“Craft Beer” Feel
While BBC has reaped tremendous success in the market place as the creator of the craft beer segment, there are those that believe that the company is too large and too well known to be referred to as a “craft” beer. Millennials craving for offerings that are organic, local, authentic, cool, and new aren’t getting what they want from the Samuel Adams brand and have started to turn their back on the company (Crouch, Wasted: How the Craft-Beer Movement Abandoned Jim Koch, 2015).
My recommendation for the company would be to continue to keep the brands under its umbrella separated. From my perspective, it appears as though the Samuel Adams tag comes with a negative stigma with millennials with ultra-high tastes. I also believe that the company should keep a watchful eye for craft brew …show more content…
Mr. Koch is extremely passionate about the company he founded and the section of the beer market that he created just by differentiating for the major players in the early 1980s. While it is amazing to see his company succeed for as long as I’ve been alive, as I was born in 1983, BBC and Mr. Koch need to recognize that Samuel Adams has become the “old man at the frat party.”
My recommendation would be to continue producing “better” beer and stop striving so hard to artificially remain a craft brewer. Unfortunately, BBC missed a key point in what makes a craft brewer a “craft” brewer; flexibility, market responsiveness, and connection with its community. The fact that the company shipped over four million barrels of brew last year lets me know that its popularity is greater than ever. But if there’s no real variety in its offerings year over year, millennials will bypass the brand in search of something they never heard of or tasted before.
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