23 Mar A Week of Evidence for the Come Back of Craft Breweries and Fans
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
Last week I spent a good deal of time in Indiana taprooms, and I can tell things are changing for the better. More people, more smiles, less stress. Walter and I then took a trip to Maryland over the weekend and stopped at ten different breweries – the same was true in OH, WV, PA and MD.
I can say with fair confidence that things are getting better for Indiana craft breweries, distilleries and wineries, and for those in the states we visited. It isn’t just what I felt or observed, it was from the things other people were saying, doing, and the numbers that could be discerned. Let’s take a look at the various pieces of evidence and then see if you agree that they are pointing us in the right direction.
1. People in Taprooms. Taprooms were packed last weekend (with spacing), and not just because of the tournament. It’s safe to say that downtown Indy taprooms had a good week and weekend with the Big Ten Tournament and the first rounds of the NCAA tournament, but it is more than that. Traders Brewing had their anniversary week, and they went through many kegs and had a great week in the taproom. It helps that Bart is making very nice beers, but whether the tournament was on or not, the traffic was definitely up.
Walter and I are at Twenty Tap just about every Tuesday, se we can see that business is picking up. image credit: Twenty Tap
More than that, the weather is helping fuel the increase in the taprooms. Twenty Tap is picking up steam, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that if they have a line for tables now and they didn’t two weeks ago then business is picking up. Yes, the weather matters, but having good weather also increases table number (like with the patio and shipping container at Twenty Tap), so to have waiting lists when the number of tables is going up means that there are definitely more people out and about.
The trend for lots of folks getting out continued as Walter and I drive east and then back west. The taprooms we stopped in (Buckeye Lake Brewing, Southside Brewing, Route 40 Brewing, Dig Deep Brewing, Antietam Brewery, Cushwa Brewing, Homaide Brewing, Helltown Brewing, and DankHouse Brewing) all had lines to get pints and lines for food. One of the big problems of the pandemic was that breweries just didn’t need as much taproom help; pour a pint and stand around. But this weekend beer slingers were on the move, it was apparent that it was time to get more help.
2. Job Openings. To continue on the point of increasing taproom employment, evidence now shows that all kinds of places are hiring more beverage and food workers. Since the time that Indiana On Tap started the Indiana On Tap Jobs Facebook Group, there have been ebbs and flows in the numbers of people joining to look for work and the number of jobs posted.
Last summer, hundreds of people joined the group looking for jobs, yet very few jobs were being posted. The just before the holidays, the number of jobs posted rose and the number of people looking plateaued. Then early this year the trends reversed and we had many more people looking for jobs. But in the last three weeks, the number of open positions on the group page has exploded. I’d say that right now we are seeing four to five job postings a day. It isn’t just me that has noticed this; I’m getting emails from friends asking if something is up. Yes, I think something is up – the economy, including with the beverage and food service industries are opening up.
We love Dig Deep and apparently so do many other people. Stop in When in Cumberland, MD. image credit: Dig Deep Brewing
3. Beer Travel. Both in Indy last week and on our trip east last weekend, Walter and I met people from around the region. While we were just south of I70 in Ohio we met a couple that had come down from the Akron/Cleveland to do some drinking. They were SO HAPPY to be out taproom hopping; they told us where they had been and we told them where we were going. We traded beers and UnTappd user names and talked about the styles we liked – and we did it at the bar. It’s likely we wouldn’t have had that interaction a few weeks ago.
In the panhandle of Maryland on Saturday, we ran into a lady from Crawfordsville – she saw my “drink beer from here” T-shirt in the shape of Indiana and stopped us to talk. She now lives in Virginia, but the next time that she and her husband come back to Indiana, we have an appointment to show them around and drink some Indiana beer. That’s exactly why I wear the Indiana beer shirts, it opens us up conversations everywhere.
Finally, while stopping in Washington, PA at bar that is part classic car showroom and part brewery taproom, we met some motorcycle tourists from southern Michigan that pointed out the Avanti in the show room and how it was made in South Bend. I think it was actually a post 1965 Avanti, so it wasn’t made in South Bend, but we still got to have a nice conversation anyway. The point of all this – people are traveling more now, and part of that traveling is traveling for beer. How can that be anything but good for the craft beer industry?
Keg sales have been dismal during Covid, which translated to fewer beer choices on draft lists. image credit: Kegerator Learning Center
4. Choices. During the pandemic, it’s no secret that keg sales have gone in the toilet. Bars and restaurants were shut down, and then they were operating at such a low level that few pints were being bought. Because of that, bars and restaurants bought fewer kegs of beer from breweries and had beer on fewer of their draft lines. Kegs at breweries began to to pile up, and they switched over to packaging more beer.
But just now, the number of draft lines are starting to increase in bars and restaurants. More choices comes from more beer being sold. This is going to be a slow process because people are now used to buying packaged beer, but the number of lines being used is starting to tick up. Likewise, at breweries during the deepest part of the restrictions, we saw fewer seasonals and special beers. Yet now we are starting to see things other than core beers on people’s lists. The beer slingers we talked to this weekend were keen on telling us about all their new beers – that wasn’t happening a couple of months ago.
5. New Events. Indiana On Tap runs festivals for several municipalities and helps many other organizers to run and market their festivals. Occasionally, we will be approached by a new organizer asking if we want to start a new festival for them – 2021 marks the first Tipton On Tap Craft Beer, Wine & Spirits Festival in July and we are helping to market the inaugural JoCo Pours in the Park near Ninevah. We certainly don’t take on every festival that people bring to us, but usually that’s not a big deal because it is only two or three a year.
Tipton On Tap is a new event, but you wouldn’t know it be ticket sales and community involvement. image credit: City of Tipton.
Last week that was turned that history on its head. In a span of nine days Indiana On Tap was approached to market or run an astounding seven new craft beer festivals. Seven! It’s likely we will take on one for fall of 2021 and perhaps one of winter 2022, but it looks like things are getting busy. This is a definite sign that things are getting better.
6. Ticket sales. The festivals that are on the books have been showing great sales so far. This is certainly true for the Indiana On Tap festivals, but we see beyond that as well. The On Tap Tickets platform is used by the majority of craft beverage events in the state (and is now going national), and we see that ticket sales are going gangbusters for all events. It took just a few days for Brrr Fest to sell out, as it did the Crawfish Boil at Off Square Brewing and tickets for Beer, Bacon, and Bourbon have been flying off the shelves.
7. Interviews. Over the last few months, several news organizations and magazines have asked Indiana On Tap to comment on the peril in which the craft beverage industries found themselves. But in the last week, we have been asked to participate in several stories about how the industries are coming out of the pandemic, how things have changed and how they are returning to normal. These have been much more fun to be a part of.
Conclusion. There you have it, seven areas with objective evidence that things are getting better for craft beverage producers and sellers. Add in the well known evidence of increased package sales and we see that things really are looking up. Get out there and be part of the craft beer, wine, and spirits renaissance.
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