Following the unexpected announcement Wednesday that Brewers Association (BA) president and CEO Bob Pease will retire in 2025, it’s clear that the trade group representing small and independent brewers is at a crossroads as it approaches 2025.
Pease’s retirement, as well as the impending departure of SVP of meetings and events Nancy Johnson – who is slated to leave at the end of the year – leaves the BA’s board of directors capable of replacing not just its professional leadership, but also of altering the organization’s direction.
BA watchers know how important events are to the organization as the trade group’s largest income source by far. But revenue declined 2% YoY in 2023, dipping to $13.886 million – on the heels of several canceled events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Event attendance, long a signal of an industry on the rise, has waned in the post-pandemic world. The trade group has eliminated SAVOR, its beer and food pairing event, put Homebrew Con on hiatus in favor of adding homebrewing elements to other events, and cut one session from the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), its biggest consumer-facing event.
So the board will decide whether its new leadership will be tasked with reversing these trends, or taking a different tack to energize the organization. Membership is also in need of a boost: In 2023, the BA’s membership revenue, its second-largest revenue driver, also recorded a 2% decline YoY, to $4.268 million.
Pease exits with a significant number of accomplishments. He created and grew the Export Development Program to introduce American craft beer to markets overseas. He helped shepherd through the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act in 2017, cutting excise taxes for brewers, and then helping make those cuts permanent. Under Pease, the trade group’s presence grew as a lobbying entity in Washington, D.C. He also led the organization through its largest boom period in the 2010s, including peak years for most craft breweries, and steered it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are now nearly 10,000 craft breweries in operation across the U.S. Last year, craft held a 13% share of the beer industry’s volume and a 24% share of dollars. However, craft never reached the lofty goal of a 20% share of volume by 2020. In fact, last year, craft recorded its first volume decline in a non-COVID year.
For all of the gains the industry made during his tenure, Pease also exits with craft brewing’s next steps unclear. Many small craft breweries are struggling. Consumer demand has waned. Craft retail sales are in the red. Draft – where craft overindexes – hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. Distributors and retailers are looking beyond craft to fill their trucks and shelves.
From appearances, Pease has worked to make the organization friendlier to women and people of color, but those efforts aren’t without critics.
Under his leadership, the BA appointed its first diversity, equity and inclusion ambassador, Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, and later hired her full-time as director of social impact. The BA has instituted a successful mentorship program, managed by Jackson-Beckham, to help new members, particularly those from underrepresented groups, hone skills and network.
The BA has also taken steps to guide its members toward maturity. In 2017, Pease announced a new policy to prohibit breweries with beer names or labels deemed offensive from using the BA’s intellectual property should they win awards during GABF or the World Beer Cup.
Following reports of racist harassment faced by employees at some member breweries, the BA developed a code of conduct in 2020 requiring members to “contribute to a positive environment that is free of hostile and offensive behaviors; i.e. free from harassment,” as well as an enforcement procedure that could include expulsion. The same code and review process was pointed to in 2021 as a way for people to report harassment amid the industry-wide reckoning with misogyny spurred on social media that summer. Some critics argue the system is toothless, with few real consequences for misbehavior.
A new CEO will inherit an organization with many issues, as well as a big-tent-party membership whose size and needs vary greatly – and some teetering on the brink of an existential crisis.
Craft’s core drinker base – Gen X and millennial white men – is aging. The industry hasn’t done enough to welcome women and people of color. And industry ownership and leadership remains vastly white and male, giving potential new drinkers almost no self-reflection to attract them.
The BA board has retained search firm Kittleman & Associates to run the search process, allowing the board to do its diligence and gauge interest from external candidates.
Should the BA look internally, the clubhouse leader may be Bart Watson, the BA’s long-time chief economist and recently promoted VP of strategy. Watson has been a key force within the BA. He’s a popular figure and industry advocate with outsized knowledge of the industry’s issues.
BA senior director of federal affairs Katie Marisic should also not be overlooked. Marisic is often hailed as one of the top lobbyists on Capitol Hill and was a key figure in the passage of the excise tax cuts.
Regardless of the choice, the new leader will have to work with the BA Board to recapture momentum – or to slow declines – in an environment in which craft’s massive growth chapters seem to be in the rearview. The next segment of the story awaits.