The joys of FOMO...

It's with an odd nostalgia for not so long ago that I'm sitting here, waiting to write up the last of today's releases, thinking a bit about Beer for a change, and also thinking back to the halcyon days of the craft beer scene and the madness that surrounded some product launches. Last night we had a slight flashback to those days, complete with lines selling out in minutes rather then hours or days, customers upset that they had missed out on specific beers, and the Jolly Good website generally under some pressure with loads of users all trying to basket and check out the same product at the same time...

West Coast, No Coast, Mountain IPA, NEIPA, DIPA, TIPA, Impy Stout, Milkshake Stout, Pastry Stout, Sour, Lambic... whichever you preference of hype beer, we've had it, sold it and probably even enjoyed drinking a few of them, but its a momentary blip, you cannot build a sustainable business on the back of that kind of excitement, because inevitably the consumer base isn't as excited about it after your 20th drop, and these occasions when they can't bear not to have your beer get further and further apart.

And it got me to thinking about Breweries and what was a sustainable structure. A lot of people have bought a lot of stainless steel on the back of this market, partly believing their own hype, and have expanded breweries wildly on the back of consumer demand, especially during lockdown for cans of exciting beers. What we start to see now though is a realisation that what was 'hey great, we sell everything we can make straight away' eventually due to increased capacity or consumer burnout becomes 'why don't they want our beers anymore' as the hype bandwagon inevitably rolls on to the next thing that people haven't had before, and the guys who built huge capacities to satisfy momentary demand now have to find ways to sell to a market that is more or less indifferent to them now there is a new cooler kid...

Those guys who were selling out merely by posting their latest on the website and waiting for it to evaporate into the frenzy of waiting uberfans are now looking about and wondering how this beer sales thing really works, when it all used to be so easy...

I was also thinking a bit about new brewers, Phil our spreadsheet consigliere bought some beers from a new brewery, one that is brewing non-mainstream styles like a Bretted 80/- and we were discussing how we could work with someone like that, the answer sadly being that we probably can't, as the turnover and volumes probably aren't sufficient to cover the overhead costs of bringing it in, putting it online and selling it out to our customers. The obvious route for them is to make direct sales to the public at lovely retail margins, and hope that they can gather sufficient enthusiasts of their leftfield products to sustain them.

where of course these two trains of thought meet is when the guy happily brewing his fan beers wants to become a guy who has people to dig out the mash tun for him, and to drive the van and do the accounts, when he wants to make the transition to seeing his beers in pubs and bottle shops further afield. What he needs is an exit strategy, a point at which his brewery is large enough to sell on to a third party and essentially cashes in those big stainless vessels and their content for a comfortable retirement. What he really needs is a sales strategy that moves enough beer to catch someone's attention to be that buyer, which means that the direct sales to the consumer model becomes part of a mix, not the whole bundle itself.

What he actually needs, is a core range. a set of beers that best represents the heart of his business to the consumer, that they can recognise and ask for, and that they will drink multiple servings of in an evening so that the Publican wants to retain that beer on his bar for the next week, and hopefully the ones after that. In essence the thing that enables growth from FOMO monger to happy retiree along the road of profitable business is having a series of beers that sell well to the mainstream(ish) market on a week to week basis, Specials are nice and all, but they have a shelf-life quite literally, and when you special isn't so special it quickly becomes a problem.

So yes, its a good way to start, getting a lot of excitement behind your brand, selling direct to consumer, and going to a lot of events to confirm your Rock Star status, but eventually its solid, well made, and recognisable that will sustain you, and you are probably going to need friends to help you with that...Don't forget that you'll still need to sell beer once the fuss dies down.