From beer boycotts, to alcohol consumers opting for ready-to-drink spirits and other products such as THC seltzers, 2023 was not a particularly kind year for beer consumption which hit the lowest level in the United States in a generation, according to be Beer Marketer's Insights, which said beer shipments were on track to fall below 200 million barrels since 1999.
The beer drinking decline doesn't come as a surprise for Fulton Brewing CEO and co-founder Ryan Petz.
"That's kind of what we see in our business day today," Petz said. "It's not obviously the kind of news that we like to see. We like to see more interest and participation in our our area of the business and beer. But it's been something that is sort of trending that way really in the three years since COVID hit."
According to Petz, a handful of factors have played a role into people changing their behaviors when it comes to drinking alcohol since the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Fulton, half or more of their sales prior to the pandemic were in draught beer or on-site sales. Those sales are down by one-third nationally.
"It definitely impacts the overall beer consumption, but it's not necessarily an indicator that people don't want to drink beer anymore," Petz added. "It's just more of the when and where they're choosing to have a drink and it's it's unfortunately not necessarily as favorable for beers it was before."
Hard seltzers and ready-to-drink spirits, such as pre-made cocktails in a can, have become readily availably alternatives to beer.
When it comes to Fulton, according to Petz, instead of choosing six-packs of beer consumers are opting to bring four-packs of seltzers home, which in turn shows a drop in overall beer sales.
The number of choices available still means business at Fulton.
"For us especially, like Fulton in the craft beer side, that same spirit of willing to experiment is what brought people to our category into our breweries and our brands in the first place. They weren't going to be complacently just drinking the same 24 pack that they always had. They are are going to try something different and that's what brought people to us."
Experimenting, finding new flavor profiles, and developing new products is one of the difficult and exciting challenges for Fulton staff. Keeping up with the changes can be a whole different challenge.
"As a small business people, we have less than 50 full-time employees and it's not like we have this massive R&D Department with all these people working on this 24/7," Petz said. "It's something that a whole bunch of us are just trying to work out, in addition to everything else we do day-to-day. So for smaller companies like ours, it is challenging because when there are so many new things that are grabbing consumers attention we can't necessarily do all the nor should we even try."