After the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest was canceled for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, brewmaster Matt Brynildson was inspired to finally pull the trigger on his goal of creating a special release bottle club at the Paso Robles, California-headquartered craft brewery.
“The fest has always been an opportunity for us to personally connect with our biggest fans and with those who drive beer culture,” Brynildson said in a press release. “World events have really dampened our opportunities for intentional interaction, so we decided it was time to create a new way to connect.”
And so Firestone Walker’s Brewmaster’s Collective was born.
Membership was available to 1,000 California residents for $599, which includes shipping. Members will receive eight shipments totaling 27 beers, 14 of which are club exclusives, beginning with a welcome box including Firestone’s 2021 release of Parabola barrel-aged stout and two variants, Double Barrel Parabola and Amburana Parabola; and Dark Ray, a barrel-aged ale blended with vanilla, cocoa nibs and toasted coconut. Firestone Walker is adding names to a waitlist for 2022 membership.
With each shipment, Brynildson, Barrelworks master blender Jim Crooks and barrel program manager Eric Ponce will host online tastings.
“Online tasting sessions should be a great way to communicate the intention and process behind each beer and give an opportunity for a two-way exchange of ideas,” Brynildson told Brewbound. “It will inevitably lead to greater understanding for both brewer and beer lover.”
Bottle clubs have grown in popularity among craft brewers over the last year. Santa Rosa and Windsor, California-based Russian River Brewing Company launched its Cellar Society in January 2021, and Salem, Massachusetts-based Notch Brewing began offering a mail-order subscription in late 2020.
The direct connection between brewers and consumers has benefits for both parties, explained Jeff Carroll, general manager of Avalara for Beverage Alcohol, which offers tax and regulatory compliance services for shipping.
“What’s nice about DTC is you can really establish more meaningful relationships with your customers,” he told Brewbound. “You are in control of your brand; you can build your brand the way you want it to be built, and then it’s more profitable.”
With consumers unable to travel, destinations such as Angry Orchard’s location in Walden, New York — where the Boston Beer-owned cidermaker produces small, experimental batches — have turned to bottle clubs to create a broader audience for their offerings.
“For the past five years, the orchard has been home to experimentation and small-batch ciders you could really only experience here, so our cider club will be the first time we’re able to bring a taste of what we’re doing in the Hudson Valley to homes across the country,” head cidermaker Ryan Burk told Brewbound in an email. “And, with our drinkers home now more than ever, this is a great time to bring some flavor right to their doorstep.”
Angry Orchard’s Cider Club is open to drinkers in 40 states through a partnership with VinoShipper, a direct-to-consumer, e-commerce fulfillment company for wineries, which cideries are classified as at the regulatory level. Shipments arrive quarterly and include three specialty bottles. Each costs $75, plus shipping, and consumers are billed throughout the year.
Burk hopes the club will provide an introduction to Angry Orchard’s offerings beyond its Crisp Apple flagship, and court both new drinkers and existing fans of the brand.
“For those familiar with Angry Orchard, our Cider House offerings will be able to showcase a different side of cider than our national portfolio, exploring nuances in apple varietals, aging, ingredient collaborations and more that can expand upon their current cider knowledge,” he wrote. “And for those new to Angry Orchard, we think this introduction to our small-batch work will showcase our passion for quality, innovation and experimentation with our very own fruit.”
At Boston-headquartered Harpoon Brewery, the Annex Society was planned pre-pandemic as a way to replace the waning attendance of the brewery’s X Night, a monthly series that invited drinkers to taste and give feedback on experimental beers.
Harpoon Beer Hall general manager Felicia Ruano first envisioned the Annex Society as drop-in occasions for drinkers to taste and evaluate on their own schedule, rather than the prescribed monthly X Night events.
“Obviously, 2020 derailed it, and we weren’t able to get that off the ground,” she told Brewbound. “But we wanted to do something similar and something that was COVID friendly.”
Harpoon Annex Society offers half-year and full-year memberships, each including a limited release 4-pack before the special beer becomes available to the public and a gift card to the Beer Hall or e-store.
Rather than relying solely on direct shipping, Ruano created a membership plan for local drinkers to pick their monthly allotments up at the brewery ($100 for six months, $175 for a year), and another that ships to members within Massachusetts ($225 for six months, $425 for a year). The pickup option gives drinkers a reason to visit Harpoon while its capacity is restricted and the large events the brewery is known for in Boston are scaled down.
But all members — those who pick up their beer or those who receive it through a delivery partner — are asked to provide feedback on the beers they taste each month.
“These people are loyal Harpoon drinkers, so their feedback, as well as everyone’s feedback, is really important,” Ruano said. “We’re talking to them via email on a monthly basis, we’re getting to see a majority of them come into our store and talk to us, so we’re building a whole new level of relationships with these people. And we’re taking their feedback and bringing it to the brewers, which has been hugely successful so far.”
For its inaugural year, the society has garnered about 50 members in each both pick-up and shipped plans. Harpoon will accept another class of six-month members in June.
All three clubs — Harpoon’s Annex Society, Angry Orchard’s Cider Club and Firestone Walker’s Brewmaster’s Collective — include discounts for members to use at the brands’ taprooms and e-stores, creating another avenue to maintain connections with drinkers.
“What your goal should be around direct shipping is to find and keep long-term customers,” Carroll said. “You want them to make future purchases from you in your direct channel, but also in the stores and in restaurants and at the taproom.”
Some within the middle tier have argued that DTC shipments from breweries threatens the three-tier system of distribution and could potentially harm brewers’ relationships with wholesalers. In Illinois, lawmakers are considering a bill that would make permanent brewers’ permission to offer home delivery, which was granted during the pandemic, and allow them to ship beer.
Illinois Craft Brewers Guild executive director Danielle D’Alessandro told the Chicago Tribune the move was born from “a natural evolution of consumer preferences.” But Bob Myers, president of the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois accused the guild of using the proposed bill to “basically to destroy the three-tier system as it is in law now.”
Carroll disagrees that expanded DTC privileges for breweries would mean wholesalers will lose out.
“That’s not the case,” he said. “You’re building your brand, you’re increasing awareness. That’s going to increase your sales across all channels, and it’s going to help your wholesale and retail partners.”
Distribution and DTC shipping have coexisted mostly peacefully in the wine industry for decades. In 2020, wineries shipped 27% more volume directly to consumers than in 2019, according to Sovos ShipCompliant. At off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm NielsenIQ, dollar sales of wine increased 17.5% in 2020.
Because of beer’s considerable weight and lower cost per ounce compared to wine, breweries are unlikely to use DTC shipments to sell their volume drivers. Most bottle clubs are designed to move the barrel-aged, large-format specialty releases that many wholesalers are uninterested in selling.
“A higher value, more exclusive product might do better than your typical 4- or 6-pack,” Carroll said.
The wine industry’s DTC channel saw its largest drop in average bottle price in 2020 — a decline of 9.5%, to an average of $36.83 per bottle, higher than the average bottle price in the bottle clubs of Angry Orchard, Firestone Walker and Harpoon. Bottles that cost $20 or less accounted for 35% of DTC wine, according to Sovos ShipCompliant, which Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson called out in a tweet.
“That’s kind of where most beer will be, so it’s interesting to watch that market from a beer DTC perspective,” he wrote.
When setting price, Carroll urged breweries to be mindful of shipping costs, which can eat into margins, especially for beer.
“The costs that you’re going to have to pay to FedEx and UPS are not insignificant,” he said.
In addition to increased margins, bottle clubs and other DTC sales can offer breweries a wealth of information about their consumers.
“When you get these customers, get their email address, get their phone number,” Carroll said. “Collect a little bit of information from them and then nurture that relationship over time so that they stay loyal to your brand.”