The Best Season for Beer Sales Is Over, and It Was Bad
Summer is the most important season for selling beer in America, but to say the three-month stretch between Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends is “live or die” for the beer industry would be a bit of a stretch. That’s good news, because summer 2024 is emphatically over, and it brought a whole bunch of bad news for the American brewing business. The season officially ended on Sept. 21, and the third fiscal quarter officially ended on Sept. 30. With the benefit of a bit of hindsight to let the data catch up, it is time once again for the Hop Take Quarterly Beer Business Report Card.
Like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” the points don’t matter. Unlike “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” this isn’t a TV show, I’m not Drew Carey, and — crucially — none of this is made up. Let’s get into it.
Subject: Government
Grade: B+
After the Beer Institute, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, and the Brewers Association (BI, NBWA, and BA, respectively) joined in with trade groups and sympathetic media from other categories to start really making noise about federal regulators’ approach to alcohol recommendations in the upcoming 2025 dietary guideline review, the industry backlash stakeholder concern has begun to pick up some serious bipartisan steam, with letters and subpoenas a-flyin’ from Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, with non-alcoholic tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) seltzers offering a rare bright spot to brewers in states where they’re legal, state house jockeying on the treatment of hemp-derived food products in states’ farm bills is a potential threat. But with the lobbying juggernaut of the NBWA signaling support for the product (so long as it rolls to market on its constituents’ trucks, of course), its long-term prospects are brighter than they might be otherwise. We might have been in A- territory here, but the CHEERS Act didn’t budge for another quarter.
Subject: Fluid (Sales) Dynamics
Grade: C-
Whether you were looking at scan data from off-premise channels, buyers’ surveys from the NBWA, or tax-paids analyses from the BI, this past quarter just wasn’t great for beer sales. The latter metric showed the category down an average of 6.1 percent year-over-year in June, July, and August 2024 — a loss of some 2.5 million barrels since last August. (September’s figures should be available in early November.) Is America’s beer money going to spirits-based cocktails? Is it going to cannabis purchases? Is it going to *checks notes* mobile sports gambling and FitBits, as Heineken USA’s chief executive claimed at the NBWA’s annual conference earlier this month? Answers are beyond the scope of this column, but just know this: It’s going, and it went s’more last quarter. Maybe the fact that beer prices at National Football League stadiums have doubled in the last decade is a hint?
Subject: Innovation Lab
Grade: D-
Did any new products hit beer shelves last quarter? Tilray is doing hemp-derived THC beverages now, I guess? We discussed (and then VinePair managing editor Tim McKirdy and I discussed again) how Boston Beer Company’s Twisted Tea sorta got pantsed by vodka-based Surfside, and in said discussions I noted that BBC’s belated answer, Sun Cruiser, is making up some ground, but that’s neither an innovation, nor a beer. Non-alcoholic Michelob Ultra? Sure. Miller High Life Light coming back? Whatever. Jack Daniel’s is doing a malt-based hard tea now? Fine, man. If there’s a “next big thing” for the American beer business after India Pale Ale, it certainly didn’t make itself known last quarter.
Subject: Social Studies
Grade: C-
Perennial Anheuser-Busch InBev follower Molson Coors turned tail on its diversity programs in the face of a transparently bad-faith, right-wing pressure campaign. At least the latter firm eventually struck a better deal with the union Machinists at its Milwaukee plant — too bad they had to strike for it first. Right-wing charlatan Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea made a half-assed effort at pretending his “Real American Beer” pander brand wasn’t political before making an appearance at the Republican National Convention to promote it. That brand will fail, but Happy Dad, the hard seltzer from YouTube edgelords The NELK Boys, has real staying power, and they’re in the bag for fascism, too. Very cool! Recency bias aside, I think Stone’s successful campaign to bust the union drive at its Richmond facility was another dismal mark in the craft brewing industry’s labor-relations ledger. Credit to ABI for delivering canned water to hurricane-hit areas in North Carolina and Florida — it’s nice to see our big, beautiful macrobrewers use their fearsome logistics for good.
Subject: Craftology
Grade: C
Tilray Brands and Monster Brewing Company, two of the largest BA-defined craft brewers in the country, both did layoffs and struggled sales-wise last quarter, even as the former doubled down on its bargain-bin acquisition strategy by scooping up MC’s also-ran craft brands. Two other major craft brewers, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and New Belgium Brewery, were among the dozens in western North Carolina incapacitated or destroyed by Hurricane Helene; Asheville’s standard-bearing status as a national destination for beer tourism will likely be years in recovery. Not great, man. Things are tough for the segment sales-wise, too, at least in the off-premise: Volume was down over 5 percent year-over-year through Sept. 8, per multi-outlet and convenience channels data as tracked by market research firm Circana.
🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now
If the frothy thrills of the hard seltzer boom have given way to some Truly (ahem) deflating realities more recently, nobody told Travis Scott. After a fast, furious, and ill-fated run marketing his CACTI flavored alcoholic beverage line in joint-partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2021, the superstar rapper-turned-“brand whisperer”-turned pariah has apparently taken over sole control of the brand in hopes of reviving it some three years after the macrobrewer pulled it from shelves in the wake of quality problems (with the drink) and image problems (with the celeb, who’s kept a fairly low profile since his deadly concert in November of that year.) Brewbound spotted the brand with a booth at the National Beer Wholesalers Association’s annual conference last week, confirming a February report from the Houston Chronicle that this is actually happening. Travis, buddy, didn’t you hear? Not everything is cyclical…
📈 Ups…
Constellation Brands’ shipments were up 7.6 percent in Q2, with the firm arguing softening trends are “a near-term issue”… Allagash Brewing Co. will begin packaging its hop water for distribution in the Northeast, huzzah… Congratulations to Lacey Gautier, the Brewers Association’s new vice president of meetings and events… With its just-announced acquisition of Night Shift Brewing, Jack’s Abby/Wormtown Brewing Co. parent company says it’ll be “Massachusetts’ largest craft beer producer” (Sam Adams isn’t brewed in-state)…
📉 …and downs
Sapporo-Stone Brewing’s sustained union-busting campaign appears to have paid off, with its workers in Richmond, Va., voting down a Teamsters drive there… Citing impasses from management, Teamsters expanded their strike on Ore. beer/soft-drinks distributor Bigfoot Beverages… Crown & Hops abruptly exited its short-lived Circle of Crowns partnership with Full Circle Brewing Co… Oh, cool, IWSR is tracking bigger-than-projected declines in American total beverage alcohol and beer sales through the first half of 2024… Rest in peace to Ron Jeffries, founder of Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales and a swell guy… Torch & Crown’s former employees have a GoFundMe going, claiming they were laid off without notice from the New York City firm’s brewery…
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