Do you know what type of brewery you are?
Welcome to issue #3 of The WBB Playbook.
And hello 👋 to all the lovely new subscribers who have joined us this week.
I’m slightly concerned that this post may be controversial. Or I may be way off the mark. So do feel free to chime in with your thoughts if you disagree. My thanks to Dan Rowntree of Brew LDN, who helped to clarify the categories below.
Before we delve in though, a reminder that sharing is caring and I would love you all the more if you fancy sharing The WBB Playbook with anyone you think will enjoy it.
This week I’m asking this question to anyone who owns or works for a brewery:
Do you know what type of brewery you are?
This is important to consider because ultimately, it affects how you position your brand, how you develop your sales and marketing strategy and even how much money you’ll need to raise to meet your growth goals.
It also helps you stay focused on only doing the things (and brewing the beers) that actually make sense for your brewery.
The idea of different brewery types occurred to me last year as I was hired (yep, you can hire me 😉) to develop the sales & marketing strategy for an established brewery.
In order to build the most appropriate strategy, I needed to know how the brewery saw itself positioned in the wider marketplace. In fact, because this brewery was well established, the answer to the question ended up being more objective, and less about how they saw themselves.
But going through the process of consideration did force me to put down on paper what I see as being the three main types of brewery, which I’ll jump into below.
A couple of caveats before we get started.
Caveat #1: I’m mainly talking about what we might refer to as ‘modern’ craft breweries.
Caveat #2: I see these categories as interconnecting circles, or a spectrum.... you may start with one but move towards another as objectives change. You can be somewhere within more than one at any one time.
Brewery Type 1: Lifestyle First 🌱
General 🍺
These breweries are happy to remain small and dominate in local love.
The majority of their beer is sold via their own taproom in the form of can, cask and keg, with a small amount going out to local trade.
The bulk of production is typically core range, although seasonal and limited edition beers are important to keep punters interested throughout the year.
The quality of the beer should be good but locality is the key driver of brand love.
Sales / Awareness Strategy 📈
Sales ratio tends to be 70 : 30 - direct : trade/wholesale.
Awareness is built predominantly via the Taproom and by an active participation in the local community - i.e. sponsoring very localised fetes, sporting teams/events etc.
Marketing focus should be on direct mail (i.e. flyers through letterboxes), very locally targeted paid social media, local PR, sponsorship of key local events.
Messaging should focus heavily on locality as the key benefit - ‘Your local brewery’, ‘Beer brewed in the neighbourhood’, ‘Craft beer, without the miles’
Conclusion & Advice 🎓
This is the lifestyle brewery, where volumes are low and capped by the type of lifestyle the brewer wants.
Margins are high though, and the owner can make a good living.
Be comfortable staying small. Be comfortable taking a long term view.
Make it your mission to be at the centre of your community. Be everywhere, get involved with everything, and make sure you’d be missed if you ever shut down. Ultimately, that is the strongest moat you can build around yourself.
This route doesn’t suit breweries that have taken significant external investment.
Brewery Type 2: Product First
For a ‘product first brewery’, the product is everything.
Locality is not important for these breweries, indeed they often show up across the country.
Product first breweries can be split further into two categories, which we’ll deal with in turn.
PRODUCT FIRST TYPE A: HYPE 🔥
General 🍺
These breweries brew beers for people to geek out on and are good at creating hype around each release.
Examples of hype breweries include: Verdant, Wander Beyond, Deya, Pressure Drop, Neon Raptor etc.
They rarely have a core range as such, instead producing a huge number of one off releases throughout the year.
Volumes (per release) are low, margins are high, and the brewery can rest assured that they will almost always sell out of every batch right away.
Sales/Awareness Strategy 📈
The majority of sales happen via your own web shop & taproom, with small amounts going out to specialist trade.
Sales ratio tends to be 85 : 15 - direct : trade/wholesale
Two most important marketing channels are social (Instagram in particular) to build hype, and email to convert the hype into sales.
Marketing messaging focuses on two main things:
Going deep on the liquid itself - hops, processes, experimental ingredients and styles.
Supported by strong imagery
Conclusion & Advice🎓
This route is incredibly difficult to follow. What makes a brewery blow up in the hype stakes is a voodoo science and geeks are fickle. These breweries tend to only ever be one or two bad releases away from being shunned.
Invest in great brewers - hire the best of the best and pay them well.
Prioritise employing a great marketing person over a sales role.
Be comfortable spending a good chunk of money on the following:
Label Design - a new one needed for each beer, the more elaborate the better.
Great Photography - Instagram is your friend.
Someone with photoshop skills - enhanced imagery helps the hype to spread that bit further.
On the surface, this route doesn’t seem like one suited to significant external investment. However, we have seen in recent years several of these folks raise large amounts, albeit mainly via crowdfunding where hype is a useful component.
PRODUCT FIRST TYPE B: CONSISTENTLY RESPECTED 👌
General 🍺
These breweries are less concerned with following trends and brewing scores of limited editions. But they have a deserved reputation for making very high quality beers that people respect.
When people refer to these breweries, it is usually with reference to the product quality.
Examples of consistent product first breweries include: The Kernel, Siren, Burning Sky, Buxton etc.
Sales/Awareness Strategy 📈
The sales mix for this type of brewery is fairly evenly split between direct and trade/wholesale.
Sales ratio tends to be 50 : 50 - direct : trade/wholesale.
They are able to strike a balance, securing listings in both highly specialist as well as more mainstream outlets.
Most of their marketing messaging focuses on the product, highlighting it’s provenance, ingredients and quality.
Social media, strong Untapp’d ratings, beer festival appearances and tap takeover events are all strong marketing avenues.
Marketing and sales functions are split fairly evenly in importance in getting the brand out there.
Conclusion & Advice 🎓
It’s probably fair to assume that this is the brewery type that most modern breweries aspire to.
That said, with so many breweries now making very high quality beer, it is increasingly harder to stand out on this element alone.
Be comfortable being very good at a small number of things.
Be wary of bandwagons and don’t try to follow every trend. Remember it takes a lot longer to build up a reputation than it does to destroy one.
Evolve when the time feels right for you, not when you feel pressure externally.
Find ways to highlight the quality of your beer through (social) proof - be it awards, medals or Untapp’d reviews etc. And make sure you are showing off this proof wherever you can so consumers know you’re the boss.
↗️ Brewery Type 3: Brand First
General 🍺
These breweries usually establish themselves locally in the first instance but grow nationally via national listings in pubs and supermarkets.
Production is generally concentrated on core range, with around 80% of output being on 2-3 beers.
Whilst core range is decent quality, it is almost deliberately not too distinct from their competitive set.
Sales / Awareness Strategy 📈
The majority of sales are wholesale to trade, with just a small amount direct to consumer, usually via a taproom/DTC.
Sales ratio tends to be 70 : 30 - trade/wholesale : direct
Lower margins are offset by higher volumes, particularly if the brewery has secured permanent listings on keg lines and in supermarkets.
Because the beer itself is not overly distinctive, the awareness strategy has to centre around building the brand piece - AKA getting consumers to love the brand enough that they choose it over other similar brands.
The big three that stand out in beer are: Camden Town, BrewDog and Beavertown (although Northern Monk are hot on their heels).
All 3 of these brands build brand interest and love through experiential marketing and PR, rather than relying on their (tasty but unremarkable) beers.
Examples of this type of marketing include: Beavertown Ice Lollies (not sure if these were real or not but I think it still works), Camden Milk/Beer Float, BrewDog Golden Can Giveaway.
Brand first breweries are usually not targeting ‘craft beer natives’ and so will often meet the consumer in entirely new areas, such as at sporting or music events, workplaces or via tie ups with other brands in different sectors.
Not every brewery needs (nor can most afford) to match the above examples of experiential marketing but they can teach us all lessons about the importance of building brand love.
Making the investment into the brand side of the business in turn makes the sales job a whole lot easier at the other end.
Conclusion 🎓
This type of brewery requires significant investment to fund growth - both in production and brand.
Breweries that are heading down this path should think creatively about how they can build brand love even if they have a small budget.
Activations should be brand enhancing, so ensure when planning that any experiential marketing fits with your wider brand ethos.
Study how the bigger players in beer market their brands and apply lessons to your own.
Look outside of the beer world to the wider consumer goods industry for inspiration. Brands like innocent, Nike and Red Bull all serve as amazing brand building playbooks.
Ultimately, what I’ve outlined above is a simplified view of the beer world, and I’m aware there is plenty of nuance that couldn’t be included.
Every brewery is different and I’m sure there are many who don’t want to be pigeon holed.
At the same time though, taking the time to think about where your brewery sits on the spectrum is a useful exercise that should play in to your overall sales and marketing strategy.
Phew, that turned out to be longer than I’d expected! Well done if you made it to the end.
As ever, I appreciate you taking the time to read and if you did enjoy it, it would be fab if you could pass it on to one other person. I’m keen to build a great community of beer sales & marketing folk so the more the merrier.
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