The Boston Globe
New England breweries are facing a sobering truth: Craft beer is no longer the hopped-up industry it once was. Why did the buzz fade away?
Millennials are getting too old to hit the pub every night. Many Gen Zers prefer cannabis to beer. And a number of breweries are increasingly pushing ciders, seltzers and other spiked drinks.
In other words, the once-heady craft beer business has lost its fizz.
It’s a story that’s playing out across New England as the industry consolidates following years of rapid expansion.
In recent weeks, the owners of Jack’s Abby in Framingham acquired Wormtown, Worcester’s oldest and busiest brewery. The parent company of New Hampshire’s Smuttynose recently reached a deal to acquire Wachusett. Dorchester Brewing has taken over Aeronaut. Ipswich Ale hooked up with Riverwalk.
Meanwhile, some brands are going away — Distraction Brewing in Roslindale has said it will shut down at the end of the month, while stalwart Cambridge Brewing Co. in Kendall Square will go dark at the end of the year.
“The shakeout is absolutely here, there’s no question,” said Dan Kenary, chief executive of Harpoon parent company Mass. Bay Brewing. “A week does not go by when I am not approached about wanting to take a look at a brewery looking to sell, go out of business, or merge.”
Have we reached an era of Peak Craft? All signs point to yes.
Last year, 15 breweries opened in the state, while 11 closed, according to the Massachusetts Brewers Guild and local blog Mass. Brew Bros. That net gain of four was the smallest increase since 2010, when there were just 48 breweries in Massachusetts. At the start of this year, there were 235.
Nationwide, overall beer sales have been flat or declining for years — largely due to soft sales of mass-market mainstays like Bud Light and Miller Light. Craft beer had posed a bright spot, eventually growing enough market share to account for roughly one-fourth of all spending on beer in the United States.
But now, even craft has plateaued. Craft beer sales volume fell 1 percent last year, per Brewers Association data, compared to a 5 percent drop for all beer. The total number of breweries, meanwhile, ticked up less than 1 percent to 9,900.
The only growth could be found in taprooms — breweries that primarily offer on-premise drinking with limited or no food menus. The number of craft brewers who sell through wholesalers had already started to decline and liquor store shelves were getting crowded with alternatives. (The beer wholesale industry, too, is going through its own consolidation, and distributors are trying to streamline their crowded craft offerings.)
Even Boston Beer Co., whose flagship lager made Sam Adams a household name, has long pivoted to other drinks such as hard cider and tea to propel growth. In each of the past two years, Boston Beer reported around 85 percent of its volume came from alcoholic beverages other than beer.
“What you’re seeing in Massachusetts very much mirrors the national trend,” said Bart Watson, the Brewers Association’s chief economist. “We had this era of explosive growth where breweries were opening right and left. That’s decelerated. [Today] it feels like we’re kind of moving toward equilibrium.”
Big Beer has taken notice. The country’s two biggest brewers, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Molson Coors, are now unwinding their craft portfolios. Last year, AB InBev sold eight craft brands — such as Shock Top and Redhook — to Canadian cannabis giant Tilray Brands, while Molson Coors made a similar move this month, also by reaching a deal with Tilray.
“The big brewers have decided they’re getting out of this craft business because, ‘Why do it anymore?’ ” said Jenn Litz-Kirk, director of content for trade publication Beer Business Daily. “’Craft is slowing. That’s not our core competence. We need to focus.’”
Kenary said he noticed that regional craft brewers, relatively larger players that mostly sell through distributors, peaked roughly a decade ago. Microbrewers and taprooms continued to grow, but even those corners of the industry have lost their buzz. Kenary cofounded Harpoon, one of Massachusetts’ first craft brewers, and said he hoped to help stoke a vibrant beer culture in the United States. He and his peers succeeded “beyond our wildest freaking dreams,” Kenary said, and then rode the rising tide.
But lately, he said, it feels like that tide has been going out.
To a large extent, the plateau reflects generational drinking habits. Craft beer rose to prominence as millennials reached legal drinking age. But they’re getting older, raising kids and cutting back on the late nights on the town. Gen Z seems to be much less interested in the latest super-hoppy IPA or double barrel aged stout. Brewers also say it’s no coincidence that their industry has stalled out as cannabis products have become more widely available.
Then there’s the aftershocks of COVID. Businesses that were starting to struggle going into the pandemic soldiered on with the help of Paycheck Protection Program grants or other government assistance. Now those subsidies have ended.
Esther Tetreault, who owns Trillium with her husband, JC, said the changing nature of work following the pandemic has also had an impact. Trillium’s Canton brewery is next to the headquarters of insurer Point32Health, where many of the roughly 4,400 employees based there are working remotely on any given day. Trillium’s Fort Point brewery, a popular post-work refuge for the Seaport office crowd, still hasn’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.
Tetreault knew the craft boom couldn’t go on forever. But she still sounds sad that the party is over.
“Whenever I hear that somebody’s opening a craft brewery, I’m a little surprised,” Tetreault said. “It feels like the timing, and the industry, and the economic landscape are not right for that.”
Dorchester Brewing chief executive Matt Malloy said brewers need to adapt to consumers’ changing preferences. For him, that meant adding wine, hard cider, and even frozen slushies to the drink menu — he jokes that his establishment is starting to turn into a “slusheteria.”
Consolidation, Malloy added, is to be expected in a mature market such as craft beer. He recently acquired Aeronaut under his newly created Tasty Liquid Alliance umbrella, moving Aeronaut production from Everett to Dorchester’s brewery on Mass. Ave. while keeping the Aeronaut taproom in Somerville going.
The mergers, acquisitions, and closings probably won’t stop anytime soon — particularly among brewers who make most of their sales via liquor stores, where the competition for shelf space grows ever more intense. People in the industry say it’s only a matter of time before the overall number of breweries starts to drop.
“When everyone’s growing, when everything is hunky-dory, people don’t tend to look for those opportunities,” said Adam Romanow, founder and chief executive of Castle Island Brewing. “In a soft market like this, more people look at that as an exit strategy or a succession plan.”
At Jack’s Abby in Framingham, Sam Hendler remains hopeful. The acquisition of Wormtown catapulted the family business, now known as Hendler Family Brewing Co., into the country’s top 30 largest craft brewers by volume. The styles of beers are complementary: Jack’s Abby specializes in lagers, while Wormtown is known for its IPAs. The Worcester brewery closed and the production work moved to Framingham. But Hendler hired most of Wormtown’s employees and is keeping Wormtown’s taproom in Foxborough and expanding the one in Worcester.
Hendler said many brewers built larger operations than they needed with the anticipation that double-digit sales growth would continue well into the future. Now the industry has far more production capacity than it needs.
“We are investing very heavily in craft beer and believe in its long-term future. This isn’t a ‘sky falling’ scenario,” Hendler said. “There might be a challenging period that we’re going to have to navigate through but we see a really bright future for those who figure out how to navigate that successfully.”
