Draft beer is awesome. Draft beer to go is also awesome.
Draft beer to go at the same price as draft beer to stay? Not so awesome. On
the one hand, I love the enthusiasm for local and craft beer that comes along
with the “growler movement”. It has even
allowed breweries with smaller setups to succeed and gain traction with a lower
initial investment and little to no outside distribution. On the other hand,
when you look at the ounce to ounce price comparison of beer at the grocery
store and beer in a growler, you can’t help but scratch your head a bit.
I remember a time, not that long ago, where the concept of
going down to your local brewery and getting a jug filled with their beer was
kind of a new thing. It seemed to be about the same price, if not a tiny bit
cheaper, as getting the same beer in a six-pack at the store. Coupled with the
romance of bringing draft beer home to enjoy, growlers were a no brainer. Fast
forward to the present and it’s clear that I wasn’t the only one with that
thought. Growler fills have become trendy, to the point that beer/wine shops,
bars, and even grocery stores now offer draft beer to go. Now, I only took one
economics class in college, but it seems to me that the increase in demand has
been one of the primary contributors to the inflated cost of filling one’s
growler.
Most of my assertions here are based off of my own
experience and recollection. I wish that I would have thought to chart growler fill prices over the years, but for some reason that
slipped my mind. However, some research in various beer-related message boards
indicates that it is not just a local or regional phenomenon. There are still a
handful of folks reporting sub-$10 fill prices (for a 64 oz growler), but for
the most part they range from about $12 up to $30 and beyond across the
country.
Why is this a bad thing, you might ask? Well, let’s do some
quick math. If we take a brewery’s standard IPA and say that it costs $10 for a
six-pack at the grocery store, that is six 12-ounce bottles, so 72 total ounces
of beer, putting it at $0.14/ounce. Now,
if you went to the actual brewery and paid $12 to get your 64-ounce growler
filled, all of the sudden it is up to $0.19/ounce. If they charge $15, you’re talking
$0.23/ounce. So in this hypothetical scenario,
the growler fill costs anywhere from 35-65% more per ounce than buying a six
pack.
Intuitively, it seems like growler fills should be cheaper
than any other option. In the beer distribution world, the profit margins on
kegs distributed to restaurants and bars is much higher than on bottles or cans
distributed to grocery stores. It makes
sense since the kegs are reusable, you fit more in a single vessel, and there
is no label printing or packaging required. Using the same logic, if you as the
consumer travel on your own to the brewery, bring your own previously purchased
vessel, and bring it back to your house once it’s filled, aren't you cutting
some of the costlier steps out of the process? You've now become the packager
and distributor in addition to the consumer. The fact that you are allowed to
pay extra for that privilege is all profit for the brewery.
This, of course, is what creates the conundrum. As a
consumer, I hate feeling as if I’ve been ripped off. As a craft beer enthusiast
and hopeful future member of the industry, I feel like it’s great. In a
business with impossibly slim margins, especially at first, it has to be a
tremendous relief to move beer at marked up bar prices instead of wholesale.
Along with the charm of draft beer to go, the great thing about
getting a growler filled is the undeniable freshness of the beer involved. Unfortunately, once you pop the top of that
bad boy, you’d better have friends nearby, or you’re in it for the long haul.
In my experience, as soon as you open it, you've got a matter of hours before
the beer gets flat. If you leave it overnight, it may still taste okay, but
you’re definitely not getting the full experience. So I suppose freshness is
both a pro and a con.
Obviously there are some cases where the price isn't a big issue. Certain beers that are either difficult
to find in stores or perhaps limited release and only available at the brewery tend to draw in a good crowd of folks that
are willing to overpay a bit to get a taste (including myself). So maybe paying
$25 for a growler fill of something like that is more palatable. But I have seen
brewpubs that offer a growler fill for one price and a six pack of the same beer at a lower price.
So what to do? I suppose my plan is to continue visiting
breweries of all shapes and sizes. If I find something unique and striking,
maybe I’ll have a growler to get filled. If not, I’ll drink a pint or two,
maybe a sample flight, and point others in that direction if their growlers are a bit empty. Perhaps the growler
fill market will regulate a little bit and we can recapture some of that
accessibility. For now, I know of a foolproof way to keep the price of a
growler fill down: fill it with homebrew.
Cheers,
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