With supermarkets bringing out $45 cartons of craft beer to compete with existing brands, craft brewers need to ensure they can demonstrate the value in the provenance of their brand in the marketplace.
Flavour is one aspect of craft, but the story behind the label – who makes it, who owns it, where it is made are all additional levels of the value proposition for craft. Especially if craft brewers want to compete in the lighter craft styles where larger brewers with better economies of scale want to play.
Who owns the stainless steel isn’t a big issue. The labelling issue makes it one.
When contracting craft brewers say “we’re open about the fact, but we don’t draw attention to it” it gives the impression that contract brewing is something to hide, it also creates a large rock for brands without integrity to hide behind saying “we’re just doing what everyone else does”.
When all brewers hide behind labelling, the discussion becomes “does it matter who owns the pots and pans” instead of making the focus “what is the story behind the brand”. The discussion should be whose name is on the bottle and what does that name represent: a brewer or a marketing company.
Labelling is a question of whether craft brewers are able to effectively tell the story about the integrity behind their brand. Those that can, should be up front and tell their story in full. This will leave those that can’t exposed.
It does not matter the address of the brewery, but labelling should include statements that reflect the fact that contracting is and accurately reflect the nature of the relationship. The more explicit the accepted statements, the less room there is for brewers such as CUB to hide behind generic labelling and say “industry practice”.
This is an industry issue just as much as a competition issue, the industry should be prepared to take this on itself rather than demurring to the competition regulators. No one wants more inflexible government regulation of labelling or brewing, the industry is best-placed to handle its own issues and needs to handle these issues itself.
