Sobering Article

[dhempy]

If you're a pro-brewer (or looking to become one) this might be sobering.

Dan

[BrewMasterBrad]

That's why so many new breweries are not relying on distribution for sales. Direct sales in the tasting room are the way to go. Stay local.

[bwarbiany]

Yep. I think the long term outlook for craft beer is great. But it's grown too fast, by people chasing trends instead of focusing on quality control, and eventually there will be a correction. For example, when I did a beer crawl in SD a few weeks ago, my fellow electrical engineer and Purdue buddy wanted to go to "Kilowatt Brewing" just based on the name. The beer was terrible. We left after one beer (some people didn't even finish theirs) and because several of us were Uber-ing around, the ladies drove 0.6 miles to Societe well the men simply made the walk. When a market is so saturated as SD that you can walk from brewery to brewery, people who don't make good beer are going to go away. There are too many of those today.

And I agree with Nixon. There are 4,000 breweries in the US and somewhere around 8,000 wineries. Why can the country support all those wineries and yet I'm predicting a correction? Because most of those wineries are boutique brands that "nobody" has ever heard of, whereas too many of those breweries want to be the next Stone or Ballast Point.

I think the US market will eventually support well beyond 8,000 breweries. But only if those breweries limit themselves to a neighborhood brewery "lifestyle business" mindset, and not all try to compete with each other to be on supermarket store shelves. There aren't enough stores to shelve all those beers.

[Maltose Parrot]

Something to be said about not distributing. There's more profit from selling a barrel of beer in a tasting room than in selling it to a distributor.