I listened to The Full Pint Podcast recently while down in Tucson about their 2022 year end episode with predictions about the craft beer scene for 2023. Some of the main topics they discussed were 1) Beer Festivals are goings away, no profit for the breweries 2) hard to make money today running a new brewery 3) Memberships and super pricey special release beers from breweries will not sell like they used to. There are no "whales" anymore, nothing is special anymore. This culminated with the demise of Modern Times, whereby their special club membership has essemntially died off when the brewery crashed and burned.
I hit 4 breweries in Tucson on a Saturday afternoon and I would say they were all pretty much dead. There were people there but still overall pretty slow. Seems like it would be tough to turn a profit with so many breweries in so many cities. Maybe there will be a consalidation of brands and we will see fewer breweries soon? Who knows but I could see this happening.... What do you think??
My friend who co-owns a recently opened nano-brewery here in NC would certainly concur that it is very hard to turn a profit! That said, it seems to me that those breweries big enough to build a strong regional only footprint are doing better than those who have tried to "go big" nationally. I remember how excited I was when I first saw Modern Times hit the shelves here in NC, but then how disappointed I was when I saw the freshness date on the can! Much easier to get super-fresh beer from one of the local or regional breweries.