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Comment by ibejoeb | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see what '23 the numbers look like before declaring it a contracting market. Sales by volume for the entire category are indeed down, but somewhere between 2-3%, and that is still likely attributable to the crash starting in 2020, when it was actually illegal to serve or even order beer in many places. (To this day, there are still aggressive measures taken against breweries, brewpubs, and taprooms, like this extrajudicial order that is crushing the business in New Jersey: https://www.nj.gov/oag/abc/downloads/LimitedBrewerySpecialCo....)

Still, imports are up, and regionals and crafts are up as a percentage of total beer. The small operations that weren't entirely destroyed are still in the process of coming back online. I'm not convince the empirical decline is the market at work and not external forces.

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If you are interested in the numbers, give Bart Watson a follow: https://twitter.com/BrewersStats

He's an economist that covers this for the Brewers Association. Based on the data, it's not looking good. Some of it is released in public reports and presos, others are member-only resources.

Here's a report from the TTB that shows the contraction:

https://www.ttb.gov/images/statistics/ttb-beer-2023-statisti...

Also, there are several industry talks that dive into the why...one factor seems to be that Gen Z just isn't drinking.

Oh my gosh. Section 1 of that about tours. What a ridiculous ordinance. I assume all this is in there to protect some other class of business that lobbied for it, right? Like bars trying to prevent breweries from competing?

Yeah. They nailed it, too:

"licensee may offer for sale or make gratuitous offer of de minimis types of food such as water" (2)

...but...

"licensee shall not brew and sell coffee" (7)

That is full de minimis lol.

There's multiple kinds of liquor licenses.

You can be a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol (retail consumption license).

You can also be a brewpub (restricted brewery license), which comes with production limits and requires the above.

You can be a brewery, which mostly makes and sells beer to retailers and distributors to consume elsewhere, but might have some tasting events (limited brewery license).

New Jersey strictly limits the number of liquor licenses of different types. Limited brewery licenses don't count against these limits: it's expected they're mostly selling their goods to other licensees.

It might be protectionism, but more likely it's just an effort to regulate alcohol that doesn't take into account the changes in the craft beer scene in the last couple of decades.

> more likely it's just an effort to regulate alcohol that doesn't take into account the changes in the craft beer scene in the last couple of decades.

This isn't a law. It's an order that was issued just 3 years ago.

A bill to undo it--which should not even be necessary given it's not legislation--was passed unanimously by both houses of the state legislature. The governor is sitting on it and hasn't commented.

> > effort to regulate alcohol

> This isn't a law.

Yes, this was why the word "regulate" was used.

> which should not even be necessary given it's not legislation

Lawmakers empower regulators to make ordinary rules without specifying every detail in laws. Sometimes lawmakers don't like what regulators do, though, and choose to exercise more direct oversight.

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