The 20th annual Craft Brewers Conference, hosted by the Association of Brewers, was held last week in New Orleans.
Most breweries at the conference were talking of year-to-date sales well into double digits. Nearly every brewery I talked to was expressing solid growth and feeling upbeat heading into summer.
Of particular interest was Kim Jordan’s keynote speech, an eloquent and passionate message for the industry to work together and strive for a 10% market share. Suggesting that those in the industry “attend to each other, just as we attend to our yeast,” Jordan’s talk was inspirational in tone and content, prompting a standing ovation at the end.
Also during the opening talks on Friday, Paul Gatza presented his annual review of industry statistics. Gatza highlighted the statistics which were released by the AOB in March and reported recently in BEERWeek.
A more detailed report on the conference appears in this weeks issue of BEERWeek.
Next years CBC will be held in San Diego in mid-April.
