Patrick Livingston from IRI gave a compelling update on the health of craft in his Brewers Assortation (BA) Power Hour presentation today. Most notable was that craft is leveling off in the IRI tracked off-premise as the year progresses. Craft had shown growth through March but has grown very little since then.
BA-defined craft grew by 6% in 2016 and 4% last year. Total growth through July of this year clocked in at 1.4% according to Livingston. IRI only tracks scanned off-premise sales, so these numbers do not take in account on-premise retail where craft is considered to be doing slightly better.
Total beer volume is down 0.2%.
Another significant trend is the growth of cans over bottles in the craft segment. Cans grew by a whopping 39% while bottle volume was down 9%. This demonstrates the dramatic shift that craft brewers are taking from bottles to cans.