SO…within the past couple of months, some breweries have failed and some have made some drastic decisions, spurred along by the well-established New Reality of post-pandemic America. Yes, certainly Covid was exactly like a nuclear warhead, planted within an earth fault, exploding and wrecking shit in every direction. MANY business of all types closed the doors for good and some of those – actually a reasonably small number – were breweries. And of course, I read this morning that reaction to this latest couple of Unthinkable Events – The brilliant Lost Abbey scaling back, moving, and curtailing distribution to California only and Anchor Brewing cancelling their iconic Christmas Ale and similarly limiting distribution – constitute Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling and that “everything’s Changing!!“.
And that part, certainly, is true…but not for the reasons given.
Here’s my take and you are not only allowed but in fact encouraged to disagree, if you like.
I’m pretty sure I’m right but you’re under no obligation to think so.
Here’s what’s happening:
Absolutely Covid changed the paradigm – ALL the paradigms, in fact – and took many things that would eventually happen, anyway, and fed them a huge dose of amphetamines.
But Covid, the (literally) planetary scale event it was, has obscured a lot of factors standing in its shadow…factors which were coming naturally but much farther down the road. Maybe Number One of these is just simply the sheer numbers of breweries we now have in the US. Anchor is obviously an outlier, as it’s been in business since 1896, where every other American craft brewery is less than fifty years old. But back when most of the nation’s larger craft breweries began – the Deschutes and Stone and Boston Beer and Rogue and Dogfish and all those OG producers – there were far less than 200 craft breweries in existence. The names of these breweries were legendary. When I drove out from NC to Seattle, in 1991, I stopped for dinner in Laramie, Wyoming, at a small café and a waitress walked by carrying a tray with a tall, glistening bottle of Rogue Shakespeare Stout on it. I was mesmerized. It was like finding a unicorn. But in the next few weeks, I saw ALL those mentioned and many, many more. But in total, even in the most comprehensive beer shops in Western Washington, there were maybe forty brands represented.
Today, there are almost 10,000 in this country and that is not to even mention a vast number of imported beers from small producers. And store shelves, in order to even be a credible shop where beer geeks would set foot in, will need 200-300 different brands, at a minimum, on display. Total Wine advertises 2,500 beers in stock at any given time and that’s somewhat legit. That is the current scale of the competition and, even if they think they don’t, all businesses do compete.
And an increasing number of those beers are made with fifty or a hundred miles of that store.
IN PART, actions like those taken by Lost Abbey and Anchor are driven by radically changed economic realities. But also in significant part, they are the result of a simple, natural, and ultimately desirable evolution away from a beer culture focused on a relatively small number of celebrated brands and onward to one of the cornerstone aspirations of most of us: Local. Eat Local. Buy Local. Vacation Local…
Drink Local.
The bedrock upon which American commerce rests is not and cannot be a retail marketplace based on Costcos and Amazons and Home Depots and Subways and the other mega-business name brands that sprawl across America like kudzu.
The recovery from the 2008 recession was driven, in large part, by a wave of determined (and some said blind) entrepreneurship and optimism. Small businesses flourished as inflation forced consumers away from always escalating prices in the mainstream, gas cost more, and wages lagged behind inflation. What were quaintly called “microbreweries” became more and more visible and the culture grew more and more stable. It became possible, as it remains today, for the majority of Americans to get in their cars and drive less than a half hour and wind up at a brewery, brewpub, alehouse, or beer-centric restaurant. Using Seattle as an example, when I arrived in ’91 the breweries in town were Pike Brewing, Maritime Pacific, Red Hook, Pyramid, Thomas Kemper (later Chuckanut Brewing of Bellingham), Hale’s Ales (begun in Colville, moved to Seattle), and several others, maybe four in all, which had minor market shares. Aviator Ales in nearby Woodinville folded early and Yakima’s Bert Grant managed to make a dent with Grant’s Ales.
Today, King County, which includes Seattle, has almost 100 breweries.
As beer became more and more ubiquitous and local brands began to plausibly compete, on a style by style basis, with the giant crafts, the demand for all but the most ballyhooed beers from the Stones and Rogues and the like began to wane. Which is entirely natural. The messaging of “Local”, mostly the province of neo-hippie back-to-nature folks when it was first used, has gained considerable traction, mainly because now it is so much easier to do it. Certain beers – Russian River “Pliny the Elder”, Cigar City “Hunahpu’s” Imperial Stout, and others of similar stature – will always remain sought after by all beer enthusiasts but, in each case, those beers are the splashiest but hardly the whole story of that brewery and there is a whole roster of their beers which are easily displaced in consumers’ fridges by local brands.
I’m sure many devout beer fans won’t like this but this shift from celebrating and fawning over and driving 250 miles (or more) to a release event to buy that one allotted gem…to a culture based on finding and drinking genuinely fine beers in our own backyards is a Good Thing. It is the healthiest sign that an economy and a state/local consumer base is vital and willing to support itself. I messaged Tomme Arthur, brewmaster and owner of Lost Abbey, when he decided to downsize and curtail distribution because I have now had a Quest, for over ten years, to find and stockpile his near-perfect “Serpent” Imperial Stout, which is more scarce, here in Tacoma, than Little People in the NBA. I usually dig up a bottle or two and have been completely willing to undertake the occasional safari to Deepest Darkest Seattle or beyond to get some because then I have…that beer(!), the very thought of which makes me weak in the knees. Now, at least, I no longer have to scour this entire region and, as I told Tomme, I am glad he did what is necessary to make his business viable so that traveling to San Diego, which is hardly anything like punishment, is still a way to know that I can get Serpent. If he had simply folded, as some less-creative brewery owners did, in the wake of Covid, Serpent would cease to exist at all. And I don’t even want to think about that.
Yes, the paradigm has changed. NO, that is NOT a harbinger of impeding doom, the oft-whined about “death of craft beer”. Change is necessary as a response to changing circumstances. The idea was popularized by Right-wing fatheads that changing one’s mind is “waffling” and sign of weakness. John Kerry was pilloried by conservatives who saw it as the sign of a faulty mentality that Kerry was willing to change his policies as facts changed. In fact, it is the unwillingness to change, the childish refusal to even see the necessity to change, that is the weakness. If someone prepares for their day, trusting the weather report or just because they want to, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap and an hour later a diving rainstorm starts, only an idiot would just stand there and get wet because, “That’s how I feel about today.”
When the ground beneath your feet, as a businessperson, becomes mushy and shaky, action is required. And the short-sighted solution is just to fold one’s tent and slink away. Anchor’s reaction and Tomme Arthur’s retrenchment are brave and pro-active responses to shifting tides and moaning because some brewery or restaurant or theater or hardware store you like finds it necessary to adapt to the times is sheerest complacency and entitlement. Shit changes. If it challenges your view of the brewery, change your views. Pissing and moaning about it solves nothing. If we are all members and supporters of American craft brewing, we owe it to the people whose asses are on the line financially and personally to not second guess and aggravate every changing situation.
Anchor and Lost Abbey will still exist, become profitable again, and continue, barring some other problems. Celebrate that and let them do their jobs. Ultimately, it is their decision and you can either ride the train or hop off at the next station, The one thing you cannot do is…lay down on the tracks.
The Pour Fool 