The continuing shuffle of acquisitions, mergers, and reorganization in the craft-beer industry has been a consistent attention grabber in recent years, as larger brewers seek means to grow their operations exponentially, smaller breweries consider their limited exit strategies, and big beer looks for a foothold in craft.
“You can’t help but notice the consolidation pressures,” says Doug Dayhoff, president of Indiana-based Upland Brewing Co., when asked to prognosticate on what we might see in the near future.
“There are some basic laws of business gravity that the brewing industry will ultimately conform to, one of which is that you can’t have an unlimited number of beers available for sale in the off-premise world and that those retailers have to have a return on their investment,” he says. “So, to the extent you’re going to be a packaging and distributing brewery, there is a finite universe of opportunity. Consumers will buy way more craft beer ten years from now than they do today—that’s the exciting part—but the laws of economics still apply.