Bars are back
Beer makers feel good about future traffic
Milwaukee-area brewers are working hard to get their sales back to pre-pandemic levels.
While Milwaukeeans are excited to be out, beer sales in the brew city have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. But brewers are staying positive.
“We had a lot of tough times over the last several months and have been coming back quickly. It’s been going shockingly well,” said Andrew McGuire, Molson Coors’ Great Lakes region vice president. “It’s upwards of 80 to 90% of where it was. People are out again. People are fired up.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic closed bars and restaurants, breweries saw beer sales drop anywhere from 15% to 25%, according to various brewery owners.
The on-premise sales stalled when bars and restaurants were closed or opened at a lesser capacity. Off-premise sales at grocery stores stayed strong, but people having fewer at-home gatherings also led to lower sales.
“We’re still about 10% down from 2019,” said Henry Schwartz, chief executive officer of MobCraft Brewery. “A lot of our traffic coming into downtown is just starting to return.”
In Wisconsin year to date, Miller Lite and Blue Moon are up 10%, Coors Light is up nearly 15%, Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy is up over 30%, and Vizzy is up 162% as interest in seltzers has spiked in the last few years, according to numbers provided by MolsonCoors.
Compared with 2019, MolsonCoors is doing about 75% of the volume in 2021.
Some brands, like Blue Moon and Summer Shandy, perform better at bars, according to McGuire.
“They took a hit last year. Luckily they grew pretty well in the stores,” he said. “I was honestly pretty nervous, but they are coming back strong. Leinenkugel’s is holding in retail and the on-premise is skyrocketing.”
Filling some tap lines with new drinks
Russ Klisch, president and owner of Lakefront Brewery, said Lakefront hasn’t seen as many people come into the taproom, plus tours are at a smaller capacity.
“We were able to make more beers, we just didn’t have the crowd in here like you used to,” Klisch said.
On top of that, Klisch has noticed that his on-premise clients aren’t filling all their tap lines.
“People are playing it safe. If they have 16 lines, they are only filling 12 of them,” Klisch said.
His client Sugar Maple is filling 44 of its 60 draft lines with beer, and trying new drinks in the rest of the tap lines. Sugar Maple now is serving tap wine, tap cocktails and tap non-alcoholic sodas and kombuchas.
“For me, it definitely is pandemic related,” said Adrienne Pierluissi, owner of Sugar Maple. “I’ve had the idea to change it up for a while. I firmly believe craft beer will be around forever, but I wanted to see more people of color and different age groups. I needed to have something for everyone.”
Pierluissi still favors small, local breweries for her tap lines. She likes to get a nice clean crisp beer, like a lager, but she listens to brewers’ input and customers if she hears a request enough.
Her goal is to have something customers can’t find elsewhere.
For example, she’ll usually favor Lakefront’s My Turn series, which are experimental limited-release taps, over their well-known Riverwest Stein.
“I would sell the hell out of Riverwest, and something like Miller Lite, but I don’t have that,” Pierluissi said. “That’s not the type of place this is.”
While Sugar Maple doesn’t carry national brands, overall those brands are strengthening their share of tap handles.
Nationally, Miller Lite (+0.2%), Coors Light (+0.1), and Blue Moon (+0.2) are all growing share of tap handles, according to numbers provided by MolsonCoors.
It was a year of transitioning from focusing on selling kegs to cans, and back.
“We went through wild swings here,” McGuire said. “We had zero keg production for some time nationally.”
Then, they had to switch back and get keg production going for this postvaccination summer.
“Early on we thought people would go to package beer more since the pandemic,” McGuire said. “At the end of the day, I was incredibly eager to see that when people get back, many of their first choice is the draft beer.”
Brewers are doing what they can to keep their brand strong.
“Everybody’s coming back and we’re being upbeat with the whole thing, getting everything going again,” Klisch said. “We are just looking forward to the future.”
Jordyn Noennig covers Wisconsin culture and lifestyle. Follow her on Instagram @JordynTaylor_n. Find her on Twitter @JordynTNoennig. Call her at 262-446-6601 or email Jordyn.Noennig @jrn.com.