The State of the Craft Beer Industry: Challenges and Opportunities
We can look back at the 90s and 2000s as a golden age in craft beer. The streets were flowing with IPAs and amber ales while the sounds of Chumbawamba and the Backstreet Boys filled the airwaves… simpler times. In fact, there were periods in the 90s where the craft beer industry was seeing 20% year-over-year growth!
Fast forward to today and a more mature craft beer industry has run into some speed bumps. The pandemic hit the industry hard, leading to a 9% decrease in production growth. While the industry has rebounded nicely since then, there was still a 1% decrease in 2023 production as the overall beer market posted a 5% decrease, and the Brewers Association estimated a 2% year-over-year decline midway through 2024.
There are several possible reasons for this slow down – a general decline in alcohol consumption, an oversaturated market, competition from new canned cocktails and alternative alcoholic beverages, the rise of the cannabis industry, and of course, inflation and cost of goods.
So how do craft breweries find an edge in an increasingly difficult and competitive market? Just like restaurants, it’s not enough to simply offer great food, or beer in this case – breweries need to create a memorable brand and an experience for guests that keeps them coming back. There are a number of ways that can be achieved, and technology can play a significant role.
Digitize the Taproom Experience with Mobile Draft Tickets
Most restaurant and brewery operators are well aware of the benefits of self-service mobile and kiosk tech as a means for guests to place orders and payments. At a typical restaurant that offers these technologies, guests place their orders on their device or in-store kiosk, make a payment, the ticket is sent to the KDS, and guests pick up their order when their name is called.
However, when it comes to mobile ordering for breweries and/or bars, there’s another relatively untapped (😜 see what we did there?) use case for mobile and kiosk – self-service digital draft tickets. With this setup, customers purchase draft tickets through the brewery’s web app, on-site QR code, or via self-serve kiosk. They then show their QR code draft ticket to the bartender who scans it for redemption, choose their drink of choice, and enjoy. This removes the entire payment process from the staff’s workflow, allowing them to focus 100% on service. Removing a central payment terminal also eliminates bottlenecks (😜 another one!) in the line, which reduces wait times, creating a much more enjoyable experience for your guests.
On top of the operational benefits of a digital draft ticket system, offering your guests convenient digital touchpoints is another avenue to build your brand. The UX for these mobile ordering systems can be a lot more than just “click here to order.” Breweries can inject their brand’s personality into every digital interface through photos and other brand assets, beer descriptions, taglines, and even popups to promote new releases or upcoming events.
Boost Sales with Smart AI Upsell Suggestions
Our data shows that adding AI-powered upselling to your brewery’s mobile order and payment system is especially beneficial for craft beer operations – when you’re serving a customer base with discerning palates, upselling and cross-selling can be more than just your standard appetizer or combo meal add-on suggestions at checkout.
Certain beer styles and flavor profiles complement each other, while craft brew connoisseurs love food pairings with their beer. With smart upsell and cross-sell suggestions, your operation can input items that complement each other, combine that with AI analysis of individual customers’ past favorites, historical data of items frequently ordered together, the time of day, and even the weather, among other data points, and your online ordering platform will suggest the perfect add-ons or complementary beers.
After implementing CardFree’s Smart AI Upsell feature, one of our brewery partners saw a 3X increase in upsell adoption compared to standard upsell suggestions the brand offered previously.
Create Loyalty with Personalized Rewards
An engaging loyalty program is another powerful tool that can help build a brand and lasting customer relationships. Instead of simply offering freebies for rewards points, breweries can offer tiered benefits that make customers feel like insiders. Exclusive access to limited-edition beer releases or merch, members-only events, or early notifications for new releases are great ways to keep guests engaged with your brand.
Lazy Dog Restaurant and Bar, a beer-centric restaurant chain, took their loyalty program a step further with the Lazy Dog Beer Club. They’ve ditched the typical points system entirely, instead offering their guests a paid membership that delivers a ton of value for beer lovers. Beer Club members get a quarterly themed package of eight craft beers, a pint glass, monthly in-store beer samplers, $39 of dine-in credit, 10% off online orders and to-go beer, priority seating, and early access to rare beer releases.
Regardless of whether you offer a standard points system, tiered rewards, or a subscription club like Lazy Dog, it’s important that your program genuinely reflects your brand while delivering engaging and valuable rewards for your members.
RELATED ARTICLE: Tips for a Successful Loyalty Program
Share The Journey
Even when your operation is able to deliver a great product, amazing guest experience, and a strong rewards program, it’s still important for your customers to connect with your brand on a personal level. You can of course analyze your customer data and make use of marketing and engagement tools for personalized messages and timely offers or promotions – that’s a necessary part of marketing – but the great brands take the time to connect on a deeper level.
Take our partners, Tree House Brewing Company – the brand has grown from a nanobrewery operating out of a small barn in 2011 to one of the top independent breweries in the country, now boasting 6 tasting room locations. Through their amazing run, the Tree House team has done a great job of growing the brand online and sharing their journey, especially on Youtube.
Tree House started its Youtube channel in 2020, steadily growing their subscriber base to more than 42k as of the time of this writing. The brand shares a wide variety of videos on their channel, providing behind the scenes secrets, info on sourcing ingredients, announcements of new beer releases, tips for home brewers, blind taste tests, beer reviews, giveaways, and a lot more. The team is consistent with its content production, publishing new videos every week or so, racking up thousands of views for each.
While consistency is key, the main ingredient to Tree House’s digital marketing success is the fact that they’ve genuinely tapped into the craft beer community. There is, of course, a level of self-promotion involved, but most of the videos on the Tree House channel provide entertaining and educational content for beer enthusiasts as a whole, rather than simply serving as ads for the brand. The channel’s most popular video, for example, which has over 605k views, features Tree House’s head brewer doing a blind taste test of three standard domestic light lagers – Bud, Coors, and Miller. Giving notes on three of the most common domestic beers is not exactly what you’d expect from a regional craft brewery, but it’s something that appeals to a wide audience while displaying thought leadership and the brand’s personality.
Most of Tree House’s videos star co-founder and head brewer, Nathan Lanier, as he demonstrates a genuine passion for craft beer and a joy for sharing that passion with his audience. By placing their head brewer front and center while giving viewers a peak behind the curtain into craft brew ingredients, where they come from, tasting notes, and the hard work that goes into everything Tree House does, the brewery has successfully fostered a sense of connection and community around their brand.
While Tree House’s videos are professional quality, you don’t have to have a pro video team on hand to re-create their strategy – you can get started with as little as an iPhone, a tripod, and some free editing software. As long as your content is authentic and engaging while giving your audience some kind of informative or entertaining value, you’re on the right track.
Raise a Glass to Innovation
The craft beer industry may be facing some headwinds, but breweries that lean into innovation and prioritize the guest experience can turn challenges into opportunities. Whether it’s reducing wait times with mobile draft tickets, delighting guests with personalized upsell suggestions, or creating deeper connections through loyalty programs and storytelling, technology can provide a powerful toolkit to set your brewery apart.
At the end of the day, it’s about more than great beer — it’s about crafting connections. Use digital tools to make your brewery unforgettable, share your story, and build a loyal community that loves what you do. So, here’s to standing out, innovating, and raising the bar. Cheers!