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.