If you retained anything from your Econ 101 class, it’s probably the role that price plays in the law of supply and demand. The textbook version: Price is the No. 1 lever that companies can use to manipulate demand for their products.
And yet, despite a highly competitive market for craft beer since the pandemic, fewer breweries than you’d expect have flexed pricing in a dramatic way. On chain grocery store shelves in particular—where craft accounts for 18.4 percent of beer sales by dollars, per Circana—national craft prices are highly homogeneous. Local craft, within a dollar or two, sits where it sits. Some SKUs, such as single-serve cans, are more competitive, but a six-pack of local IPA offers relatively little in terms of pricing hierarchy.
However, what happens when a brewery wants to grab the pricing lever and pull it hard?