Game of Levers: Pull Wisely
Winter isn’t just coming for the Top 50 craft breweries and beyond, it’s already here. Keeping pace with the fast-changing demands of today’s customers is a complex game and the zombie breweries are making their way North to claim what they believe to be theirs. Alliances can be formed and chess moves remain in play, but each one comes at a toll that the brewery must understand and be willing to pay. How to innovate without cannibalizing? How to go deeper and expand distribution, without killing freshness? How to successfully build brands, while keeping up with the constant desire for new? What to do with a popular SKU that has little runway left to grow? To answer these questions and stay atop their throne, breweries must play the game of levers. And play it well.
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Thicc Margins
One of the many reasons we climbed so fast to 7,300+ breweries is because “the big guys” took too long to respond to IPA. By leaving the door wide open from 2011-2015, new breweries saw instant success on the back of that particular style and were afforded the cash flow to expand into some of the strong local/regional players we have today. While AB-Inbev bought Goose in 2011, IPA wasn’t made the priority until 2015, the same year that Lagunitas and Ballast Point were acquired by Heineken and Constellation. Once those and other transactions closed and updated strategies were put in motion, the industry would never quite be the same.
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The Fraudulent Influencer
Prior to working in beer and actively using social media, I was a forensic accountant at a consulting firm and held a designation called a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). To pass that exam, you have to memorize every known financial fraud scheme, how to detect it, and how to prevent it. The training teaches you how to identify red flags on a company’s financials, reports, & analysis, instilling a natural suspicion. This background is how I ended up working in Internal Audit and eventually running that department for Reyes Holdings. I mention this only to provide context to why this topic jumps out at me:
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Out of Code: Why Freshness Ain't Easy
I get a lot of questions about my path into the beer industry from folks interested in the same. Many of them work in Logistics, IT, or Data Analytics, so I often share information to get their wheels turning on how the two professions coincide and where their expertise may be able to add value to a brewery someday. I've been meaning to get this all written down and out of my head for a few years, so I thought I'd make a blog entry about it:
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Let'em Eat Cake
"Sour" beer is a difficult category to measure, which is why you don't hear a lot of statistics about it. When it comes to sales data tracked in major retailers, a significant portion of ''sours'' are incorrectly classified, or they cross over into another style and are housed there instead. In IRI, these crossovers include Seasonal, Special Release, Belgium Ale, IPA, etc., instead of the "Wild or Sour Ales" bucket. Lagunitas' Aunt Sally for example, falls under Seasonal. So a significant chunk of data gets lost, leaving you with a painful exercise to truly understand how well sour is actually selling in the US.
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Blame Instagram
Instagram has received a lot of well-deserved credit (and blame) for igniting the New England-style IPA trend, in part thanks to its bright, colorful, juice-like appearance that's typically accompanied by very attractive and 'gramable can art. We were brought up understanding that beer should be clear, but Instagram has been slaying the fundamentals of beer, one after another. We shouldn't be surprised, as Instagram has become a key source of advertisements, inspiration, and [gulp]...influence for all industries. We're watching a lot less TV these days, which is where we used to get our style and pop culture trends, whether intended or not.
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Scorching Hot 2019 Predictions
What better way to get back into the beer blogging spirit than with some 2019 predictions to kick off the year! I remain positive on the beer industry and its future, but "the pinch" happening right now as a result of 7,000+ breweries and a seemingly flat consumer base cannot be ignored. So while some of these predictions may have negative undertones, I remain excited about what we're going to see moving forward as the cream rises to the top. I invited some industry friends from around the country to contribute a prediction of their own. So thank you to Chris, Kenny, Kate, and Danny for letting me include yours. And here we go...
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