Craft beer, specifically.
Millennials like @mcmurtry66 are now even getting old and worn out. As is the craft beer they couldn't get enough of for the last 15 years or so.
Gen Z doesn't seem to drink much, nor have much sex. I don't know how to talk to these people.
www.beervanablog.com
Millennials like @mcmurtry66 are now even getting old and worn out. As is the craft beer they couldn't get enough of for the last 15 years or so.
Gen Z doesn't seem to drink much, nor have much sex. I don't know how to talk to these people.
Mike Kallenberger, a 31-year marketing vet at Miller, thinks generational behavior is a big part of it. The founding generation of craft brewers and drinkers were boomers. Craft brewing was part of an overall trend away from mass-production to artisanal foods and beverages. Gen X was a small force, and by the late 90s, they were not drinking as much—and they were turning away from “yuppie beer.”
I started writing about beer right at that seam between beery eras, in late 1997. By 2000, craft beer was really looking passé—it carried the image of the middle-aged boomers who mainly drank it. My old alt-weekly even dumped the beer column I used to write in favor of a cocktail column. In Portland, Oregon! Meanwhile, the Pabst boomlet was the only bright spot in beer, as gen Xers looked for something working class and “authentic.”
Millennials really saved the day. They started turning 21 in 2002, and fueled the next great wave of excitement in craft beer. The last of them turned 21 in 2017, just as craft’s fortunes were about to turn.
With generations and fashion, the pattern of rejection seems unavoidable. Whatever your parents thought was cool is, definitionally, terminally sad and uncool. That’s where the cyclic pattern of the craft cycle (niche and obscure ➡️ just niche enough to be very cool ➡️ mainstream ➡️ overexposed and trashy) collides with generational cycles. Right about the moment any trend is getting overexposed and trashy, it’s so visible that kids naturally avoid it. Aaron Goldfarb documents this in a wonderful piece on the new TikTok fad of teens filming their hopelessly embarrassing dads gush about beer. Gen Z seems like a kind and gentle generation, so they do it lovingly—but they do not think sampling flights of beer at taprooms is a cool way to spend your time. The age of the bearded beer connoisseur as trend-setter is decidedly over..
The Last Time Beer Went Bust — Beervana
Craft beer is suffering a real identity crisis as consumers move on to other beverages. But is it also an existential crisis or something more cyclical? Here’s a reason to think it may be the latter.
www.beervanablog.com
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