Other Half Brewing is used to large growth targets, posting double-digit volume growth nearly every year since its inception in 2014, according to data from the Brewers Association (BA).
In 2025, the Brooklyn, New York-based craft brewery is aiming for more slow and controlled growth, co-founder and chief commercial officer Andrew Burman shared with Brewbound.
“We used to be able to rely on a line around the block of 500 people every Saturday – it made life a lot easier,” Burman said. “Now it’s focusing on how do we make every little thing a little bit better. There’s a lot more internal focus than it once was.”
Last year, Other Half produced 39,431 barrels of beer, an 11% increase from 35,500 barrels in 2023, according to the BA. This year, the brewery is still around 40,000 barrels, targeting single-digit growth. The company plans to add another two thousand barrels to its output over the next few years as it maximizes its facilities’ capacity.
“As a mature company, we’re looking at a couple percentage points growth,” Burman said. “We’re not looking for the 10% growth, 20% growth everyone’s had [before].”
Year-to-date (YTD) through August 9, Other Half’s off-premise dollar sales are up 1.8% in NIQ-tracked channels, while volume, measured in case sales, is about flat (-0.1%), according to data shared by 3 Tier Beverages. Trends accelerated in the summer, with dollar sales (+12.5%) and volume (+9.5%) both well-outpacing industry trends in the last four weeks.
The brewery’s total business – including operations at its eight own-premise locations across New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. – has been more of a “mixed bag” this year, Burman said.
“I was talking to a couple other breweries a month or two ago, and they were just basically breaking even,” Burman added. “We’re trying to tread water a little bit.”
While some of Other Half’s locations have a steady stream of visitors, others – such as its Bloomfield and Canandaigua, New York, taprooms in the Finger Lakes region – have seen less tourism than historically expected.
“The hardest part about any of the locations is that each consumer and each demographic is slightly different – what they want, what they want to see and what people are buying to go and what people are drinking on-premises,” Burman said.
The recent momentum changes are likely due to larger macroeconomic factors that are plaguing the total bev-alc industry, including inflation, tariffs and a strained relationship between the U.S. and Canada, with the latter deterring many of New York’s Northern neighbors from visiting. With most factors out of craft breweries’ control, Other Half is focused on what they can influence, such as tightening up its internal operations and trimming SKUs.
“It all has changed a lot,” Burman said. “We used to live and die on double IPAs, and now we’re much more diverse and have many more styles.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Other Half was releasing new beers every two weeks, constantly trying to innovate and offer more to consumers. Now, about 40% of its volume is five SKUs, led by flagship Green City hazy IPA (7% ABV), Burman said. The brewery’s total SKUs, including taproom offerings, have been trimmed from about 500 to 300, with more cuts expected.
“We still do a great amount of individual beers, but it’s trying to focus the innovation into stuff that is replicable,” Burman said, referring to a beer brand’s ability to be extended into other offshoots.
“Like how do you make a single beer into a series so that it actually can fill up a portfolio slot?” Burman continued. “Because a single beer is nice, but if you can make 30 barrels of it once a year, what does that really matter? You need to move some volume.”
Additionally, Other Half has made sure anything in market is supported with a dedicated sales team and collaborative distribution partners. Burman noted that having “really great relationships” with wholesalers is more vital to craft breweries than ever before.
“We’ve really opened up as many different avenues as we can to make beers as easy as possible to get,” Burman said. “We ship, we have all these taprooms, we get into the stores and we really try to make sure that the barrier to entry is really low.”
Other Half isn’t completely halting innovations, experimenting with products beyond beer, such as THC beverages. However, the company has learned that those segments don’t work everywhere or with all consumers. While its OH2 Chill THC-infused seltzers work well in Upstate New York, consumers in New York City “do not understand it whatsoever,” Burman said. So the brewery has made sure to consistently remember “what’s the why” behind any of its extensions.
“It’s really going to be interesting to see how you can as a brewery diversify without leaving who you are,” Burman said. “If we’re able to put effort and passion towards something, we’re usually pretty successful.
“I could make a tequila brand and mezcal, if that’s what we love and what we want to do,” he added. “But do I have enough time? Can I take the focus away from the 40,000 barrels of beer to sell 1,000 cases of tequila? No.”
Burman also warned craft breweries against getting into segments or categories just because they’re hot with consumers right now, such as spirits-based ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs). While the segment may be sticky with consumers, breweries still need to evaluate whether they can provide a better or new product compared to what already exists.
“RTDs are a race to the bottom, and they’re gonna look at your brand that has two-year-old whiskey in it as an Old Fashioned, and they’re gonna look at somebody else’s that’s half as much [price wise] and older … they’re gonna go with that other one,” he said. “Brand affinity only takes you so far.”
At its taprooms, Other Half is expanding what it offers consumers beyond the liquid itself, drawing from Burman’s hospitality experience.
“As the industry matured, now everybody’s sort of in the same boat, where you’re more like a restaurant/bar than you were before, and you’re looking at how do I get check averages up and how do I make sure people are greeted properly,” Burman said.
Other Half has also reevaluated how it communicates with consumers, new and O.G.s. For the latter, the brewery has invested in direct marketing and emails, which help give loyal fans “what they want” – insights into what the brewery is doing and a feeling of community, Burman said.
“Instagram is not a great way to communicate with your audience over and over again,” he said. “It might cater to a broader audience, but it doesn’t to your diehards that want an email and want to see what’s going on and want to see what’s coming next.”
For connecting with new consumers, Other Half does look to social media. However, the company is prioritizing “showing” what the brewery’s mission is and what it provides, rather than “telling,” Burman said.
“You have to be constant and show how it is, instead of just being like, ‘We care,’” Burman said.
With all the industry changes, Other Half hasn’t lost faith that craft beer will come back around with consumers. While Burman warned craft breweries against “sugar coating” the state of their businesses, he said there are positive signals already popping up.
“More West Coast beers are coming back, and not as a nostalgia hit,” Burman said. “They’re good beers, and people like them and they’re going back to that.”
Burman noted that Other Half went from producing “30 random barrels” a year of its West Coast IPA Green Flowers (6.8% ABV), to adding the offering to its core lineup and onto its production schedule every other week.
Green Flowers is up triple digits YTD in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels (dollar sales +150.9%, volume +164.7%), with double-digit gains in the last four weeks (dollar sales +31.9%, volume +37.2%), according to data from 3 Tier Beverages.
“It’s a hard world to live in,” Burman said of the state of craft. “I’m just really interested to see how things change in the next couple years.
“But I also have faith that it’ll come back,” he continued. “It’s about how do we keep moving forward on those little incremental things?
“We’re trying to figure out what’s working, and what to focus on, and what we can make better. Is it the same that it was five years ago? No. And it won’t be the same in five years from now. What we’re really trying to see is what’s the tumultuous nature of what’s going on right now? How do we sort of adapt and tread water for a little bit and then see where the next trends are coming and what people want.”