About this episode

Bart Watson discusses the current state of the craft beer industry, addressing economic challenges and the importance of nuanced understanding.

If you’ve read any mainstream news coverage of craft beer over the past year, it’s likely you’ve seen something about the “death” of craft beer. The apocalyptic tones and pearl-clutching over the industry’s recent economic woes mostly lack context, often painting a complex and diverse industry with a single brush—yet the stories continue. In his recent State of the Industry presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia, Brewers Association president and CEO Bart Watson made an effort to acknowledge the real challenges facing the industry while also dispelling some of the more hyperbolic assertions often seen in popular media. In this episode, we unpack the data and arguments for a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the current state of craft beer. Through the episode, Watson discusses: the question of how many breweries the market can sustain how the long tail of breweries creates noisy data often not captured by industry analytics sectors where craft beer is growing the importance of investing in experience changing the narrative and capturing the breadth of craft beer today understanding who your customer is and what your value proposition should be the…

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