Tag: Bart Watson

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Starting Today

Craft beer fans will recognize the name of Bart Watson as the pragmatic numbers guys for the Brewers Association.  But he is currently the vice president of strategy and membership after his stint as the chief economist of the group, Watson becomes president and CEO on January 6, 2025 two days after the retirement of Bob Pease on January 3.

photo courtesy of the Brewers Association

You can get the full scoop HERE.

It is a challenging time in the beer industry but Watson knows the group from the ground up so I expect that good changes and good growth are on the horizon.

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State of the Craft Beer Union

Yesterday, Bart Watson presented the Top 50 Breweries in the US for 2022 along with answering questions about other items of craft beer economic import. Y’all probably saw the shares and re-tweets of the list but below are my take-aways from the press conference.

  • overall production was static at around 24+ Million barrels
  • total retail dollars grew due to higher beer prices and a shift back to on premise drinking
  • 9,552 active breweries in 2022 (though some may not have finished the year as active)
  • openings still outpace closings 549 to 319
  • no correlation between higher beer prices and slower growth
  • taproom only models are skewing younger in years and perform better in general
  • leases tend to be the main drivers in closings

I will dip into the Top 50 from a California perspective but this year saw the exit of Bell’s from the list since they do not meet the ownership criteria for craft and Stone will exit next year due to their sale to Sapporo. Also Yuengling is numero uno this year.

Here are the CA breweries in the Top 10

#3 Sierra Nevada

#4 Duvel US (which includes Firestone Walker)

# 7 Stone

Others include both Coasts, Lost and North, Pizza Port, Gordon Biersch and Craft Ohana which is the Maui Brewing / Modern Times group.

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Bart on 2022 (and 2023)

Before Christmas, Bart Watson, the economics guru for the Brewers Association talked about craft beer in 2022 as well as a dip into what he thinks maybe in store for 2023.

Here are some of the numbers nuggets from his talk….

  • breweries with direct sales are close to 2019 pre-pandemic sales
  • check-ins from Untappd data shows an uptick in ticks from a brewery
  • channel shift due to the pandemic is reverting back
  • around 9,500 breweries in the U.S. now
  • more openings than closings by a 2 to 1 ratio
  • Imperial IPA, Hazy IPA, low to no alcohol beers doing well
  • 2023 openings will probably be lowest in years
  • 2023 distributed craft only breweries won’t grow
  • 2023 some inflation price hikes might hit early in the year

It looks like some tough sledding next year but as the world clicks closer to normal, more opportunities might show themselves.

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Sales Data

First, I suggest you take a quick read of Bart Watson’s take on the first half sales numbers for 2022. You can click right HERE for that.

Now what leapt out at me wasn’t so much the numbers for on premise or OpenTable reservation data but a term that was new to me, channel shift.

Now it is just a fancy way of saying that people bought beer from different places but it is quite interesting to see how the swirling will they-won’t they of Covid restrictions and lessening thereof has thrown things out of whack.

Pivoting is good and was practically required of breweries but it does making reading the tea leaves much harder. Toss in supply chain snafus and airline flight cancellations and each year becomes an unenviable sorting task for Watson.