What's Working? Part 2

What’s working well out there in the beer and greater beverage space? I asked the Beer Crunchers community to share recent examples of wins they’ve encountered and the feedback is a testament to the power of collaboration and resilience. Today’s topics cover a wide range, including calculating the value of craft, betting on the core, investing in new categories, understanding co-packing relationships, and long term content planning. Let’s get the gears turning, spark a new idea, and fuel some newfound motivation.

Josh McJannett, Co-Founder of Dominion City Brewing Co. (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

Hammering our value proposition — it's tough out there, especially in restaurants. We've seen craft-focused bar and restaurant closures pick up as recently as the last two weeks. Others who seemed committed to making quality local indie beer a priority seem to be wavering; one multi-location account let us know this week that they took a macro deal and tore out half their craft taps. They came demanding keg deals and kickbacks for any brand that wanted to stay on the few remaining taps.

It remains to be seen whether it will be enough, but we've been refining our unique value proposition and have landed on the fact that we offer a high rate of sale and greater profit per pour than our peers. We've made up the attachment below in a bid to educate our customers about the pricing elasticity they get with our brand (and about the true cost of their macro options once all the freebies and kickbacks are counted.) It's made the difference in keeping our business with several accounts to date and we hope to use it as part of our pitch to accounts that might not look craft-accessible. So both a shield and sword strategy.

Doug Response: I am marking out hard over this one. We’ve experienced similar, but different challenges after entering the Premium Lager space. When you begin selling a style with more competitive pricing that other styles, by default many will still charge the same higher price. As a result, we’ve added space to our Sell Sheets with a template to show the math, but do it by hand with the buyer to show the value.

Jason Klein, Co-Founder of Spiteful Brewing (Chicago, IL)