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Welp, it sounds like Green Flash filed for Chapter 11. That escalated quickly.

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Aw, i see my buddy Finns name. Great guy. lol
 
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I'm actually legitimately surprised that the bank was able to convince someone to buy that asset. Volatile AF.

Must've been cheap, lol.

This won't be good for mid-size breweries trying to finance (through private equity OR investment) to go national.

I'd look at what happened here as a bank and be ******* terrified.
When people talk about a craft beer bubble I think they're mostly spewing ********, but if I were an investor I'd be terrified of these mid-size brands with national aspirations. If most of your money is coming from shelves, I think you're going to have a bad time for the next few years. If you're content being small-ish, local, and not growing like mad then you'll probably be fine, even if you make garbage beer.
 
When people talk about a craft beer bubble I think they're mostly spewing ********, but if I were an investor I'd be terrified of these mid-size brands with national aspirations. If most of your money is coming from shelves, I think you're going to have a bad time for the next few years. If you're content being small-ish, local, and not growing like mad then you'll probably be fine, even if you make garbage beer
A lot of the new breweries in Austin aren't sending ANY product out the door. They sell it all in their bar. And they ...mostly... seem to be staying in business.
 
When people talk about a craft beer bubble I think they're mostly spewing ********, but if I were an investor I'd be terrified of these mid-size brands with national aspirations. If most of your money is coming from shelves, I think you're going to have a bad time for the next few years. If you're content being small-ish, local, and not growing like mad then you'll probably be fine, even if you make garbage beer.


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Oh Founders, why are you the way you are. Next BA beer is a BBA, Dry Hopped post barrel treatment Imperial Red IPA. Sigh.
They brought back CBS... I can guarantee in their minds that they think that buys them another couple more years of putting out ******** in the Backstage Series, lol.
 
I've been saying it for a while now, but the margins are so much higher selling your beer across your own bar then dealing with a distributor / wholesaler and retailers (on premise or packaged). If you are content making $1-2 million a year on a 7-15bbl system, and don't have aspirations of being the next Revolution / Half Acre, you can thrive in this current market.
 
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I've been saying it for a while now, but the margins are so much higher selling your beer across your own bar then dealing with a distributor / wholesaler and retailers (on premise or packaged). If you are content making $1-2 million a year on a 7-15bbl system, and don't have aspirations of being the next Revolution / Half Acre, you can thrive in this current market.
Plus you can throw in online sales to reach a wider audience if you product is good though and people will go through the hassle of proxy pickups. My friend opened a brewery and is doing this and im very happy to see bottles selling out this way. His beer is really damn good too.
 
Plus you can throw in online sales to reach a wider audience if you product is good though and people will go through the hassle of proxy pickups. My friend opened a brewery and is doing this and im very happy to see bottles selling out this way. His beer is really damn good too.

Different business models to an extent though. While it is nice making a nice piece of coin through a bottle release / festival / etc..., it isn't what keeps the lights on and employees paid throughout the year. Hearing the stories of how much of their yearly revenue Cycle made through it's weekday releases (from friends / industry folks in Tampa) made me queasy.

I'd be really curious to see the number of what someplace like Funk Factory makes from the taproom vs. the bottle releases through Brown Paper Tickets as a percentage of their overall sales.
 
The craft beer bubble will effect mom and pop bottle shops more than anything. Now that brewery only releases are common.

Edit I worded that weird initially.

On one hand I agree.

On the other hand part of the craft brewery end-game is/was to convert Light Lager drinkers into craft beer drinkers. There is obviously plenty of room to be made there. So if your Light Lager drinkers sustain the likes of Sam Adams, Anchor, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada etc etc I would hope they'd be fine.
 
Sculpin itself—irrespective of BP—has absolutely enormous mindshare. One time at Societe (which is one of the more well-known brewery taprooms specifically for IPAs in San Diego) someone saddled up next to me and went “Can I get a Sculpin?” And at my work it’s not uncommon for someone to pick up those BP mixed-packs for Fridays and the Sculpins always always disappear first. For anybody who has the slightest bit of interest in craft beer (which is increasingly quite a few people), the default craft beer is an IPA, and the default IPA is Sculpin, ergo the default beer is Sculpin.

[edit]: I want to back up a sec and acknowledge that there probably has been a bit of a dip in the Sculpin market due to its premium pricing, which is likely why BP repurposed the “Fathom” name to their new slightly lower-market IPA. But I still think Sculpin alone currently has several orders of magnitude more mindshare than GF ever had even in their heyday.
 
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Sculpin itself—irrespective of BP—has absolutely enormous mindshare. One time at Societe (which is one of the more well-known brewery taprooms specifically for IPAs in San Diego) someone saddled up next to me and went “Can I get a Sculpin?” And at my work it’s not uncommon for someone to pick up those BP mixed-packs for Fridays and the Sculpins always always disappear first. For anybody who has the slightest bit of interest in craft beer (which is increasingly quite a few people), the default craft beer is an IPA, and the default IPA is Sculpin, ergo the default beer is Sculpin.

[edit]: I want to back up a sec and acknowledge that there probably has been a bit of a dip in the Sculpin market due to its premium pricing, which is likely why BP repurposed the “Fathom” name to their new slightly lower-market IPA. But I still think Sculpin alone currently has several orders of magnitude more mindshare than GF ever had even in their heyday.
In San Diego for sure. Here I don't know who buys it. People got a little excited at first, and then a little excited for Grapefruit Sculpin...and that was it. Local hops and cheaper big craft like Lagunitas seem to carry the day.
 
In San Diego for sure. Here I don't know who buys it. People got a little excited at first, and then a little excited for Grapefruit Sculpin...and that was it. Local hops and cheaper big craft like Lagunitas seem to carry the day.
Hazebois cutting into the market share here. And for the folks who just want an IPA that tastes and looks like an IPA, Goose Island.
 

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