Breweries look to crowlers during pandemic
In the age of the coronavirus, a peculiar star is shining over the craft beer industry: the crowler.
A crowler is a 32-ounce can, filled to order onsite at many brewpubs and sold as beer togo. Now, with brewpubs, bars and restaurants suspending all service except for takeaway orders, many small breweries have ramped up their use of crowlers as one of the only ways to sell beer and legally get it out the door.
“We have definitely been leaning on our crowler machine to get us through,” says Joe Tachis, co-owner of Indian Valley Brewing Co. in Novato. Here, sales are way down, with most employees furloughed indefinitely. To sell beer, Indian Valley is offering crowler service from 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends.
Even local restaurants, though similarly relegated to takeout-only, have incorporated crowlers of Indian Valley’s Beer into their service, Tachis says.
Many, many more breweries have ramped up their crowler service. In fact, one industry source said that wholesale suppliers have been running short of crowler cans thanks to the heightened demand.
For breweries that distribute most of their beer to grocery stores, crowlers and other takeaway beer service, including growlers, aren’t especially necessary.
But, for the multitude of small breweries that sell all or most of their beer on draft, either onsite at the brewpub or through other bars and restaurants, the coronavirus shutdown has really hurt. For such breweries, crowlers and growlers have emerged as a way to survive.
Under business-as-usual circumstances, selling beer strictly on draft is rather profitable. Though it limits the total volume of beer that can be made and sold, it puts a higher percentage of cash directly back into the business by eliminating the hassle, expense, middlemen and competition of delivering beer to supermarkets.
But abruptly, beer on draft, enjoyed from a glass at the pub where it was made, has become a thing of the past, at least for now. The cessation of eating and drinking in crowded public spaces will be a key strategy in slowing the spread of the coronavirus, and this weird new normal will almost certainly last for months — maybe a year or more as researchers develop a vaccine.
For breweries whose beer does not reach stores, it’s going to be a challenging time. Many will likely go out of business.
But creative adaptations could pull them through. Beyond using crowlers, many breweries are doing a variety of things to keep the beer flowing and the cash moving. At least one brewery we’ve heard about was seen selling beer in mason jars (crowler machines are expensive). Others, cashing in on a new market opportunity, have been distilling their beer down into highly concentrated ethyl alcohol, now in demand as a virus-killing handcleaner.
One local brewpub (whose owners couldn’t be reached for comment) that relies entirely on draft sales reportedly has installed a new canning line (not the same thing as a crowler machine) to put its own beer in four-packs and sixpacks.
East Brother Beer usually sells almost 70% of its beer at its Point Richmond brewpub, as well as bars and restaurants that serve the brewery’s beer on draft.
“Two-thirds of our sales have gotten wiped out,” says Mill Valley resident and co-owner Rob Lightner.
Throughout the brewing community, hope is strong that community support, now and later, will carry breweries through the crisis.
Tachis, at Indian Valley, calls the neighborhood rallying that he’s seen “a silver lining” through the coronavirus ordeal.
“The support from our community has been heartwarming,” he says. “These people and other small businesses in our community have been so supportive, showing up on a regular basis to buy our beer. … They have all taken it upon themselves to make sure we survive.”
Alastair Bland’s Through the Hopvine runs every week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.