Sales

Last year was another tough one for beer sales, though there’s been a gap between retail and on-premise sales. Let's take a high-level look.

Distributor consolidation, competitive shelf sets, and beyond-beer beverages make a compelling case for external sales help. Here’s how to evaluate them against the in-house alternative.

It takes some extra attention to pricing and inventory, but some smaller breweries are finding that mixed packs can help energize to-go sales from the taproom.

People are going out less often, generally, and brewery taprooms have had to get more creative to keep those beers pouring and margins healthy. Here are specific tips on how to entice customers out and make it worth their while.

IPAs are known crowd-pleasers, but what about that lighter style or passion project that somehow catches fire? Can your brewery capture that lightning in a bottle (or can, or keg) and reproduce the magic?

Successful breweries prioritize quality, from raw materials all the way to finished, packaged product. Yet even after your beer leaves the brewery grounds, there are ways to help ensure that people are enjoying the best possible version of it.

Amid wholesaler consolidation and a tightening market, could alternative distribution methods help small breweries achieve their goals?

While many brewers love a well-made, Belgian-inspired saison—dry, refreshing, and great with all kinds of food—it can be a tough sell to North American drinkers. Yet the style has broad potential when breweries highlight the liquid’s virtues.

The chief financial officer turned chief marketing officer at Chicago’s Revolution Brewing, known for dabbling in hot takes via his humorous social-media presence @beeraficionado, offers his perspective on the trends facing craft beer in 2023.

Make it fun for them: Amid rising costs and changing customer habits, there are untapped opportunities to pack them in and maximize sales with creative events and activities.

These demographic insights could help you please the fans you already have—and, potentially, win the ones you don’t have yet.

Pulling double-duty in terms of revenue and marketing, merchandise can be a lucrative source of extra cash for small breweries. Here are five strategies to sell swag that drinkers can’t wait to buy.

Sales of imperial IPAs are outpacing their standard-strength counterparts. Yet breweries need to find the right packaging mix, price point, recipe, and marketing to keep margins in line.

There is growing demand abroad for local, niche products—including beer. Even smaller breweries can tap into that sales channel. Here’s how to evaluate your brewery’s potential to export beer abroad.

Online beers sales are growing, but there are complex state and local rules that must be understood to be followed. Knowing and following those rules is key to further expanding this avenue to additional sales.

Have a plan—but build it with a cushion that will allow your business to adapt to the unexpected and take the occasional risk. Here, the planners at North Carolina’s Highland Brewing share their evolving approach and best advice.

Thousands of small, taproom-focused breweries are keeping afloat during the pandemic by leaning into to-go sales. How can we encourage those customers to keep coming back? One small brewery in Vermont has developed tactics that are working already.

Drinkers are visiting less but spending more when they do. Package and store sales remain strong, while draft margins remain scant. Here we round up some recent data and analyses relevant to independent brewers.

Predicting future sales is always tricky, but the pandemic’s shifting regulations and purchasing behaviors have magnified the difficulty. Ross Ackerman and Bud Dunn of GP Analytics share strategies to manage risk and make smarter production decisions.

Alex Koral, senior regulatory counsel of Sovos ShipCompliant, shares his expertise on the changing regulatory landscape for brewers considering whether to send beer directly to their customers.