On-Premise and At-The-Brewery Trends

Everything’s bigger in Texas and America’s oldest brewery is hoping that beer sales will be too. This fall, the Lone Star State will be the first new market to receive D.G. Yuengling & Son beer as part of the Pennsylvania brewery’s joint venture (JV) with Molson Coors Beverage Company, the companies announced in a press release.

Popular Vermont craft brewery Hill Farmstead is going into hibernation in mid-January and will halt production and cease retail sales until late March.

On-premise retail sales will not rebound to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson shared yesterday in a webinar for members of the trade group. “The on-premise is not fully going to recover next year,” he said.

As COVID-19 cases spike, California has enacted a new regional stay home order that went into effect Sunday night and affects 85% of the state’s population. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new system that would trigger regional stay home orders when hospitals’ projected intensive care unit capacity dips below 15%. That threshold was met Sunday in the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions.

2020 will see Captain Pabst’s final voyage. Pabst Brewing Company announced yesterday that the Captain Pabst Pilot House, its Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based brewery, taproom and event space, will permanently close on December 21.

Boston area brew-your-own beer and brewpub Hopsters lost its bid to prevent a court-appointed trustee from converting its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to Chapter 7 liquidation during a hearing Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the District of Massachusetts.

The Tampa, Florida area will soon have another tourism destination with ties to an American beer dynasty when D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. expands its Tampa campus.

Anxious viewers of election coverage on CNN or Fox Business last week might have seen a commercial encouraging them to join its “Saucy Posse” and become an investor in Cleveland, Ohio-headquartered Saucy Brew Works.

Two more popular craft breweries have announced that their taprooms will be hibernating this winter as colder weather makes outdoor service infeasible, and COVID-19 cases continue to rise nationwide. Chicago-headquartered Revolution Brewing and Canton, Massachusetts-based Trillium Brewing both said this week that they will be temporarily shuttering their locations for on-premise service through the winter.

Pacific Northwest-based hospitality and brewpub chain McMenamins has launched the second phase of its investment drive as it seeks to raise as much as $15 million from accredited investors. Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Titletown Brewing is seeking a new owner or investors due to the COVID-19 pandemic hampering sales.

Dexter, Michigan-based Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales has opened a new cafe and brewery in East Lansing, Michigan, the company’s ninth location. Uinta Brewing’s new pub at Salt Lake City International Airport marks its first offsite expansion since opening in 1993. Brooklyn, New York-headquartered Other Half Brewing opened its third brewery and taproom in Washington, D.C., last week.

Craft brewers’ sales improved during the third quarter of 2020, but are still far off from where they were in 2019, according to a new analysis by Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson. Combining several datasets tracking on-premise sales, Watson found that Q3 sales fell 22% below baseline, a marked improvement over Q2’s 45% below baseline.

Tourists and a pandemic don’t mix. Salem, Massachusetts-based Notch Brewing announced Wednesday that it would close its biergarten for on-site service beginning Friday through November 1, as its hometown faces a deluge of tourists in the lead up to Halloween.