There’s been a wide variety of different covid restrictions coming from different state and local governments. Some have been reasonable and evenly applied, some not. Chicago’s application of restrictions seems to fall in the latter category. It seems restaurants and coffee shops, while still under capacity restrictions themselves, haven’t had nearly the limitations placed on them that taverns do. This Good Beer Hunting article by tavern owner Virginia Thomas (also a friend of mine) lays out the unfair treatment taverns have been getting under the Chicago system. I get it that bars are where we’ve been seeing a lot of these scenes of clueless hordes gathering together in apparent super-spreader events. But making the simple availability of food the factor that determines who stays in business or not is short-sighted. Limitations should be based on space, capacity, and the implementation of safe procedures by the operator. The current state of things in Chicago aren’t that and are threatening small taverns across the city.
More supply shortages in beer
Earlier I linked to an article about can and aluminum shortages in the beer business. There’s another one making waves now - CO2. Carbon Dioxide production, which interestingly enough is linked to ethanol production for gasoline, has dropped recently due to covid. As this article in Brewbound details, this puts brewers in another pinch, as CO2 is used throughout breweries for all kinds of things. At the same time, breweries produce a lot of CO2 in the fermentation process. Many larger breweries have recovery systems, which I’m sure they’re really happy about having right now. These systems are expensive though, putting them out of reach for lots of smaller brewers. Hopefully there’s some relief in sight here for brewers. When it rains, it pours, and right now its torrential.
Consolidation in Chicago Beer Distribution
Things have gotten a little tighter for small to medium sized brewers in Chicago in the past few weeks. A couple of key distribution deals have further constricted how beer is sold in the Windy City. As Kate Bernot notes in this article from Good Beer Hunting, the number of distributors in the US has declined by over 60% in the past 30 years. This is at the same time as the number of breweries has exploded to well over 8,000. With every brewery mandated by law to go through one of these 3rd party distributors, this trend makes it increasingly hard for brewers entering the market to find a good distributor arrangement. Fewer distributors means larger portfolios and that translates to less attention any individual brewer can get from the average distributor salesperson. All this consolidation might be good for the fewer increasingly large distributors but it’s not good for brewers and it’s not good for beer drinkers.
Shorts Brewing Calls Out Bad Behavior
Normally I think it’s bad practice for a brewery to complain about customers on social media but in this case, I’ll make an exception. Apparently the staff at Michigan’s Shorts Brewing have been experiencing a lot of harassment and rude behavior by their customers so the brewery called them out on social media and said they’re done with putting up with it. Good for them. I don’t know exactly what led to the customers behaving like that but apparently it was in reaction to having to wait for service too long. And really, the reason doesn’t matter. Things are incredibly difficult for the hospitality business right now. Most have had to completely rework their way of doing business on the fly due to the pandemic for what is oftentimes a fraction of their normal operating income. Employees are putting themselves at risk by being there in the first place. People need to be patient. Harassment and rude behavior due to bad or slow service is simply unacceptable right now. People who act like this need to be called out and denied service altogether. If you can’t be nice to your service staff when you go out, then stay home.
Mid-year Analysis
Bart Watson, the Brewers Association Chief Economist, is one of those people who always provides some really insightful analysis into what’s happening in the beer business. And in a time when nothing is predictable, I pay particular attention to his analysis. He just released his mid-year analysis based on scan data, BA polling, and a few other sources. As you might expect, it’s a mixed bag. There’s some discouraging news about how much the business is down low double-digits. But also some encouraging news, like the fact that brewery closings haven’t increased nearly as much to date as some expected. It’s a read well worth your time.
How many will survive?
This has been a major theme of a lot of hospitality industry news lately and it’s not going away anytime soon. I’ve been telling people for a while now that we haven’t seen the worst of what’s coming regarding business closures. I wish I was wrong. Another round of mortgage payments are due very soon and another round of restaurant operators may very well decide that they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. This New York Times article goes into some individual stories of restaurant and other business owners having to make the tough decision to shut their doors.
This article from Eater profiles one LA restaurant in particular that was forced to close the day after they finally opened back up. It’s a particularly frustrating read. It lays out very plainly how lack of leadership and the politicization of the pandemic forced states and municipalities to open too soon, only to have to shut down again when the pandemic came back in force. The victims here are small business owners who are only trying to do the right thing. The close when they’re supposed to, spend an unreal amount of time, effort, and money to open up the right way, then have to just eat it and shut down. And meanwhile there’s no relief coming from a government that’s more worried about the stock market and re-election campaigns. If governments continue to let small restaurant and bar owners hang out to dry taking the brunt of the pandemic-induced hurt, then we may not have many small restaurants left when this is over.
What has craft become?
When I stop and look back over my 23 years in the craft beer business and the nearly 30 years since I started homebrewing, it's a wonder I even recognize the industry today. Many of the staples of craft beer today didn't really exist back then. And many of our stalwarts of the early days are long gone. Through these changes, craft brewers have evolved and gone down paths many of us in the early days had rejected and sometimes outright rebelled against. It's a new world now. Lew Bryson has been around for quite a while as well and has some really great perspective on all of this in The Full Pint.
Michelin Starred Restaurant Faces Reckoning
Band of Bohemia, the only brewpub in the US to be awarded a Michelin star, has decided to close temporarily due to social media outrage about how their employees have been treated. This is one of the more dramatic developments in what seems like a daily stream of bad behavior being exposed publicly. From entitled white people pitching a fit in public over masks, to racist rants in coffee shops, it seems like every day we’re witnessing some public outing that is inevitably followed by the requisite social media outrage. Band of Bohemia joined in with multiple staff and former staff publicly outing the owners for treating employees badly and looking the other way when their managers became abusive. It’s a good lesson for any operators out there who think the rules of common decency don’t apply to them.
The Future of Beer
No one really knows what the beer world will look like on the other side of the pandemic. Sometimes right now it’s hard to even see the light at the end of the tunnel. What we do know is that the industry has been forced to change quickly and dramatically, and what it looks like on the other side won’t be what it looked like going in. Jonny Garrett does a good job of exploring these possibilities in Good Beer Hunting, analyzing our current state and making well-reasoned projections.
The Latest from the BA
Subscribers of my newsletter have seen me post several items in recent weeks about the Brewers Association. Like a lot of businesses, they’ve been hit pretty hard by the pandemic, first losing all of their big revenue-generating events, then having to lay off a large percentage of their staff. Now they’re getting hit pretty hard on social media for their response to the Black Lives Matter movement and their track record on diversity. In this Beer Edge podcast, Andy Crouch talks with Bob Pease, the CEO of the BA and asks him about all of these topics. By the look of social media after this podcast came out, it doesn’t sound like the voices have been quieted. I’m sure there’s more to come.
Ode to Zinnebir
This is a great celebration of a wonderful beer produced by Brasserie de la Senne. Founded in 2006, this relatively new brewery (by Belgian standards), produces some wonderfully drinkable beers. Zinnebir, in particular is a crisp, balanced, wonderfully complex, and uber-drinkable beer. Eoghan Walsh’s piece in Pellicle sums it up nicely, not neglecting to mention the possibly more famous of their beers, Taras Boulba, which is certainly worthy of its own love letter.
Distributor Consolidation
For the past several years, Reyes Beverage Group has been purchasing distributors and expanding across the country. As Kate Bernot details in Good Beer Hunting, they’ve quietly built a distribution empire that makes them the country’s ninth largest privately-held company. While some might praise efficiencies that come with this (lower costs?), others aren’t crazy about it. One in that camp is ABI, who suddenly has a big competitor to its network, especially in California. Another group consists of countless retailers I’ve spoken with over the years that complain of increased tel-sell, fewer delivery days, and overall worse service.