A few notes before we dive in: 

#1 

We’ve pulled the following 4 important sections from this review and are sending them exclusively to our Beer Branding Trends Newsletter subscribers. 

How to future proof your flagships
How soon should your brewery jump on a trend?
Is a cannabis beverage right for your brewery?
How Legacy Breweries can sell more beer 

If you’d like to receive these insights — along with more than 9,500 other beer and beverage industry pros — you can sign up here:

#2 

We’ve released a companion podcast on this year’s review over on the Beer Branding Trends podcast. Head over there for more background context on what we see shaping beer and Bev Alc right now.

#3 

If you’d like to discuss any of the strategies we present in this report or explore how CODO can help you build a stronger brand and sell more beer, email Isaac.

#4

Think of this article (22,000+ words) as a choose your own adventure experience. Click on any of the following links to skip ahead to a particular section:

Beer Branding & Portfolio Strategy

Brand Architecture

Beer & Beyond (Beverage Trends)

Beer Package Design Trends

*** 

Section 1: Brewery Brand & Portfolio Strategy

This section explores the conversations we’re having in our daily work with breweries and Beverage Alcohol (Bev Alc) brands across the country right now. These insights span Brand Strategy considerations, positioning opportunities you might consider and portfolio makeup, 

Let’s kick off by discussing why breweries are rebranding right now. 

Why are breweries rebranding right now?
Addressing pain points and seizing opportunities 

Over the past year, CODO has rebranded breweries as young as three years old and groups that are more than 40 years old. And we’ve fielded more inquiries from breweries looking to rebrand than anytime in our 16 year history.

This work has spanned subtle brand refreshes, sweeping rebrands and tactical package refreshes that land somewhere in the middle.

Here are a handful of recurring pain points and opportunities we’re seeing driving these moves.

1. Sales are flat

We’re handling a lot of rebrands today to directly combat flat (to declining) sales. 

“We’ve been hovering right at 8,500 bbl for the last few years.” 

Or…

“We’re coming back from our 2019 high point of 12,000 bbl but are stuck in a stubborn plateau.”

Another shift we’ve seen is less emphasis on branding as a way to make you look cool (more of a surface-level consideration), and more direct conversations about how this effort should increase sales: So branding as a strategic move — a precursor — to gaining back your lost share. 

I’m glad that people are talking openly about the value of branding and how they expect to see a clear return on their investment. This raises the bar for the entire industry. 

2. Things are going well and you want to capitalize on that momentum 

We’re including this point as a positive counter to the previous one.

Not all of our rebranding work today is aimed at combating slacking sales. CODO is actually working with a lot of folks for whom things are going well. 

Really, really well. 

Sales are trending up, their team is fired up and they’re on a winning streak.

These groups see a revamp as a way to knock off some rough corners and keep the good times rolling.

These sorts of engagements are generally more of a refresh than an outright rebrand (learn about the difference here). As such, they usually aim to address annoying pain points (think inconsistent packaging, a shallow identity system that doesn’t lend itself to merchandising, etc.), as opposed to  deep, existential who-am-I type issues. 

In other words, what’s working, and how can we build on that and continue to stay ahead of everyone else?

3. It’s just time”



“It’s just time. We haven’t updated our packaging in several years and customers just aren’t seeing us on the shelf.”

We’ve heard this rationale from breweries, distributors and retailers across the country on several revamps this year. 

In the past — say, pre-2020 — I would hear something like this and take it with a grain of salt. I used to believe that you should aim to have consistent packaging for years so people know what to look for on the shelf — so that your packaging becomes iconic in your market. But I’ve come around almost entirely to the “it’s just time” argument. 

I now think there’s a lot of merit to refreshing your packaging more often just to keep things, well, fresh. We’re gathering sales data on a few engagements to support this idea (stay tuned for case studies that illustrate this). But for now, I can say that it’s looking like a killer rebrand done once — perfectly executed across the board — followed by package refreshes in 3–4 (ish)-year intervals seems to be a great way to get a lot of return on your investment. 

So yeah, sometimes it can just be time to knock some dust off and revamp your packaging.



4. Rebranding ahead of an important Brand Architecture move

We’ve run into this several times over the last few years. Your brewery will want to make some sort of Brand Architecture move, and while planning, realize that you need to readdress your core positioning and brand identity itself first (or alongside that work).



A few examples we’ve seen include:



– You want to spin a best-selling brand into a Sub Brand (and scale the “Sub Brand Ladder”).

 

– You bought another brewery (or taproom, distillery, restaurant, brand, etc.) and now have to figure out how these brands live together.

– You need to bring all of your taproom and/or restaurant locations under a more cohesive brand experience but found your branding, as-is, isn’t suited for this. 


– You’re opening a new taproom and it hits you, do you really want to spend $15k on exterior signage when you’re not in love with your logo? 

—

Rebranding and working through your Brand Strategy is a great time to take stock of everything you’ve got going on and to prioritize. 

What’s working well? What could work better if we make XYZ changes? And what should we lose entirely from a Brand Architecture standpoint?

 5. Cleaning up a poorly performing previous rebrand 

This one’s interesting and we’re seeing it more often today. It looks something like this: Your brewery rebranded a while back (say, back in 2019 or 2020), but the work wasn’t really that good. Or more importantly, it didn’t have the impact you were hoping for. (And that doesn’t even count what the wrecking ball that is 2020–2024 did to your brand and the industry as a whole.)

We’ve handled a few of these kinds of engagements now, and I can confidently say that a poorly managed rebrand may actually be worse than doing nothing at all. Here’s why: 

– Again, sometimes, the work resulting from your previous rebrand is just bad.

– There’s (usually) no deeper strategy, messaging and positioning work upon which to scaffold everything else because you likely didn’t clearly define, let alone address your pain points, the first time around. So now you’re just stacking on more problems. We’ve been hired to help fix a few surface level refreshes that were originally billed as rebrands — meaning there was no discussion around important underlying issues like positioning, brand voice and portfolio architecture.



—

A word of caution here: Make sure you get it right this time. 

Rebranding multiple times over the course of several years is a bad sign. And at the risk of sounding too melodramatic, it’s now do or die. We’ve heard from distributors and retailers (on two specific projects now) that frequent rebrands make it appear that your brewery A) doesn’t know what it’s doing and because of that, is… B) “throwing a bunch of shit against the wall to see what sticks.” Not great either way. 

And for your customers, who have (essentially) unlimited options for what beer to buy, why would they stick around for your 3rd revamp? 

Oh, they rebranded again? I guess things aren’t going so hot?

A rebrand is a signal. If handled well, it can be a powerful one.

Why are so many breweries rebranding today? Because the boom is over. The days of easy, organic growth are long gone. In order to thrive over the next ten years, you need to get your branding — your story and key messaging, your brand voice and identity and packaging — completely dialed in.

This is no longer a nice-to-have, and it’s not even table stakes. Now, it’s mission critical. 

Your competition is already thinking along these lines and you need to do the same.

How Legacy Breweries can sell more beer
Opportunities to court lapsed fans and younger drinkers

There are hundreds, if not thousands of older breweries across the United States right now quietly having similar, pressing conversations behind the scenes: 

– How do we recruit new, younger drinkers? 
– How do we make our packaging stand out in retail?
– Should we release a beyond beer product?
– Is it time to build a Sub Brand? 
– How can we get our distributor(s) to care about our brand again?
– How do we stand out from the dozens (or hundreds) of local options?
– What even is our story today, XX years in?



—


This weariness is particularly prevalent amongst older, mid-market breweries: Outfits who are ~10 to 20+ years old and making anywhere from ~5k to 15k+ bbl per year. In many cases, they’re no longer seen as a cool, romantic or sexy brand. They’re no longer seen as relevant, especially compared to their younger counterparts.

But, perhaps most painful of all, you have a growing number of lapsed fans — folks who have moved on to drink beer from other breweries, or beyond beer products, or less alcohol in general. 

This leaves you at a crossroads, unsure where to go from here.

Package refreshes are trending as a lower cost investment
A low(er) cost, high return investment opportunity 

There hasn’t been a single day since 2018 where CODO hasn’t been engaged in a brewery rebranding project. This includes wholesale rebrands, subtle brand refreshes and more prevalent as of late, package refreshes.   

Over the last two years alone, CODO has fielded more package refresh inquiries and projects, than any time in our 15-year history.

We’re seeing growing interest in this approach among our top 50 brewery clients (those producing ~75k+ bbl per year) down to outfits making ~1,000 bbl per year. And we’ve refreshed packaging for breweries as old as forty years and as young as two. 

So, this trend runs the gamut — startup to Legacy. Micro to regional.

This section will give you a rundown of everything we’ve learned in our project work on this front: When you should (and shouldn’t) consider a package refresh, what are the pros and cons, nuances, nuts and bolts of this process, etc. 

But most importantly, we’ll show you how you can set your brewery up for success should you decide to refresh your packaging sometime soon? 


We originally published this as a three-part series on the Beer Branding Trends Newsletter based on the following thesis: 

There are more breweries today in the US than any time in history, yet consumers are drinking less beer. This has led to flat-to-declining sales for breweries of all sizes across the country. 

The fallout? Marketing budgets are tighter than ever. But this comes at a time when investing in your branding, packaging and marketing is more important due to all the competition.

This means that breweries are carefully weighing their options and investing where they expect to see an outsized return. In this landscape, package refreshes have emerged as a compelling strategy to stay top of mind with consumers. 


And if handled well, these moves can often net a great return with less risk.

Now let’s quickly define what this looks like and when a package refresh can make sense.


What is a package refresh?  

A package refresh is when you update your packaging on its own while leaving your core brand identity as is. So, the result would be new packaging adorned with your existing logo and broader identity components. 

These are tactical projects, and they can make a lot of sense when your brewery’s positioning, messaging and broader brand and brand identity are good to go and your packaging just needs a facelift. This process focuses more on addressing annoying pain points and inconsistencies than solving an existential crisis.

Package refreshes work well when:



 – Your Brand Strategy (positioning, messaging, values, voice and personality) is compelling and aligns with where you want to take the business in the coming years.

– Your core brand identity is working well (your main mark is strong and recognizable and rounded out with a robust Modular Brand Identity System).

– Sales are flat, but not in a free fall, or…

– Sales are trending up, and you want to capitalize on, and maintain, that momentum. 

– Your beer / beverages are as good as they can be (i.e. we’re not attempting to mask a subpar product with great visuals).

– You’ve got a squared away, energized team that’s ready to hit the streets and move some beer.

– Market and competitive set changes have presented you with an exciting opportunity (e.g. a competitor closes shop, wholesaler consolidation has affected you in some way, new advantageous legislation has passed, etc.).

If any of these criteria are met, then a package refresh can be a great investment, especially when compared to a more costly rebrand.

Now that you know what a package refresh is, let’s discuss some important nuances of this process to determine whether this could be a good approach for your brewery. 

Package refresh vs. a deeper rebrand: On weighing risk vs. reward 

The biggest issue driving a shift towards package refreshes is the challenging market we’re all facing. 

A tough market requires being nimble no matter what. But in this context, a wholesale rebrand — complete with Brand Strategy, updating your brand identity, packaging (and the rest of your touch points) and managing the complex process of launching the new look — represents a big investment (both in time and budget) that might be hard to swingright now.

To put it bluntly, rebranding is never without risk. And we’re seeing people becoming more risk-averse and more budget conscious due to the economic environment we’re in. 

In 2024, Allagash founder Rob Tod put it well when he said that today’s beer market is a “game of inches.” Every dollar counts. Every barrel, every case, every account, all of it. 

Unless your brewery’s brand identity and positioning pose an immediate and existential threat to your business, it can be easier, faster and less risky to look for opportunities to drive incremental growth elsewhere.

So, a brand refresh that addresses annoying inconsistencies or a package refresh that breathes new life into your on-shelf presence may be a better investment than burning everything to the ground and starting fresh 29 years in (even if that’s what your heart really wants). 

TLDR: A package refresh can help you find the quick wins with less risk.

Cost is subjective

I need to qualify that a refresh can be more affordable relative to a rebrand where you’re working through Brand Strategy (positioning and audience definition, brand voice, Key Communication Pillars, Brand Essence and Architecture) and a Brand Identity update en route to refreshing your packaging. 

If — and this is a big IF that we’ll explore in a moment — your brand is on solid footing, then a package refresh can be a great investment that bypasses the additional cost (in budget and time) of a larger rebrand.

How big a swing can you take?

Do you want to subtly evolve your packaging or take a bigger swing? And how should your visual and Brand Equity inform this decision? Our usual caveat here is that every project, background context and competitive set will differ and therefore call for a different solution. That said, I would offer that a package refresh doesn’t have to be as limiting as a brand refresh.

In other words, don’t let the term “refresh” limit you here. 

You can change your packaging, even dramatically so, through this process. Assuming this is a true package refresh and we’re not updating your brand identity, then your logo, along with any sacrosanct visual equity (e.g. SKU colors, or a long-standing packaging composition) should provide enough continuity to ensure your update doesn’t push too far away from where you stand today. 

 In this way, a package refresh can be an opportunity to take a bigger departure from where your packaging currently sits, so long as that aligns with your project and positioning goals. Our work with Fernson Brewing is a great example of a package refresh that dramatically departs from their previous packaging’s look and feel.
 

When your equity calls for a refresh

One counter to our previous point — an argument against making too drastic a change — would be if your packaging has so much visual equity that it’s better to evolve its look through your update.  

We’ve explored visual and Brand Equity at length in our newsletter and podcast. In the interest of keeping this issue somewhat short, you can revisit some of our most popular pieces on these concepts below:



> What is Brand Equity, really? – [ BBT Newsletter ]



> Defining your Brand Equity: Fast & Slow [ BBT Newsletter ]

 + Podcast



> When to jettison your Brand Equity – [ BBT Newsletter ]



—



The risk of pushing too far – not honoring your visual and Brand Equity through a package refresh – is real. People can easily lose track of you on the shelf or become confused and/or alienated by the change. And with thousands of other options immediately at their disposal, they can simply move on without a second thought.

But if you see a big enough opportunity, or if that equity doesn’t align with where you want to take your brand over the coming years, then don’t be overly precious about it. 


Brand Strategy (to invest or not to invest?)

If we had our druthers — and if budget and timeline were never a limiting factor — we would work through formal Brand Strategy on every engagement. 

But one of the biggest reasons why your brewery might consider a package refresh is that you can occasionally get away with not working through formal Brand Strategy. This means you’re looking at a faster overall project timeline and can potentially save tens of thousands of dollars in strategy work.

But back to our earlier point here, for this to work, you must be 100% confident that your brewery’s positioning, key messaging, values, brand voice and personality and identity system are all dialed in and will help you build your brand over the coming years. 

You need to be sure that a package refresh is actually what you need to solve whatever problem it is that you want to address in the first place. 

Where these projects can falter

The reason we push for strategy as often as we do is that without working through that process, there’s no mechanism for your team (or your design partner) to verify that you’re correct about your Brand and brand identity being good to go.



So, you could kick off a package refresh, only to realize later on that there’s a deeper issue at hand. This would require a mid- to late-stage regroup. And even if your team can manage this hiccup and unwind the problem, it’s not ideal. 



—



Of course, you could be right. We’ve worked with some of the brightest minds throughout the beer and beverage industry — folks I wouldn’t hesitate to hire if given the chance. So, this isn’t a critique of you and your ability to measure your brand’s effectiveness.


It’s more a matter of perspective.  

Working every day at the brewery means you’re closer to your brand and business than any outsider can ever be. And this closeness can hinder your ability to be objective about your business (or more germane to our discussion here, how well your Brand and brand identity are performing).



My advice here is to be open to using Brand Strategy as a diagnostic tool to make sure a package refresh will help you accomplish your goals. 

My biggest caution before you embark on your package refresh is to…

Make sure you don’t need to solve a Brand problem first 

This is so important that it bears repeating: A Package refresh can be a great investment IF your brand and Brand Strategy are on a strong foundation.

Are you facing a surface level packaging (and portfolio and competitive set) problem? Or is there a deeper brand problem at hand?



Some things that point to a more surface level issue:



 – Your packaging is inconsistent. 

– Your nomenclature (beer naming system) is inconsistent.

– Several key competitors have recently rebranded or updated their packaging. 

– Your packaging hierarchy is confusing.

– Your packaging hasn’t been updated for several years. 

– You’re seeing flat (to slightly declining) sales. 

– Your packaging looks terrible (no need to sugar coat this).

Some things that point to a deeper, upstream positioning and Brand issue:

 – You have no clear, compelling story.

– You’re chasing trends (in beer and the Fourth Category).

– Your distributor and retail partners aren’t passionate about your brand. 

– You’re seeing a steep decline in sales. 

– You feel like you’re reinventing the wheel with each new release. 


– Your portfolio lacks focus and clear priorities and/or a clear throughline
.


If you’re dealing with problems from the former group, then a package refresh can be a phenomenal option to increase your sales. 

If you’re dealing with more existential problems from the latter group, don’t fret. These can be resolved as well, but it will take more than a package revamp to get you where you need to be.

When should you plan your next refresh? 

Before 2020, I believed you should use your packaging for as long as it was working —  decades, even. I believed you should only make a change when you see something bad happening (e.g. softening sales) and that ideally, your packaging would stand the test of time and become iconic. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think this will cut it today. 

Setting aside an obvious perverse incentive (oh look, the guy who owns a branding firm is telling you to continually invest in branding and packaging), I now think there’s a lot of merit to refreshing your packaging more often.  

And we’ve heard this idea directly from brewery CMOs, distributors and retailers in our project work.

Today, I think the path looks more like this: 

1. Get your Brand Strategy and core identity completely dialed in.

2. Refresh your packaging on a 4- to 5-(ish)-year cycle based on your sales trends and shifts in the competitive landscape.


 3. And don’t sleep on all the other moving parts needed to build your brand — your seasonal and LTO program, continually refreshing your merch, locking in your ABP and distributor priorities, etc. 

You should consider this work iterative. 

The need to stay top of mind with your fans and other key partners like retailers and distributors — to stay relevant and exciting — will be crucial for growing your business over the coming years. 

Your packaging, like your Brand itself, is a living, breathing thing. It is never truly done. It is just done for now. 

—

Wrapping up

A package refresh can be a great option if your brand identity and strategy are working well. But if they’re not, a refresh will likely not have the impact you’re after. And if that’s the case, you’ll end up worse off than if you had done nothing because you will have invested time and capital into a change that accomplishes nothing. 

Make sure you take stock of your identity and strategy before deciding that a refresh is the best course of action. If you determine you’re not dealing with a Brand problem, then you can move forward and refresh your packaging in confidence.

—

Check out the third issue of our Package Refresh Series to learn about how Brand Strategy and art direction differ, how to conduct a competitive set audit, how to manage stakeholders through this process as well as how to launch your refresh.

How to future proof your flagships
How to build and maintain a strong foundation

Innovation will always drive the craft beer industry. From the earliest days that saw founders building breweries by welding derelict dairy tanks together to carting hand-bottled beer from bar to bar to build their businesses one account at a time — it’s in our DNA. 

But we also have to recognize that we’re coming down from a ~10-year period of non-stop innovation that, at its peak, saw as many as three new breweries opening per day across the country. 

The competitive landscape ballooned, where some markets that might have boasted a few dozen outfits across an entire state now have that many jammed into a few miles. On top of that, we saw Hazy IPA and hard seltzer dramatically alter the industry, as well as the (continuing) rise of Imperial IPA, Hop Water, NA beer, RTD cocktails, Hard Teas and various other FMBs. This skims the surface of what the beer industry has churned out over the last decade, but one thing is becoming crystal clear: Consumers are kind of over it.

According to the Brewers Association’s 2024 mid-year Harris Poll, Bart Watson reported that 37% of survey respondents said there was “too much / more than enough brands” available today. And this was after a year that saw about 1,000 fewer new brands than the previous year. 

So where does that leave a brewery that has been hanging its hat on constant innovation for the last several years? 

I think this data points to a big opportunity to re-invest in your flagships for sustainable growth.

Dialing in your seasonals

How to keep your brewery top of mind year-round 

Over the last year, we’ve seen an increase in breweries focusing on their seasonals as a path towards incremental growth. Now, this is nothing new: Seasonals exist to keep your brewery top of mind year-round. What is new is that, we’re seeing more clients rethink their seasonals as deeper brand building opportunities. 

Here are a handful of things we’ve been discussing over the last year on this front. 

Can a fan favorite seasonal be pressed into a year-round offering?  

The past year has seen a few high-profile brands shift popular seasonal releases into year-round status. I love this idea and am curious to see how well it performs. 

Why? I think there are a lot of people who just like to drink what they like, no matter what month it happens to be. 

(Entirely anecdotal here, but I know several people who would just drink pumpkin beer all year long. Same with a shandy. And I’m not sure I’d turn down an Oktoberfest no matter where we are on the calendar.) 

Yes, drinking with the seasons is a nice way to mark the passage of time and be present and enjoy the world, but as I’ve asked a few times already in this report: Do we need to be so precious about these things? 

A few words of caution here: 



This only works if you see a real demand. 

Some seasonals are more acutely tied to their time in place. A pumpkin beer is inexorably tied to the fall harvest season. But does a wheat beer have to be tied to summer? I’m not sure it does.

How should you differentiate your seasonal packaging from your flagships? 


Ten years ago, the standard approach for designing your packaging was to have your flagships all look one way and develop an entirely different look for your seasonals. 

That approach waned as more breweries leaned into either formal Sub Brands, or more often than not, just putting out whatever they felt like without thinking about their package design and their broader portfolio (because why would you when everything you package sells anyway, right!?). 

We’re now seeing a swing back towards a clearer system, and for what it’s worth, I do think there’s some merit to tying the seasonal to your brewery’s parent brand. Unless there’s a compelling reason to not do this, I think a connection makes sense and helps to keep your brewery relevant and top of mind year-round (especially during off-peak buying seasons like winter). 

But that’s changed now, and we’ve had several interesting projects that centered around how to treat seasonal packaging specifically. This is even more common when that seasonal is a franchise brand (comprising a healthy amount of your revenue) on its own. 

My point is that there’s no best practice today. This all comes down to your broader Brand Architecture, competitive set and how you want to position your seasonals.

Highlight that these are limited time only (LTO) products  

Let’s wrap this section up with a tactical note: I think breweries should highlight more directly that a beer is seasonal (and only available for a short window of time) on its packaging. This can extend to social media, POS and on-trade activation as well, but overall, I think we take for granted how little our customers know or care about how the beer industry ebbs and flows throughout the year. And even more so now that we’ium in a flat-to-declining sales environment. 

The guy who would show up at your brewery for a special beer release on a random Wednesday back in 2017, can’t be relied upon to show up anymore. And I bet if you look around your taproom, you’ll see that same thing. Your audience has likely shifted over the last few years.

This is a broader idea that we’ll explore in more detail on the Beer Branding Trends Newsletter later this year. 

To wrap this up here: We need to constantly be educating our customers and partners. Don’t assume anyone knows anything about your brand, or your beer, or the beer industry, and treat every interaction as a chance to educate, dazzle and delight your customers.

And this means that telling someone why a beer is only available right now in this season, and why they should drink it, is a great place to start.

Style names as a positioning tool 
Don’t make your customers have to work

We’ve been tracking the evolving role of beer styles closely over the last few years, both in CODO’s project work and out in the broader market. 

The basic idea here is that style names matter less as a TTB designation and more as a tool to help you position a beer. And this means you have some leeway on what you can call a beer, leaning less on being technically correct (but esoteric) and more towards being easy to understand (and interesting).

Now, does this mean you can call your Stout a Pilsner? No. 

But it does mean that while you may be canning a Kölsch, a potential customer — who may have zero idea what that means — might be more inclined to grab that same beer if it’s called a “Pale Golden Beer.” 

Or for a fun example from the food industry, which sounds more appetizing: A Patagonian Toothfish or a Chilean Sea Bass? 

We’re seeing this idea on full display in the lager (and lighter beers in general) segment today. Lager is a brand, and while consumers generally know what to expect here, there are a bevy of fun opportunities at hand when determining how to position your lager (or lighter beer).

Some examples:

– Lager Refreshing Beer (Swiftly)
– Lager Light Beer (St Elmo)
– Lager Pub Beer (10 Barrel)
– Pilsner Summerfest (Sierra Nevada)
– Cream Ale Cold Drinking Beer (Virginia Beer Co.) 

And we’ve seen a handful of other qualifiers here as well, like: 

– Premium
– Domestic
– Classic
– Light
– Heritage
– American
– Industry 
– Craft 
– Gold(en)
– Beer (bonus points for confidence and brevity)

Main takeaway: You need to meet your customers where they are. 

Don’t be precious with your flavors and descriptors. Be short, simple, direct and familiar. And don’t make people work to understand what you’re selling. 

– Will someone intuitively understand how a Blue Moon Light Sky is different from Blue Moon, or would Blue Moon Light work better on shelf?

– And same question with Jai Low: Is that low cal, or low alc, or both (Or did they change the Jai Alai recipe?)? Or would shedding that hurdle entirely and calling it Jai Alai Light work better?  

Who do you want to buy your product, and what’s their comfort level and familiarity with beer? Once you understand this, you can use beer styles to tell people exactly what to expect and as a tool for positioning your beer however you see fit.

A renewed focus on the on-premise
How your brewery can offer something for everyone

Taprooms aren’t immune from the challenges facing the broader beer industry today. But hospitality-focused breweries, and particularly breweries with multiple taprooms, are better positioned to weather this storm. 

The economics haven’t changed (i.e., selling beer across your bar at a higher margin will always be good business), but this approach has become more vital as off-premise sales continue to contract.

Here are some interesting trends we’ve observed in our work with taprooms and hospitality-focused breweries over the last year.

Shifting hours & your taproom’s role in people’s lives 

People aren’t going out as much as they used to (we’re becoming a nation of homebodies). They consume more alcohol at home (when they do drink), spend less money (thanks to inflation) and go out earlier (again, when they decide to venture out of their comfy house and into the real world).

Bart Watson has done a great job of documenting these ideas, as has the Sightlines team this year. 

A few important facts from their coverage: 

– The peak visit time for breweries across the nation is now 7pm on Wednesday and Thursday vs. 8pm on those same days just two years ago.


– This trend extends beyond breweries and into a variety of other on-trade venues like bars and restaurants. (So, no one’s having an easy go right now.)

What does this mean for your brewery? 

– For starters, you might want to rethink your overall customer experience. If people are coming in earlier, should you offer more daytime-friendly options like light beer, NA beer and Hop Water and seltzers? 

– And don’t discount the power and draw of a formal coffee program. If your space is suited for it, can you bring people in during the morning time to hangout and work and then transition to a traditional brewery taproom in the early afternoon? 

– Happy hours (where legal) are another great opportunity to attract budget-minded drinkers. 

This also means that you must work harder to earn someone’s time and dollars. One way of doing this is ensuring you have something for everyone and provide phenomenal hospitality. 

Something for everyone 

One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen with our taproom-focused clients over the last few years is a move to offer way more than beer, including things like:

– Food
– Spirits & cocktails 
(*these offer a much higher margin than beer)
– NA options 
– Wine
– Events & programming 
– Amenities (e.g. patio, playscapes, family friendly times, dog parks)

The biggest takeaway here is to not be too precious about your identity as a brewery or brewery taproom and position yourself more as a local hangout. This is both smart and sustainable. 

After all, does this distinction matter so long as people are regularly coming in, spending money and having a great time? 


Connecting off-premise with on-premise 

One of the most surprising findings to come out of the Brewers Association’s 2024 Mid-Year Harris Poll was data showing that, for the first time since the survey’s inception, consumers reported that they’re less likely to buy beer at retail after visiting that brewery’s taproom. 

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this is bone-chilling. 

This industry was built in taprooms across the country. And the goodwill and experiences you deliver to your customers has historically translated directly to increased off-premise sales. But now, that appears to be changing.

So, what can you do with this information? 

A few thoughts: 



A shift towards hospitality 

We’ve already covered this idea elsewhere in this report, but breweries need to be dialing in their taproom experience:

– Clean your draught lines.
– Offer something for everyone (do not sleep on high margin cocktails).
– Invest in employee training and food and experience and overall hospitality.

Your brewery’s brand should precede you

People aren’t browsing and taking chances on a new 4- or 6-pk at retail like they used to. They’re increasingly gravitating towards brands they know and buying from breweries they trust. 

Sierra Nevada’s never let me down, so I’ll try this new Pils.

I’ve been drinking Firestone Walker for years, so this new XPA is probably good to go. 

I’m a simple man. When I see Schlafly, I add to cart. 

You need to build your brand at every turn, including on-premise. After a period of time and great experiences, people will come to know and trust you enough to grab your beer, whether they’ve been in your taproom or not.

Section 2: Brand Architecture 

Brand Architecture is a framework for determining how all your brands, current and future, interact with one another. How do specific brands relate or differ, how are they positioned and named, how are they priced, and how does all of this help you build your business?

And I firmly believe that every brewery in the country needs to be up to speed on these concepts in order to compete over the coming years. 

We’re seeing this every day in our client work, and I bet you’re dealing with a Brand Architecture problem (or opportunity) right now, too. For example, if you are:

– Considering spinning a best selling beer into its own brand, or…

– Wondering if you can Line Extend to a new style, or even category, or…

– Planning to acquire another brewery or brand and aren’t sure how to roll this new brand in under your parent brand (or if that’s even the right choice), or….

– Wanting to launch an entirely new category but aren’t sure if your parent brand can credibly play there.

I can go on and on here, but let’s cut this short so we can get to the main subject. Brand Architecture is a mission critical tool to help you expand your brand safely and grow your business. 

Here are some of the most recurring trends we’re seeing in our Brand Architecture work right now.

Sub Brand use cases
A flexible way to scale your brand 

We’ve been working on and writing about Sub / Endorsed Brands and Brand Architecture heavily for the last few years. And this trend is showing no sign of slowing down—both the continued march of Sub Brands as an important Brand Strategy move in today’s maturing beer market, aaaaand me writing about it. (Sorry.)

In this section, I wanted to share a few interesting Sub Brand use cases we’ve come across in our project work over the last year. 

These are all interesting scenarios that you might find valuable as you think about your portfolio for the remainder of 2025. 

But first, a quick definition here, from The Beyond Beer Handbook:



What is a Sub Brand?

A Sub Brand is connected closely to your parent brand — think of it as a little extra spice given to separate each product from one another within your overall portfolio.

A Sub Brand still carries the same values that intuitively link it to the parent brand but targets a specific audience with further defined attributes and benefits that might not be offered by the parent brand alone. This allows you to build stronger bonds with your existing customers while expanding your overall footprint by dipping your toes into new categories and audiences.


—

A quick note here: 


In Brand Architecture terms, this strategy can manifest as a Sub Brand or an Endorsed Brand. The specific approach isn’t as important as is the long-term bet that we’re seeing more breweries make: The future will be more centered around specific brands and brand families, more so than around a brewery’s parent brand.



When building a true Sub Brand, your parent brand is still the main purchasing driver.



So, the things we’re discussing today can be positioned as Sub or Endorsed Brands. The main takeaway is that you’re building a brand within your brewery’s broader portfolio.

Sub Brand use case #1: Bridging into the fourth category 

Our Brand Architecture work began in earnest in 2019 when we helped a handful of breweries across the country launch hard seltzer brands. That work quickly gave way to breweries building RTD cocktail lines, spirit brands, coffee brands, Hop Waters, NA beer and all manner of other fourth category products. 

The biggest concern in these early engagements was what releasing this new non-beer product would say about your brewery. (i.e. will this confuse our fans?)

Building a Sub Brand to launch a fourth category product is a clean path to market because it puts just enough of a buffer between your parent brand and this new product brands so that you can continue to expand this new line (via Line Extensions, co-branding, scaling the Sub Brand Ladder, etc.) without harming your parent brand’s positioning and equity.

This creates a solid platform for future extensions should you decide to go that route.

Sub Brand use case #2: Building a budget line 

On the other end of this spectrum, we’re seeing a lot of Sub Brand development around budget(ish) lines. This is being driven almost entirely by the craft lager and light beer trend (and the inflationary environment we’ve all endured over the last few years). These products aren’t quite domestic, in terms of pricing, but seek to occupy that same space in people’s fridge. And I think the “budget” term here is relative.



These premium lagers are “budget” relative to the rest of your craft portfolio, but more premium than the mainline domestic industrial lager brands.

We’ve written a lot about this space over the last year. If you’re interested in this topic, hit these links to learn more: 

> The year of craft lager? – [ BBT Newsletter ] + Podcast

> On the perils of releasing a budget brand – [ BBT Newsletter ] 

Sub Brand use case #3: Creating a brand that can travel

The last several years have seen breweries pulling back from markets further afield and re-entrenching in their backyard. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still find growth across state lines.



We’re working on a lot of projects right now that aim to do just that. This approach doesn’t mean you’re looking to take over the world via national expansion, but rather you’re pushing into a specific, highly targeted market where you feel like you can win.  

The problem is that there is so much beer — great beer — everywhere, that the value prop for buying your brewery’s beer in another market is challenging. This is a problem for all craft breweries looking to launch new markets but becomes amplified the more closely tied you are to your town or state. 

A Sub Brand, particularly a lifestyle play that eschews specific provenance, is a great way to get around this. It allows you to drop into a market and build without your parent brand’s baggage.



Our recent work building the Cold Drinking Beer brand is a great example of this concept.

 Virginia Beer Co. sells a lot of beer in their home state. But this name doesn’t carry much weight in, say, South Carolina. Virginia Beer Co. still wanted to expand their distribution footprint, so they created a light beer brand — Cold Drinking Beer — to lead the charge.



—

Wrapping up

We see Sub Brands and Brand Architecture moves as one of the most important trends happening in beer right now, at least from our corner of the industry as a branding firm. Breweries across the country are finding, and winning, incremental growth by making these sorts of moves. And whether you go premium or budget, beer or beyond, you should think about how these strategies could help bolster your business in the coming years.

How soon should you jump on a trend?
First mover or cautious observer?

Breweries of all sizes are releasing Fourth Category products today, and looking at shifting consumer preference trends, it’s clear that this is the right move. The brewery of tomorrow needs to be thinking Beyond Beer. 

But consumer preferences shift fast, in some cases, seemingly overnight. This creates a constantly moving target and begs the question: When should your brewery wade into a new segment and release a new product? 

Is now the right time to release a line of cocktails? How about a hard cider, or a hard tea, or a non-alcoholic beer? Some of these segments are more established than others, but how about more nascent options like cannabis beverages or Hop Water?

This is what I want to discuss with you today: 

– How should your brewery think about new product development? 

– How can you decide if a new category makes sense for your brewery? 

– And more importantly, when does it make sense to pull the trigger and develop a new offering, vs. sitting back and waiting for a category to continue taking shape?

We’re regularly making recommendations on this front through our Brand Strategy and Architecture work, so I want to give you a rundown here on how we think about and discuss this topic with our clients.

House of Brands
Not just for Big Beer 

A House of Brands is a common Brand Architecture model among larger beer and beverage conglomerates (think Molson Coors, Boston Beer Co, ABI, Diageo) where having a diverse line of products that span multiple categories, price points and distribution territory adds up to a robust portfolio.

But over the last few years, we’ve seen more of our smaller* craft clients lean into the House of Brands model as well, by launching targeted standalone brands (e.g. a light beer brand, an RTD cocktail, a spirit brand, etc.).
*Note: smaller in this case can be anywhere from 1k to 20k bbl. They’re smaller relative to the Molson Coors of the world (but aren’t we all?).

So, this is a broadly applicable approach. 

Let’s start by defining the House of Brands and then get into some possible use cases for your brewery as well as some important caveats to be mindful of in case you think this is a good approach for your next product launch.

What is a House of Brands? 

In Brand Architecture, a House of Brands model is a collection of (mostly) disparate, independent brands with little to no tie between each other or to a corporate brand. In this approach, each brand has its own value proposition, messaging, and positioning, and is completely independent as far as the consumer is concerned. 

And a quick note: We say “corporate” in this case because “parent” denotes some manner of a relationship with an extension (e.g. You extend your parent brand when launching a Sub or Endorsed Brand). In a House of Brands model, there is no parent brand connection. 

This approach allows you to target different consumers and segments with niche brands and products that are tailored to their specific needs and values without competing with other brands in the portfolio. This makes for a more robust overall business.

Traditionally the stock and trade of mega corporations like Procter and Gamble and Unilever, this can be a valuable concept for breweries to employ depending on their product mix, volume and sales goals.

Benefits & use cases for a House of Brands model 

A House of Brands approach allows you to offer products to highly targeted niche audiences without worrying about how to adapt your parent brand

By creating an entirely new brand, you’re free to explore each product individually under a House of Brands model without being governed by (or concerned with) any of your parent brand’s equity. Each product can have its own unique value proposition and attract different customer segments. And none of this will be confusing, because you are not beholden to a broader brand narrative. 

You can have a functional beverage along with a hard cider and an Imperial IPA and an NA beer in the same portfolio and no one will bat an eye (because they’re not positioned as being part of the same family). 

You can quickly seize market opportunities because you bypass all the work (and worry) of making sure your parent brand works in a new context

The House of Brands approach allows you to be more agile, rapidly executing on new opportunities without considering what that might mean for your parent brand. You are free to move on an appropriate idea without being encumbered with existing equity or customer expectations. 

In this way, agility can be just as important as having a great product that is correctly marketed and positioned. Being first to market in a particular category can go a long way towards ensuring long term success.

Caveats

Building a House of Brands can be challenging for smaller breweries 

If the biggest benefit of building a House of Brands model is the speed and ease at which you can bring new products to markets, the main drawback is how inefficient and expensive this approach can be. 

Here are the two main challenges a smaller outfit will face when trying to build a House of Brands.

A House of Brands is costly to build 

A House of Brands takes a lot of capital to construct because you’re simultaneously building multiple brands. This can start lean, but over time, as a new brand grows, you’ll have to develop (and maintain) new names, brand identities, websites and perhaps even dedicated corporate structure and staff for each standalone brand.

Simply put, out of all the Brand Architecture models you can use at your brewery, the House of Brands requires the most work, investment and follow-through. 

Giving every brand in your portfolio a fair shake means you must invest heavily in each individual offering. Don’t underestimate how much work (and budget) this will take to pull off correctly.

Capacity, capacity, capacity

The second big challenge in building a House of Brands is capacity. Capital is going to be important no matter what scale your brewery is at, but we’ve found capacity to be a more immediate limiting factor for how effectively your brewery can launch a new standalone brand. 

An example from a project we’re working on right now:

Our brewery client launched an RTD cocktail standalone brand and within one year, found that they needed to bring it more in-line with their parent brand (as a Sub Brand) for marketing budget, distribution and consumer mindshare reasons. We helped them sort through this Brand Architecture shift and are currently refreshing the packaging to suit. 

If you’re part of a small team at your brewery — or if you ARE the marketing team — then you may not have the time it takes to properly build a new brand.

Wrapping up



People aren’t stupid 

Here’s a final caveat that’s not related to capacity or your operating expense (OpEx) budget.  

A House of Brands doesn’t fully insulate your larger business from blowback. We saw this through the Bud Light fallout in summer 2023 as several other ABI brands saw losses and bad comps as well. 

Regular, non-beer industry folks walking around might not know that Twisted Tea is owned by Boston Beer Co. But this sort of knowledge isn’t really hidden anymore. A quick search can reveal who owns a brand. And if you have a big blow up — a PR disaster, a QC issue, etc. — you can expect your fans and the media to quickly spread this news

I’m not sure this idea is applicable to you, or any of the other 9,500+ folks who read BBT, but to draw a fine point here — building a House of Brands isn’t an excuse to launch a product that you’re not proud of or which lacks integrity. 

Anything you put out into the world still needs to adhere to your personal and corporate values.



Otherwise, what are you building?

Section 3: Beer & Beyond (Beverage Trends)

Craft beer drinkers are wired to explore and try new things. They are, as Bart Watson calls them, “Omnibibulous.” This means you’re just as likely to find an RTD cocktail (or a domestic beer, seltzer, or NA beverage) in their fridge as you are a local 4-pk of Hazy IPA.

This desire to drink across different categories has driven the category convergence we’ve seen over the last few years, including soft to hard crossover products, Big Soda getting into beer, cannabis wading into the space, and craft breweries, in equal measure, branching out into other categories as well.

You could view this as frustrating — why aren’t beer drinkers category-loyal? But the better framing would be to view this as an opportunity. Today’s craft drinkers want variety, and this spans well beyond beer. So what can you make to get them excited and keep them coming back no matter what they’re in the mood for? 

This section explores just that — some of the trends we’re seeing in beer and the Fourth Category, happening right now across beverage alcohol, and how you might apply these ideas to your brewery’s portfolio.

The Year of Lager
How to win in beer’s most crowded category

For the last ~15 years of the Beer Boom, The Year of Lager has always been just around the corner. But after years of recycling this joke, it seems as though the industry has willed this idea into existence.

Today, you can find lager everywhere you turn, from the largest craft outfits in the country to your small, neighborhood brewery. 

Adding more fuel to this fire is the success of Montucky Cold Snacks and Garage Beer, both of which have seen major outside investment while proving that there’s a path towards building a sizable brand in this segment.  

Before wading into this, let’s start with a broad definition. In our previous writing on this subject, we drew a hard line between craft lager (produced by a craft brewery) and domestic / light lagers produced by macro brands like Miller, Coors, ABI, et al. To streamline this conversation, we’re dropping this distinction entirely. Now, we’re speaking broadly about lager, and in some cases, lager-adjacent easy-drinking light beer styles. Why? Because we’re seeing the same positioning moves happening across this divide. And further, the numbers get wonky here when we try to delineate between craft pricing to macro tiers (e.g. Domestic Premium, Sub Premium, etc.). You can read more on beer pricing tiers here in our conversation with Bump Williams Consulting team.

With that out of the way, let’s explore a handful of topics we’ve seen come in our work branding and positioning these beers, beginning with exploring why lager is trending right now. 

Lager is easy

The Brewers Association’s mid-year Harris Poll was full of interesting, and sobering, findings. One that caught our attention was that consumers feel there are “more than enough” breweries and brands on the market today. (And this comes after a year that already saw more than 1,000 SKUs reduced from shelves.) 

If we can interrogate this idea a bit, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this could be because beer has become too saturated. A beer fan living in any mid-market city likely has dozens of local breweries to choose from. And how many of those breweries have a unique point of view and/or produce a genuinely differentiated portfolio (vs. a litany of indistinguishable Hazy IPAs)? For the consumer, it all adds up to too many decisions. And all I want is a beer. 

In this context, lager is an easy choice. You don’t have to worry whether the IPA you order is clear or hazy. You don’t have to worry about mispronouncing an esoteric style. You don’t have to worry about whether the 7% ABV will leave you preternaturally hungover. 

Lager is just beer. And there’s a lot of utility in this.

Lager is nostalgic

Lager is an inherently nostalgic style. This could stem from the days when all beer was lager, by default. Or for some, it could spur memories of college or stealing that first beer out of your dad’s garage fridge. Or for me, drinking Hamm’s with my grandpa. 

Either way, there’s something delightfully authentic and blue collar about this style. And in a world where you must actively fight to keep your head up and not give into doom scrolling, nihilism, despair and anxiety, enjoying a beautiful lager is a welcome reassurance that, at least this one thing hasn’t gone to shit.

Nostalgia is a powerful adjunct, and when applied properly, it hits just right. 

Lager is big business

The premium light segment is massive, which means that carving off even a few points of that share is serious business.

While Montucky and Garage Beer continue ripping their way to national status, I think there’s a real opportunity for mid-market brewers to dominate their own region over the coming years.  

What this can look like is based on your scale, your competitive set and your location itself. For some, this could mean becoming the de facto lager of a particular city. For others, it could mean spanning their entire state. And for others still, this could extend to a smaller multi-state footprint. 

This is where I’d be focusing if I were entering this space. How can I go as deep as possible in my immediate market? How can I secure as many PODs and go as dense as we can here over the next five years. National distribution? Who wants to wrestle with that logistics nightmare? And besides, there’s plenty of business right in your own backyard.

Lager can be a lifestyle brand platform 

Lager is the quintessential occasion beer because it never gets in the way or tries to steal the show. It’s there on the side, amplifying things, but never taking center stage. 

And this makes it somewhat of a chameleon. You can dress it up or down and press it into any activity or occasion or lifestyle you see fit. 

I expect to see more hyper-focused lager lifestyle brands launched over the next several years, and for breweries who approach this properly, I think there’s some serious opportunity here.

Lager gets cold

This is a small trend (a fad, maybe?) that builds on our earlier section on the evolving role of beer styles as positioning tools. Here, we’re focusing on unique qualifiers.

Lager has had a myriad of these over the last few years — “Light,” “Classic,” “Small Batch,” “Premium” and “Domestic” (a fun appropriation from Big Beer). The stickiest of these would probably be “Crisp” — which, while done to death, is fun and still has a lot of runway. 

Another term we’re seeing more in our work and out in the wild is “Cold.” 


This isn’t exclusive to lagers (e.g. Cold IPA), but we are seeing it crop up a lot in this space. In either case, this is a fun way of signaling exactly what the beer should taste like and making a potential customer not work so hard. 

“Citrusy” covers a wide gamut. As does “Dank,” and “Sour.” If I’m looking at a menu with 20 options, I may just pick a “Cold” one and call it good.

Food for thought: Old school babe-centric advertising
What beer? Hurr hurr. 

Something we’ve noticed alongside the rise of these on-the-nose nostalgically positioned lager brands is a lot of “babe-centric” advertising. Like the corny stuff we saw in the 90s and early Aughts.

What does that mean? 

Well: Good looking, scantily clad women. Bikinis. Slo-mo shots of these ladies gratuitously pouring beer all over themselves. (I haven’t seen many frogs or bull terriers, though I assume they’re at the shoot, just off camera).

The 14-year-old in me loves this. The 39-year-old father of two daughters… not so much. But I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to inject myself into this conversation. 

For starters, my opinion on this doesn’t matter. I’m not a puritan, nor am I the fun police. So, I’m not coming at this topic from a judgmental standpoint.

But I think it’s important to consider who you want to attract to your brand, or who we — the industry-wide Royal We — want to attract to the craft beer category.

I shared this draft (and several images) with half a dozen women in my life (spanning Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X and Boomers), and none of them were offended by any of this. However, I did hear a few recurring sentiments in this survey:

– “Well, that’s just how beer has always been marketed.”

– “Meh. I don’t care. But I wouldn’t buy it.” 

– “I guess this is just a bro thing?”

Again, this is about as unscientific as you can get. But I think these responses highlight an important thing to consider here. 

If your brewery is worried at all about changing drinker demographics, or about attracting groups that have traditionally been ignored by the broader craft industry, then perhaps you shouldn’t start behind the power curve by reverting to the sexist, reductive marketing of yore. 

Craft is already 70% male to 30% female (vs. 60 / 40 for beer more broadly). And if we want to close this gap, there are better ways of bringing new folks to the table. 

Lager: It’s Brand, and personality, all the way down

You’re going to be running against entrenched macro brands and a growing contingent of craft brands no matter how you position your lager. This means your Brand — your brand name, your positioning, your brand voice and personality, your packaging and overall vibe — these are what will separate you from everyone else. 

Assuming your lager is well made and priced right, your Brand will be crucial, perhaps even more so than in other styles and segments, to differentiate your product and help you scale.

Small beers. Big opportunity?
A possible sweet spot, just don’t call them “session” beers

This is entirely anecdotal, but I’m seeing lower ABV beers (for a concrete number, let’s say sub-4%) popping up in taprooms across the country. 

The value props here are obvious: 

– More crushable (you can drink more in one sitting)
– Less alcohol means a lessened hangover 
– Lower calories (presumably)
– More flavor than NA beer (in some cases)
– Cheaper to produce 
– Tailor-made for day drinking moderation

Whatever your preferred benefit, I think there’s something here. And as the beer industry continues seeing growth at the high end with Imperial IPAs and on the low end with NA offerings, I think small beers, if properly positioned, could be an interesting bet to make over the next few years.

The rising importance of fruit & flavor-forward beers
Craft’s secret weapon for new drinker recruitment? 

Fruit-forward beers have been trending for some time, and for good reason. While they can taste wonderful, their true importance lies in the significant opportunity they present for breweries to reach non-traditional beer consumers

Consider this: 50% of alcohol consumers actively avoid craft beer because they “don’t like the flavor.” Even more strikingly, an eye-popping 70% of women aged 21–34 share this sentiment. It’s reasonable to assume that many associate craft beer with either excessive bitterness (think IPAs) or profiles significantly heavier than the light lagers that have long been considered the “standard” beer flavor.

Fruited beer bypasses this baggage entirely and can be positioned however you want. Forget “craft,” or even “beer.” You can focus entirely on the flavor or adjunct itself because the core value proposition here is: Familiar, approachable and delicious.

In this way, you can meet your customers where they are and shed all the other stuff they would typically have to wade through.

I’m not sure what a Kettle Sour is. Or a Gose. (Am I even pronouncing that right??)  

But leading with fruit and flavor gives people a familiar reference. 

Oh, it tastes like blueberries. Got it. Add. To. Cart. 

And this concept isn’t limited to beer. The fruit-forward approach can be exported to other segments as you see fit. While offering a fruited-beer is certainly an option (and one worth considering), the same principle can be applied to hard seltzers, canned cocktails, hard ciders, hard teas and even NA products. The key is to offer flavor profiles that people want, allowing you to follow your consumers’ preferences across categories.

To bring this home, fruit-forward beverages are more than a flash-in-the-pan style of the day. They are an opportunity for growth and market expansion. By emphasizing familiar flavors and approachability, your brewery can attract a wider audience, including those who have traditionally shied away from craft beer. 

Hard Cider
A handful of thoughts on one of CODO’s favorite non-beer segments

If you’ve listened to the BBT podcast, or seen us on stage at a conference, or taken a peek inside our office kegerator, you know how bullish CODO is on hard cider. I believe broader Bev Alc and consumer trends point to some bright days ahead for this segment. 

We see nothing but runway here (and actively shifting format rules, regulations and tax structures will make this more compelling in the immediate term as well).

Here are a handful of recurring conversations we’re having with founders and marketing directors in our cider branding work right now.

On apples and provenance ( Does this scale? Does it have to? )

Provenance has always been an important value prop in craft beverage.

And cider has a leg up on beer in this regard because you can point to physical orchards  — and trees and dirt and bees and baskets and tractors and old farm dogs, all of it — to tell your story. 

This is wonderful. So if you have it, and if it suits your positioning, flaunt it. Anything that gives consumers a frame of reference for why your products are different should be explored.

However, the current winners in cider — Schilling, Blake’s, Two Towns, Angry Orchard, et al. — don’t hang their hats on this exclusively. It’s certainly a part of their story, where relevant, but looking at their packaging shows a broader focus on CPG beverage cues. Namely, fruit and flavor and personality and vibes.

Cider brands that are crushing it right now are — similar to beer and RTDs and FMBs — leading with their brand and flavor above all else. This is an important trend to keep in mind if your cidery (or brewery) is thinking through how to appeal to a broader audience. Going broader means a bigger potential audience that is already drinking across category. So meet them where they are.

Who’s drinking hard cider? 

Broad brush time: A cider drinker is:

– Someone who drinks across category (beer, cider, NA, spirits, RTDs, etc.)
– Fairly gender neutral (though proportionately attracting more women than men compared to beer)
– More health conscious (not always, but generally)
– Someone who drinks cider for a health reason (gluten-free or reduced, etc.)
– Someone who enjoys flavor and sensory experience 
– Young-ish: Cider could reach LDA Gen Z folks as well as Millennials (and Gen Xers)

—

Findings from CODO field work (anecdotal) 

One of my favorite things to do when in a brewery taproom — whether for work or pleasure — is to ask servers and bartenders what they see people order most often. This is anecdotal, but it seems like every time I ask someone this question (when they serve cider), they mention it as a crowd favorite. Here are a collection of quotes I’ve gathered from recent rebrand kickoff interviews:

– “Wine drinkers gravitate towards our cider [because we don’t serve wine].”

– “We see a lot of wives order it. And gluten-free folks, of course.”

– “We actually see a lot of younger guys order it, particularly our dry cider.”

– “It’s [cider] a great answer to the question, “What do you have that isn’t beer?”

—

There’s an overlap with beer drinkers here. But don’t make the mistake of viewing your audience as monolithic. People have different tastes and preferences, and hard cider can be a great addition (particularly in the on-premise) if you’re not already making it.

On cider’s Gluten-Free claim 

This value prop comes up every single time we work on a cider brand. And I understand why. For people who are cutting back, or actually unable to ingest gluten, this is  a critical differentiator. 

And as we’ve previously explored, the gluten free claim punches far above its weight and can cast a broader halo effect over the rest of your brand — Oh, this is gluten free. That must mean this is healthier than these other brands.

A caution: Mind the positioning trap

Positioning boils down to 3 main points: 

– What do you do / offer / make? 

– For whom (who is your intended audience?)

– And how you are meaningfully differentiated from your competition?

Your goal as a cider (or beer, spirits, XYZ beverage) brand is to land in the top 2 or 3 spots in someone’s head for a given category. 

Example: What brand comes to mind when you think of Non Alcoholic beer? How about canned water? How about hard tea? (YMMV depending on where you’re located, but if you’re here in America, I bet you answered Athletic, Liquid Death and Twisted Tea.)

From a consumer standpoint, positioning is how people categorize you in their mind. We can’t remember the names and differences between hundreds of options. We can’t even do that with dozens of options, it’s just not how we’re wired. (For fun, try to name 12 shampoo brands. I’ll wait.)

So we look for meaningful points of differentiation—story, value props, and how your brand will help me self-actualize and help me shape my own identity — as a way to categorize brands in our head. 

—

Back to gluten now…

If you lead with a gluten-free claim, that’s exactly how people will categorize your brand. Not whatever story you’re telling, or how your packaging looks, but as a gluten-free product. 

And here’s where we need to think strategically about audience size and industry direction. Leading cider brands are increasingly positioning themselves with broader, more mainstream CPG approaches. They’re speaking to wider audiences about lifestyle, taste and occasions — not hanging their hat on niche attributes.

When we look at audience size:

– Those who medically require gluten-free products represent a dedicated, but small segment

– Health-conscious consumers who prefer gluten-free options make up a larger, but still limited audience

– The total addressable market for cider drinkers is significantly larger than both these segments combined

This doesn’t mean you should ignore the gluten-free attribute — it is still valuable (see the halo effect idea above). But consider it as part of your broader story rather than your primary positioning.

Think of it as a supporting proof point that reinforces your larger brand narrative, rather than the narrative itself.

Remember: Positioning is one of the most important ongoing exercises you engage in. While having unique claims like gluten-free can be tempting to lead with, make sure you’re not inadvertently limiting your brand’s potential by focusing too narrowly. 

The question isn’t just “Can we claim this?” but rather “Does this claim help us reach and resonate with our largest possible audience?”

Should your brewery launch a cannabis beverage?
Is cannabis a threat, an opportunity or a waste of time?

CODO is fielding a few cannabis beverage branding projects right now (one in Washington and another Minnesota) and we’re having a lot of fun.

This space feels a lot like the early days of the Beer Boom — our team is drinking from a fire hose, figuring out label compliance and regulatory considerations, positioning and category canon, consumer education levels, Brand Architecture, and on and on. 

We’ll develop robust case studies for these projects later, but I wanted to outline a few of the recurring themes we’re seeing in our work, branding, positioning and helping breweries bring these cannabis brands to market today.

Non-alcoholic beer, canned water & Hop Water 
Exploring different ways to ride the wellness wave 

I don’t think there’s a single person who, ten years ago, would’ve guessed that a dedicated non-alcoholic beer brand (NA) would be one of the largest breweries in the United States by 2025. But that’s what’s happened, as Athletic Brewing has gone from small startup to parabolic growth path. 

We had a lot of conversations around how a small brewery could get into the NA beer space back around 2020 / 2021, and whether this could be a way to court younger drinkers who aren’t consuming as much beer as we’d like.

Today, we’re seeing less interest here. Why? It’s notoriously hard to make well (great tasting so your fans will love it) and even harder to make safely (so, it won’t, uh, kill them). 

I think it’s also fair to ask how a younger person who never developed a taste for beer in the first place would end up regularly buying a non-alcoholic beer (or Hop Water, for that matter).

But for a brewery interested in the non-alcoholic space, NA beer isn’t the only game in town anymore. Now, we’re seeing more breweries exploring Hop Water, and canned water in general, as an approachable NA option. 

No matter where you land, I think the brewery of tomorrow has to offer NA options. Athletic has proven there’s an appetite for this segment. But more importantly, there’s a growing contingent of younger folks who see alcohol as overtly dangerous (with zero benefits whatsoever).  

Adding on to this is a growing trend of national health organizations declaring that no amount of alcohol is healthy. This will eventually lead to revised mandatory labeling requirements, increased sin taxes and possibly purchasing limits. And those loosey-goosey Beverage Alcohol crossover brands, especially from historically children-focused brands launching spiked versions are not helping your case here (e.g. Sunny D???) 

And on the other side of this, away from the threat of government wading in, you have canned water brands making sobriety cool (in a non-preachy, ironic way, fun way) as well as a growing contingent of people who view any amount of alcohol as dangerous to their long-term health. 

Canned water brands sit at an intersection of several important trends:

– All zeros (0 carbs, 0 sugar, 0 calories)

– Sustainable (aluminum vs. plastic)

– Functional (can layer in other benefits, like nootropics, probiotics, or some other newfangled ingredient of the day) 

And for people who bemoan canned water as Late-Stage Capitalism, I’m not sure that critique holds much, well, water. Water is (thankfully) a commodity. We need to drink it every day, and we need to take it with us on our daily goings-ons. If canned water is more environmentally friendly than plastic, then why wouldn’t a company put its weight behind branding and marketing to differentiate and dominate the category. 

Wrapping up 

Non-alcoholic beverages are here to stay. And if you want to get into this space, don’t limit your brewery to just producing NA beer. Hop Water, canned water, and other styles are emerging as promising alternative NA options.

As we look to the future, breweries are going to have to adapt to changing consumer interests. And NA options will continue to grow and become an important part of your portfolio.

Section 4: Beer Package Design Trends

In this section, we’re going to highlight several interesting visual trends we’re seeing across beer and Bev Alc today. 

A quick note here: We’re going to focus on surface level aesthetics. Graphic design is fun and beautiful and it plays an outsized role in building your brand and getting people to grab something from a cold box and put it in their cart.

But in talking about these different visual trends, I want you to think about the deeper meaning behind the specific look and feel. What could a particular aesthetic say about your brewery? What sort of audiences could a specific look resonate with? And what brand voice and personality and positioning can you build around these ideas? This section is always fun, but make sure you’re keeping your eye on the bigger prize as you read it. 

Bifurcation
A clean way to corral your flagships 

Bifurcation emerged as a leading trend amongst larger breweries back in the mid-to-late 2010s. Defined by a clear color block — usually white or cream on one end and a color on the other that shifts from SKU to SKU. You can sprinkle in other graphics and elements as needed, but this is a useful way of delineating between multiple brands and creating a show-stopping billboard on shelf.

The problem is that this look became overdone as even smaller breweries began to employ it across the country for several years.

As a response to this (whether directly or indirectly), beer packaging veered away from clean and systemized and full bore into a Postmodern maze that often leaves consumers having to hunt to see who even brewed a beer, let alone what style it is. (It’s a Hazy, by the way. There, just saved you 30 seconds.)

Anyway, we’ve been on several road trips rebranding and/or refreshing brewery packaging over this last year and aren’t seeing it as much as we used to. So, it could be a great time to bring this look back, particularly if your brewery has rationalized its portfolio and is leading with a new, simpler lineup overall. 

What messaging does a bifurcated look carry? This beer is reliable and well made. It’s precise. And it’s easy. If you like the Pils, grab the yellow can. If you like the West Coast IPA, grab the dark green one. 

This is professional and clean, and I predict that it’ll become big again in the next few years.

Retro keeps marching on
It was the 80s!

We’ve been tracking an overtly 70s / 80s thread in beverage and broader CPG packaging over the last few years, and it’s continuing its march this year. 

As with many of these trends, isolating why this is in right now is challenging. My guess is that it stems from broader culture and street fashion which informs everything we see on social media, which is then adopted by CPG brands to better target consumers on said social media. Eventually, it makes its way into beer and the other everyday brands we see on shelf. 

An easier explanation is that whatever was in 25–30 years ago will always come back in force as kids who grew up with those aesthetics hit their peak earning years, start having kids of their own and want to fondly share their own childhood experiences with their children. 

When it comes to actually leaning into these aesthetics for your packaging, I do think there’s an interesting conversation to be had about what constitutes a timeless look vs. something that is decidedly ephemeral. And since both ideas are, in this case, rooted in a retro period, the line becomes even blurrier. 

Close your eyes and think about this: Which will still look good 50 years from now? 

– Mid-Century typography or bubbly Y2K typography?

– Reductive 1970s lithographic printed cans or 90s grunge?


There’s no value judgment in either of these questions. Aesthetics are inherently subjective and, in this context, can change on a dime as consumer interests shift to the next *shiny* thing to buy.

But if you’re building a brand and intend to do so for the long haul, think about how your aesthetic decisions, particularly if you’re leaning more retro, will stand 5, 10, 20 years from now.

We’re headed out west
See you out on the dusty trail

We’re seeing an interesting blend of Texas, Southeastern US and Western US aesthetics (and maybe a sprinkling of SoCal) across CPG beverage right now. 

Why? A few guesses: Austin is a cultural hub in the US. And Yellowstone is (was?) the biggest show on TV for several years. And the West in general is part and parcel of the American spirit — the frontier and exploration and adventure and making your fortune.

But setting conjecture aside, these aesthetics are timeless and attractive and they blend well. So maybe we don’t need to overthink it?

Mascots, Pt. 3
What if this coffee bean had arms? Is this anything?

This is the third year in a row we’ve written about mascots in beer branding. And this trend just will not let up. 

And I’m not even judging it at this point. Is it overdone? Are mascots often used when they don’t make sense? Can you build a brand around a mascot? Is there any way you can create an entirely new mascot without directly ripping off 1,000 other designers who also made a pizza slice or a beer can or a coffee bean that came before you?

You’ll have to answer these questions for yourself. 

But on the flip side, there’s a clear reason why mascots are such a prevalent trend not only in beer, but across the broader CPG landscape itself: They’re fun.

This entire report, up to this section, dove into the behind-the-scenes considerations for building your brewery’s portfolio, positioning new products and how to leverage your brand in new and interesting ways to build a more robust business. But let’s set all that aside. Again, mascots are fun. And whether intentional or not, they usually come with a healthy dose of nostalgia. So good all around. 

My caution for you in case you’re thinking, “Hey, maybe my brewery needs a fun mascot.” Think about this just a little deeper. What does this mascot say about your brewery? And is this message something that will help you build your brand over time? 



If yes, then draw those googly eyes and arms and legs to your heart’s content. If not, maybe find another visual approach.P

The Occult 
Spooky season, now, year-round! 

This is a small trend centered around mystical, dark illustrations and iconography — think skulls, pentagrams, cryptids, spiders, Ouija boards, hour glasses, candles and various winged-artifacts.

You could argue this look has always been prevalent, if we extend this definition to include the more heavy metal illustrations you see in beer packaging (e.g. Three Floyds, War Pigs). 

In either case, it’s fun. And it’s certainly not the norm, so it stands out. The problem is, does it stand out in a way that gets enough people to pick the beer up and throw it in their cart? (Are there enough goths to sustain your business?)


Dimensional Shading 
Adding depth and texture 

Dimensional shading and typography lends a fun 3D effect to your packaging. 

This is a small trend (actually, a carryover from last year) that punches way above its weight visually. It’s an interesting way to ground typography, or any other visual element, in a composition while creating a container for other important info types (e.g. ABV and health claims). It’s also visually flexible:  

– It can look contemporary.

– It can look like vintage grocery store window painted typography. 

– It can look like comic book art.

– It can look small and artisan.

– It can look right at home on the shiniest global CPG brands.

I have nothing deeper to say on dimensional shading. It’s cool, and it’s in right now. But that means the clock is already ticking for when this becomes old hat. 

So, my caution with this, and indeed, any other visual aesthetic we’ve highlighted here, is to be careful about building your entire visual identity around something that’ll look out of touch in a few years. 

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