Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

  • Home
  • About
  • Editorial
  • Birthdays
  • Art & Beer

Socialize

  • Dribbble
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Powered by Head Quarters Built on WordPress
You are here: Home / Uncategorized / Southeast Showing Greatest Craft Beer Growth

Southeast Showing Greatest Craft Beer Growth

February 28, 2008 By Jay Brooks

In a story related to the news that craft beer growth was up 12% last year over the previous year, the southeast region of the country — including the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina — showed sales growth of almost 32%, the highest percentage in the nation. The sales figures used are from five types of retail locations: grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, big box retailers (warehouse stores, club stores, etc.), and liquor stores. The data was complied by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) for a presentation to the Brewers Association last week.

Another interesting tidbit: seasonal beers are now the best-selling segment of beer, having eclipsed that of Pale Ale, which previously held the top spot.

 

Here are the geographic areas listed by their growth rate:

  1. Southeast = 31.6%
  2. Great Lakes = 28.1%
  3. Mid-South = 25.6%
  4. Plains = 20.8%
  5. Northeast = 19.1%
  6. South Central = 16.5%
  7. California = 13.7%
  8. West = 7.2%

 
Some additional observations.

1. Notice that there are seven states where beer cannot be purchased at grocery stores and the like.

2. What happened to Hawaii and Alaska?

3. Three of the regions showed growth of more than 25%

4. Only one region, the West (excluding California) was below 10% which suggests that craft beer is growing virtually everywhere and is not limited to small pockets of the country.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Uncategorized



Comments

  1. Red says

    February 28, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    I have a tough time reconciling these numbers. How is it that seven of eight regions in the country have a growth rate above 13% yet the national average for craft beer growth works out to be 12%? Are Alaska and Hawaii experiencing such dramatic declines that they’re dragging the rest of the national average down? Not likely.
    Sorry, but I’m going to exercise my right to not believe everything I read on the internet. This one doesn’t add up.

  2. J says

    February 28, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    Red,

    Far be it for me to dissuade you from not believing everything you read, but there is a good reason why the numbers “don’t add up” and that’s because they shouldn’t. The data from this chart is sales information collected by IRI and only in certain kinds of stores. It does not nor is it meant to reflect all beer sales nationwide. IRI data can only give a snapshot that is useful insofar as it shows trends within a certain segment of retail stores. It’s usefulness is limited but I thought it was an interesting picture to look at. The other 12% average came from the Brewers Association, who polls all member breweries and also uses other kinds of statistics on national sales data to compile their estimates. I probably wasn’t clear enough about that, but it’s apples and oranges, two different pictures both showing good, positive growth of craft beer. But because they’re collected differently, using different information they will never match up the way you’d like. Sorry abut the confusion.

  3. Red says

    February 29, 2008 at 8:08 pm

    Okay, got it. The data is selective for bottled beers in particular retail niches. But those numbers are still so widespread and high that some other factor must be an effective counterweight pulling overall growth rates down to 12%. Slack draught sales?

  4. Robert says

    March 12, 2008 at 7:31 am

    The regions with high double digit increases (ie S. East) are coming late to the craft movement and are measured against a much smaller volume base than those showing “lower” trends. For example the western region….includes craft strongholds WA & OR where craft exposion occurred years ago and the volume (or market share base) of craft segment is much higher than rest of the country.

    Better measurement of relative growth and development would use craft share of total beer category.

    Also as J notes, this is grocery store data only, no on premise, no draft. Additionally in many states the c-store or liquor store channels are more dominant for beer as a whole. We also know that crafts skew much higher in Liquor channels.

    Finally, one thing in common across the states with big black X’s…grocery stores there sell only 3.2% (4%abv) beers.

    Cheers!

  5. Mic Lemi says

    January 23, 2009 at 7:50 am

    So this is only grocery stores and doesn’t include liquor stores? Someone mentioned that the West already had a craft beer explosion years ago, hence the small growth recently. I wonder if that is the case with the Northeast (where I reside) since we have quite a few micro-breweries as well as Sam Adams. What does anyone else think?

Find Something

Northern California Breweries

Please consider purchasing my latest book, California Breweries North, available from Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore.

Beer Bulletin Email

Enter your email address to receive daily digests:

Recent Comments

  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Lucy Corne on Beer Birthday: Lucy Corne-Duthie
  • Kendall Staggs on Beer In Ads #4341: Miss Rheingold 1955 Filling Yuletide Requests

Recent Posts

  • Beer In Ads #4394: Brooklyn Girl Is Named Miss Rheingold 1957 March 28, 2023
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Jaromír Vejvoda March 28, 2023
  • Historic Beer Birthday: August Anheuser Busch, Jr. a.k.a. Gussie Busch March 28, 2023
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Frederick Pabst March 28, 2023
  • Beer In Ads #4393: New Miss Rheingold 1957, Margie McNally March 27, 2023

Tag Cloud

Advertising Anheuser-Busch Announcements Bay Area Belgium Brewers Association Brewing Equipment Budweiser Business California Christmas Europe France Germany Guinness Health & Beer History Holidays Hops Humor Infographics Kegs Law Mainstream Coverage Miller Brewing Northern California Pabst Packaging Patent Pennsylvania Press Release Prohibitionists Rheingold San Francisco Schlitz Science Science of Brewing Sports Statistics The Netherlands UK Uncategorized United States Video Washington

The Sessions

session_logo_all_text_1500

Next Session: Dec. 7, 2018
#142: One More for the Road
Previous Sessions
  • #141: Future of Beer Blogging
  • #140: Pivo
  • #139: Beer & the Good Life
  • #138: The Good in Wood
  • #137: German Wheat
Archive, History & Hosting

Typology Tuesday

Typology-png
Next Typology:
On or Before March 29, 2016
#3: Irish-Style Dry Stout
Previous Typologies
  • #2: Bock Feb. 2016
  • #1: Barley Wine Jan. 2016
Archive & History

This month’s posts

March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Feb    

BBB Archives

Go to mobile version