At-the-brewery pint prices have not kept pace with inflation, according to a recent report from Brewers Association staff economist Matt Gacioch.
The nationwide average price of a pint of beer was $6.05 in January 2021, according to data from point-of-sale provider Arryved cited by Gacioch. That average price “rose steadily” over three years to $6.85 in December 2023.
Although this increase amounted to +13.2%, when adjusted for inflation according to December 2023 rates, “the price of pints sold onsite did, in fact, drop since early 2021,” Gacioch wrote. Gacioch calculated average pint prices for the focus period by month using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consumer price index (CPI) both overall (CPI-U) and for food away from home, which includes alcoholic beverages.
“These declines in real terms demonstrate that pint prices are not keeping pace with inflation, even more pronounced in the food away from home category,” he wrote. “Yet, the price in real terms has remained mostly consistent since the end of 2022, indicating price adjustments are getting closer to the overall inflation rate.”
Using the CPI-U, the average price per pint in January 2021 would have been slightly more than $7.10 and nearly $7.30 using the CPI for food away from home. Both rates dropped fairly linearly until January 2023, when they began to flatten.
The rate of increase tracked in Arryved pint price data has mostly lagged behind the CPI-U and the CPI for beer away from home between January 2022 and December 2023. CPI-U led Arryved average pint price increases by at least 2 percentage points between January and October 2022.
“Essentially, what we see here is that brewery owners implemented as much in the way of price increases as they felt comfortable doing in the high inflationary period of 2022 but have slowed the increases as disinflation has occurred in the overall economy,” Gacioch wrote. “The lagging of pint price increases again demonstrates that onsite beer prices have not kept up with overall inflation.”
At the end of the focus period, CPI-U landed at slightly more than +3%, lower than both the CPI for beer away from home (nearly +5%) and Arryved pint prices (nearly +4%).
Breweries in only five states (California, Georgia, Virginia, Florida and Ohio) increased prices by more than the +8.6% increase the CPI-U took between March 2022 and March 2024. Two states (Tennessee and Kentucky) raised prices by less than 4% in the two-year period.