THE WAKKER WEEKLY
Issue #1540 – Posted on: 3-August-2020
NEWS FROM THE BREWERY! Head brewer, Michael Gaetz, reports our seasonally available Baron Bock, Double Honey Imperial Irish Red Ale, Two Sons Milk Stout and Blood Orange Blonde Ale are currently on tap. There are also batches of Chinook ESB, Fleck’s Czech Dark Lager and Premium Pale Ale working their way through the brewery.
Our cheesecakes continue to be one of our most popular comfort foods. The Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup was a huge hit!
This weekend’s Special Dining Feature is an OTTAWA BURGER & A PINT for $19.95. Available Thursday, July 30 – Saturday, August 1st. Our Saturday CLASSIC STEAK & A PINT SPECIAL for $21.95 will also be available.
Our AUGUST PREMIUM WINE FEATURES are Mission Hill 5 Vineyards wines from British Columbia. The red is a 2017 Pinot Noir VQA ($8.95 for a glass and $23.95 for a half litre) and the white is a 2018 Pinot Grigio VQA. ($7.95 for a glass and $21.95 for a half litre)
Our GUEST TAP is currently pouring the Hibiscus Lime Gose from Regina’s Pile O’ Bones Brewing.
In addition to taking our beer home in glass bottles, 2 litre jugs and growler fills direct from our pub, you can find a varying selection of 650 ml bottles of Bushwakker beer in all six Regina SLGA stores.
Our new cocktail menu is finally complete! You’ll find everything from an Oaked Gin Negroni to a Vanilla Espresso Sarsaparilla Paralyzer. Almost as much variety as our beer selection!
BUSHWAKKER NEWS
Please remember that reservations are accepted and are encouraged for any time and on any day so give us a call at 306-359-7276 to secure your table. Please note under current guidelines the maximum number of people who can be seated at the same table is limited to six. Larger reservations must occupy more than one table and maintain physical distancing between each table.
Our current hours of operation are Monday to Saturday from 11:30 AM until 9:00 PM. Our kitchen closes at 8:00 PM. We are closed on Sundays. Our takeout food and beer services will continue to be made available.
Please continue to practice safe health and social distancing practices. Remain connected to one another and to us! In addition to this weekly newsletter, we are very active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Check-in with us often as we navigate these continually evolving times together. Try to support local businesses whenever possible. Be vigilant in your resolve to protect yourselves which in turn will protect others. Please don’t let your guard DOWN so the province can continue to open UP!
Our Home Rider Game Burger & a Pint specials will continue according to the original 2020 CFL schedule.
This weekend’s gourmet burger offering will be an OTTAWA BURGER & A PINT.
The Geography and Demographics of Small Brewers, Part 1
By Bart Watson
In this two-part post, I’m going to take on two distinct, but inter-related topics:
- Who are craft brewery customers and how has that evolved over recent years?
- Where are breweries located and how do the demographics of those locations compare both to their customers, and to the general U.S. population?
The data sets used for this analysis are available to Brewers Association (BA) members, and could potentially be used to answer a variety of other questions. For example, while I’ll spend some time describing the demographics of current brewery locations, the geographic data set would be a great starting point for site analysis and identifying new brewery locations, either based on those existing demographics, or different criteria that a brewery in planning feels matches more closely with its business model. In addition, because the data includes Census Bureau FIPS codes, it can easily be updated with new variables.
As an upfront disclaimer – demographics are one of the social sciences where the data is the best and the causal inferences are the hardest. Because so many demographic variables are related, isolating one or two while missing another that might be a confound makes analysis challenging. In addition, demographics are not destiny, in that knowing someone’s race/ethnicity/income/age may give you averages, but it tells you nothing about individual circumstances, and those same variables mean different things in different places with different cultural or political context. I’ll do my best to lay out what the data show, but the “why” may be lacking at times.
Gender/Sex
Let’s start with the gender demographics. This data comes from Scarborough, a division of Nielsen, and covers a time period from August 2012 through November 2019. One reason I like the Scarborough data is that their sample sizes are huge: 200,000 people in total. For craft drinker demographics, the samples are naturally smaller (since not everyone drinks craft). They use a target of consumption of “any microbrew/craft beer” in the past 30 days, and using this approach, their sample size ranges from 11,360 in the 2012-13 survey up to 18,551 in the 2018-2019 survey. I’ve written about how the number of craft drinkers varies a lot depending on which frequency you use, but this more narrow approach finds that 8.4% of the 21+ population drinks craft regularly (past month), up from 6.6% in 2013 (and up from 7.4% and 7.3% in the 2014-15 and 2016-17 surveys).
I’ve already revealed the best news, which is that the craft drinking population continues to grow. 8.4% from 6.6%, which equals almost six million new drinkers. That’s also roughly in line with the growth in craft production during that time period, approximately 40%.
The time series of this data set also reveals positive signs in terms of better gender balance, with craft’s gender percentage moving from 69.2% male and 30.8% female in 2013 to 65.9% male and 34.1% female in 2019. Note: we don’t know much about entry/exit based on these types of surveys – meaning is the additional 1.8% of the population from the same 6.6% and a new 1.8%, or is it, for example, a new 2.8% and loss of 1%? Even an improved gender balance suggests plenty of room for improvement. Because of the bigger base percentage for men, that change suggests 3.3 million new male craft drinkers against 2.5 million new female craft drinkers, so the incremental percentages are 57% male and 43% female.
Age
Next, let’s take a look at age demographics. One of the biggest long-term opportunities that I’ve seen for craft is that it might “hold” its demographic as craft drinkers age. Historically, beer has drawn a high proportion of its customer base from younger legal drinking age consumers. As those consumers have aged, some of them have moved out of the beer category, partially due to lower volume consumption, but more so because they “trade up” to what they see as more sophisticated or socially acceptable options, which previously had benefited wine.
With the explosion of craft breweries, beer styles, and higher priced beers designed for a broader range of occasions beyond “refreshment,” craft has had a chance to re-write this narrative. There are beer options in fine-dining, and bringing a special bottle of beer or four-pack to the boss’s holiday party is an option now. So, does that mean that craft’s demographic is aging? The data do suggest some positive signs.
Income
What the overall indices show is that craft skews toward higher income, and the time series shows that this hasn’t changed much, and if anything, may have gotten more skewed over time.
Race/Ethnicity
We see similar things when we look at the race/ethnicity data.
The only non-white category that has significantly improved its index from 2013-2019 is Hispanic. And Black/African-American continues to severely under-index.
One thing I was curious about was how much of this was an income effect. Race and income are highly related in the United States, so I asked Scarborough to run race and income for various racial and ethnic groups for each year. What the data show are that each racial and ethnic group has similar gaps in craft consumption between the highest and lowest income brackets.
So income tells you part of the story, but even as income rises, Black/African-American and Hispanic Americans don’t consume craft at the same percentage rates as White Americans. To me, this is a quantification of both the opportunity and the hard work that craft brewers have to do to expand their customer base and invite more Americans to the craft party. Putting aside systemic differences in income levels by race/ethnicity (its own arguably more worthy topic), if the craft category could simply achieve parity within income brackets, you’re talking about millions of additional craft drinkers. Craft brewers can only play a partial role in larger systemic change. They can choose to play a much bigger role in shrinking this gap.
I’ll use that as the transition to part two of this series: Where are breweries located? And equally important, what do the neighborhoods breweries are located in look like in terms of demographics by income, race/ethnicity, and age?
TIME OUT– Timeless Classic
A man walks into a bar and orders a beer. He sips it and sets it down. A monkey swings across the bar and pisses in the pint.
The man asks the barman who owns the monkey. The barman replies, “The piano player”. The man walks over to the piano player and says, “Do you know your monkey pissed in my beer?”
The pianist replies, “No, but if you hum it I’ll play it.”
