A Real Bad Month for Craft BPI

Dear Client:  The September Beer Purchasers' Index just hit, and it was a tough month for the category, at 31. Recall, for this measure of distributor ordering trends, anything under a “50” signals segment contraction. Beer’s composite score fell notably from the September ’23 reading of 45.  The NBWA, which releases the index, noted that the result revealed a “continued downshift in distributor sentiment.”  As bad as that composite score was, craft's showing was worse. The segment hit an index