Dear Client:
The Ohio Craft Brewers Association’s recent biennial economic impact study provided a look at just how brewers in the state fared in 2020, per the Cincinnati Business Courier. Quick spoiler: it was a tough year for brewers.
The study, conducted by Silverlode Consulting, found that the Ohio craft brewing industry’s total economic impact (both directly and indirectly) was $880.7 million for 2020, down from $967.1 million in 2018, about a $86 million decrease.
Beer production dropped 17% in the state between 2018 and 2020, as on-premise shutdowns undercut large revenue streams for local brewers. Despite having fewer avenues to sell their beer, the state’s craft brewers did manage to produce more than 1.2 million barrels of beer for the year.
“Craft breweries really struggled to weather the effects of the pandemic, and the fight isn’t over yet,” said the association’s executive director, Mary MacDonald in a release. “Emergency relief funds and targeted changes to laws and regulations helped many of our breweries survive, but small businesses need continued support if we’re going to see a successful recovery.”
Mary added that she also didn’t expect breweries to be back to normal until at least 2022.
As of February 2021, there were 357 craft breweries in the state, with 15 closing during the pandemic. Meanwhile, 73 new breweries are in the works, according to the report.
Members seem optimistic about the future, despite the long road to recovery. Seven out of ten respondents said they think production will increase in the next two years and half of respondents expect they will undergo an expansion in the same period.
HOW OWL’S BREW IS LEANING INTO FEMALE-FOUNDED STATUS
Last week we profiled fast-growing “boozy tea” brand, Owl’s Brew, which has grown triple digits and almost doubled its footprint (to 18 states) in the last year-plus, after a complete reformulation [see CBD 06-24-2021] from its former “radler” orientation.
In the latest 52 weeks (through 5/22/2021), Nielsen’s beer/malt database shows the company has done about $633,414 in sales. Not bad for a “new” entry.
But we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell the side of the story about Owl’s Brew leaning into its female-founded orientation.
Co-founder Jennie Ripps shared how they’ve leveraged the brand to create all sorts of gathering and empowerment platforms for women, including an official Boozy Book Club, with giant publisher, Random House.
“You know the statistics in beer: 96% of leadership in this category is male, 96% of the brewers and 96% of the sales force is male,” said Jennie. “We’ve actually had a great ride in this community. But [cofounder] Maria and I realized that we’re very much a minority. And rather than kind of ignore it, we thought it was important to kind of have a voice. We’ve learned a lot along the way. And the idea that we can have an impact in this community and kind of outside of the community became something really important to us.
WISE WOMEN COLLECTIVE… “So, we developed this program called the Wise Women Collective, and that just is now part of Owl’s Brew.” She describes the Collective as “basically a ‘women for women’ organization. And it goes beyond us being kind of unique in the category … it’s a place where we promote women gathering; we promote conversation; we have the ‘Boozy Book Club.’
“We just launched the Boozy Book Club in partnership with Random House, with author Lauren Weisberger, whose new book is “Where the Grass is Green And the Girls Are Pretty.” But who previously wrote “The Devil Wears Prada.” So on one level, it’s just about community and gathering. But then we do have our partnerships.”
They’re also partnered with Dress for Success, a nonprofit that helps women achieve economic independence through the donation of clothes and other tools.
“And then we also have a summer long partnership with retailer J. McLaughlin, where we’re actually holding events,” says Jennie. “And we’re either giving back to charities or promoting certain causes at those events. So it’s multi-layered. On the one hand, it’s about community.” But there’s also a charitable component.
CELEB CHIEF BRAND OFFICER JEANNIE MAI. Then, too, they just brought on a new Chief Brand Officer in Jeannie Mai, activist and co-host of the show, “The Real.”
“She has become very involved in our brand,” says Jennie. “She fell in love when she bought the tea at Whole Foods. And she was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe that this actually tastes good because that’s not always what happens when you taste something in a can.’ Then she reached out to us, and she’s become pretty involved with our Wise Women Collective as well.”
ON “DIRECT” SHIPPING AND DELIVERY. But besides the timely issue of female representation in brewing, we were also curious about another timely topic: shipping and delivery.
We asked Jennie about their strategy there, as their website features a “shop” where customers can order their products. (Note, the order payment processing and fulfillment “are facilitated through a 3rd party licensed liquor retailer,” so it’s not totally direct.)
“We do have direct to consumer and we’re able to ship to 32 states,” Jennie said. “But as shipping to multiple states can be expensive,” Jennie says, “we prefer to focus on the brick and mortar.” And they’re partnered with delivery services, “like Gopuff, TapRm, Drizly, Minibar. So we’ve seen a lot of success in those partnerships.”
At the end of the day, the majority of their business is driven by the retailers.
“I think that we definitely see a lot of business through people ordering, but I think those orders are actually flowing through the brick and mortar retailers for the most part. So I would say, the majority is through our chain retailers.”
Until tomorrow,
Harry, Jenn and Jordan
“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”
– James Bryant Conant
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