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RE: Craft Beer- The next big thing, or was it?
Assuming that there is available distribution there is certainly the market there for craft beer. I know the biggest issue down in here in Australia is not a lack of breweries as everyone wants to own a brewery is the outlets for the sales whether it's bottle shops (laregly controlled by a couple of big corporate players who like doing a single deal with AB Inbev) or bars/pub which again have contracts yo sell AB Inbev exclusively. What we need is more craft beer loving pubs/retailers, but thats a business much harder to scale up
I recently had a short visit to Australia (Ettalong Beach and Syndey) and it did seem that there were quite a few tied houses. It seemed like Lion? controlled the taps everywhere.
Are tap rooms a popular model in Australia or do the laws make it prohibitive? In the US, many breweries have become the "third place" and in some areas a brewery can thrive on tap room sales alone.
Breweries opening their own tap rooms is certainly a trend, there is definitely the business model of a brewery big enough to do the tap room and some small take away (growlers are problematic here due to weird tax laws so they are that popular), even the bigger craft breweries are opening tap rooms in their breweries, we haven't really seen the model you get overseas of the brewery with 5 or 6 tap rooms though, usually just the one and usually on site at the brewery.
Interesting. In the US, most places I’ve found are either entirely craft beer, or no craft at all and are exclusively AB InBev. Perhaps that will be the next step for Australia?