Cast your mind back to when you were 21. How many breweries were there when you hit that newly minted beer drinking age? For me, it was a whopping 312. My range of choice was also probably much, much smaller than that so I probably drank more of the same beers or more from the same breweries just due to lack of options. I don’t remember and no Untappd back then to lean on for historical reference.
My oldest nephew turns 21 in 2021. By then, there may well be over 10,000 breweries with much, much wider distribution. How will he make a decision when faced with a bazillion tap and packaged options? How many bars with over 20 taps were around when you started your beer journey compared to now.
That is the new model of entry level consumer education that needs to be understood. Flagships, as lovely as they are, simply cannot hold the same level of attention. We have trained bars to rotate beers and rotate them hard and often. We have trained breweries to focus on special releases and multi variants. How does a new beer drinker navigate that?
Then factor in the cost. Will my nephew be able to plunk down $25 for 4 cans? I am priced out of a lot of stuff right now. I have to pick and choose and try to find single cans and bottles to keep up a variety and I am in no way close to keeping up with the beer Joneses.
Breweries are going to have to go after some of these youngsters and give them a reason to pick up a beer. Whether that is through better signage at their taproom to point newcomers to start with a certain beer or to use simple flavor descriptors in the manner of Modern Times with their 3 adjective branding on their cans or some other novel concept to quickly message what the beer will be like.
You can’t expect customers to be of the same mindset and you can’t say that millennials are not drinking beer and just shrug your shoulders as if being a different generation is the only answer. We all need to put ourselves in other peoples shoes.