BrewCast and How Breweries Use Weather to Project Sales

When you think about your favorite brewery and its beer sales, do you think about the weather? Probably not.

That is, unless you live somewhere remarkably cold, rainy, snowy, or uncomfortably hot. Then you might wonder if anyone would venture into the elements for a frosty brew. Otherwise, you likely don’t think about the weather at all other than to know if you need to wear a heavy coat or bring an umbrella to the brewery. Even if you don’t, breweries are aware of the weather today and in the future.

You might not realize it, but weather plays a surprisingly important role in future sales and revenues for breweries. Some are even looking at weather forecasts as far as a year into the future because of the belief in the “power of 1 degree” in which an increase of only one degree will increase a brewery’s sales by at least 1%.

Weather is such a big deal that breweries are even working with weather experts to understand the impact of future conditions and temperatures. Recently, Weathertrends360 CEO Bill Kirk launched a weather-predicting service specifically for breweries called BrewCast.

“Breweries receive a 100% automated report that gives management their one store location to help them understand the short-term and year-ahead weather with a syndicated beer sales forecast,” says Kirk.

The report is delivered every morning at 5 a.m. via email. “There is a website version available to them as well. From this report, they can make decisions and plan around staffing and inventory.” The annual subscription for this service is only $300.

You might be wondering how important weather is to beer sales. Well, according to Kirk, it’s very important. One degree can add or remove a lot of profit.

“With Beer, it’s typically every 1-degree Fahrenheit warmer there’s a 1-2% increase in beer sales year-over-year.” He adds, “If 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than last year 10-20% increase in sales.” The same goes for 10 degrees colder. You’ll see a hefty decline in sales.

A 1-degree Fahrenheit change impacts thousands of seasonal category sales. “We’ve proved this with point-of-sale data from hundreds of customers over the past 22 years to the rules of thumb are great predictors of sales,” says Kirk.

“Consider, for example, weather data can determine how many fewer air conditioners a big box store like Target might stock if the weather is ten degrees cooler,” he says.

Kirk says that unrelated to brewing, his weather predicting services even helped a town save on their rock salt budget by accurately predicting their overall winter would be moderate. “This helped the town build the playground that was once out of budget for them.”

So, next time you visit your local craft brewery, don’t just think about what they have on tap and whether or not that over-the-top fruited triple IPA is selling. Think about how the weather now and in the future will impact their overall sales.

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