Are Craft Brewery Acquisitions And Consolidations Now The New Normal?

What was once the occasional ‘big announcement,’ that some brewery was being acquired by another, has become increasingly common. And we find that growing normality to be an ominous trend.

Just this week there were two big acquisition announcements.

Michigan-based Short’s Brewing announced that they’d sold almost 20% of their company to Lagunitas, who earlier in the year had sold its remaining stake of their brewery to Heineken.

Also this week, Brooklyn Brewery announced that they’d invested (read: purchased) an undisclosed stake in both San Leandro California’s 21^st Amendment and Ft Collins, Colorado’s Funkwerks, as part of the effort to form a national craft beer sales and distribution platform.

Over the last couple of years, the most concerning trend has been Big Beer’s craft acquisitions.

AB InBev now holds 10 craft beer properties in the states – a portfolio that includes Goose Island, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Elysian, Golden Road, Four Peaks, Breckenridge Brewery, Devils Backbone, Karbach Brewing and most recently Wicked Weed (a loss that still stings).

MillerCoors is also in the craft brewery acquisition game. Their current state-side crafty portfolio consists of four onetime independents including Saint Archer, Terrapin, Hop Valley and Revolver Brewing.

It’s almost like you need an ACQUISITION SCORECARD to keep up with all the activity. Let alone get into all the venture capital companies with money in breweries like Dogfish Head, StillWater, Southern Tier and Victory Brewing.

AB InBev’s left-of-center acquisition plays are also increasing and reaching into uncharted waters like the homebrewing industry and craft beer media outlets

We took pause when AB InBev’s ominously tagged “global disruptive growth group” ZX Ventures invested in ecommerce homebrewing supplier Northern Brewer, last year.

And things got even more concerning when ZX announced that they’d be funding a new young-end Conde Nast craft beer publication called October. And when it was discovered that Anheuser-Busch had acquired a minority stake in RateBeer, we can’t say we were entirely surprised…

Clearly the craft beer industry has entered a brave new era, and it’s one that we’re not loving that much.

Craft beer has entered a time when defensive alignments such as the Brooklyn Brewing/21^st Amendment/Funkwerks agreement have become a necessity. And that necessity has become the new normal for on craft breweries who hope to survive in the shadow of global beer companies intent on consuming craft beer properties and co-opting its media.

So have craft brewery acquisitions and consolidations now become the new normal?

Do we even have to ask?