishes it’s horses that can lead the portfolio on a year-round basis, seasonal beers are the next frontier to conquer. With Summer being the glorious peak for beer sales, there’s a long list of fitting style choices and a chance to do serious volume thanks to the friendly weather. Fall is probably the best time to be a beer fan offering darker styles a chance to shine alongside Oktoberfest celebrations, the convergence of the 4 major sports, and holidays galore. As we turn to Winter, volume runs into its biggest challenges of the year, but the proper styles for the season are well understood. And then there’s the impossible Spring seasonal…
Seasonal Mechanics
Once a brewery reaches the point of getting placements in chain stores, the stakes rise and each beer in their seasonal “program” becomes linked. “Seasonal” typically represents one SKU, meaning one slot on the shelf, and the brewery rotates the beers throughout the year. Each release uses the same barcode so they scan on the register not as “Oktoberfest” for example, but as “Seasonal” since the computer doesn’t know (or care) which release it is. The pressure is then on the brewery to produce the right amount of each seasonal so that they naturally cycle through to consumers before the season changes. Overshoot your forecast and watch the wrong beers lingering on the shelf with no demand outside the season and risk your shelf opportunity getting deleted due to poor performance.
“Spring” Styles
As tough as Winter can be on the program, expectations are low which takes some pressure off. Spring is where the biggest risks takes place and the most damage can be done. In parts of the country who experience the seasons, the unpredictable back-and-forth from cold, to rain, to warm makes pairing styles with the weather an impossible exercise. I half-joked on Twitter that rather than overthinking it, breweries might as well just brew the styles of beer that they want to brew, then slap the word “Spring” in the beer or style name.
I don’t really believe there’s a game changing style to capitalize on, so why not use Spring as the excuse to lean back into the old brewer line “we brew what we want to drink.” The addition of “Spring” to the label triggers the consumer to think that this is the beer of right now. The styles most fittingly being used to implement this strategy include Bocks, Saisons, Biere de Gardes, Lagers, and Kölsch.
For breweries using seasonal releases as true one-offs, who are not beholden to a rotating program built for big box stores, it’s a smart strategy. When battling in the chain world where “Seasonal” is the #2 selling category in craft, you have to be extra careful not to get…
Wrecked By Kölsch
In 2020 at Revolution, we felt that it was time for our longtime draft-only Kölsch named “Ghost Ride” to get upgraded into our seasonal program. When on draft, the beer would always be one of, if not THE top selling beer at our two locations. The logic seemed sound as we were looking for a style that could provide a buffer between Winter and Summer Ale season, which really hits its prime in June & July. Kölsch is a very likable style and one that you can certainly enjoy a couple of in a sitting. The recipe costs easily met the criteria for our seasonal program, which much all be the same price since they utilize the same barcode. But there was (at least) one problem…
While our most engaged fans were praising the launch of Ghost Ride cans and complimentary of the liquid, the beer sat…and sat. I could blame this on COVID and use cliches like “beer fans were looking to avoid risky purchases and look for ‘comfort beers’”, but I don’t really believe in any of that. With shortages in the off-premise, everything seemed to be moving well, except Ghost Ride. I don’t think nearly enough people at the grocery store shopper level knew what a Kölsch is, in part due to its foreign name. As a result, our Summer seasonal was blocked on the shelf. It couldn’t get placed until our Spring Seasonal finally sold through, shortening our Summer window to capitalize with our seasonal work horse, Sun Crusher. Seasonal was our worst performing SKU that year.
Creepin’ These Days
So where are we in 2023? We’ve learned our lesson and are done trying to get cute with a Spring Seasonal, feeling that there’s more to lose by getting it wrong, than gain by getting it right. We are extra careful not to overproduce our Winter seasonal, then just let our Sun Crusher creep it’s way up to Spring, ensuring it’s penetrated its shelf placements by the time the sun is consistently shining. Large-ish breweries like us who give such high priority to seasonals have to face the realities of these style education hurdles and limitations. This opens the door for smaller breweries, or just smaller one-off series, to champion these more niche styles where larger breweries cannot compete.
