Michigan’s Short’s Brewing is on the verge of its 17th anniversary — one that will go without an in-person celebration for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Short’s, which historically has hosted an April anniversary party, called off this year’s celebration in January. In its place, the company opened orders for an “Anni Party Gift Pack,” featuring a pair of 22 oz. bombers and offerings from Short’s new food line, which consumers could order from Michigan beer retailers and would pass through Short’s wholesaler, Imperial Beverage, in an effort to spread the business across the company’s partners.
Despite a number of challenges created by the pandemic, Short’s was able to weather a turbulent 2020, CEO Scott Newman-Bale told Brewbound.
“We saw about a 78% reduction in our keg business, but enough rise in package that we ended the year up 3% in depletions,” he said. “It was the most roller coaster year we’ve ever done to get there. But if you look at the end of the year, it wasn’t that bad.”
And the company came “within a nominal amount” of its projected profitability for the year, Newman-Bale added.
Nevertheless, Short’s is taking a cautious approach to 2021.
“We’re not forecasting big growth this year,” Newman-Bale said. “We have some ambitious plans here and there, but then we’re also planning on them not coming to fruition.”
Off-premise dollar sales of the Short’s brand family are up 9.7%, to more than $7.9 million, for the 52-week period ending March 27, in U.S. food, drug, liquor and convenience stores tracked by market research firm NielsenIQ, according to data shared by 3 Tier Beverages.
Those trends are a bit better year-to-date through April. Off-premise dollar sales of the Short’s brand family are up 10%, with 60% growth over the latest four-week period, according to VIP Data encompassing all sales, including independent and chain accounts, shared by the brewery. Package sales are also trending up (+19% year-to-date, and 35% over the last four weeks), according to the company.
Big Bet in 2021: Lil’ Huma
Short’s focus for 2021 is on Lil’ Huma (4.5% ABV), low-calorie, low-carb IPA, which was added to the brewery’s year-round lineup in December as a spin off of flagship Huma Lupa Licious IPA (7.7% ABV).
“We felt it was time to add something that was less than 7% ABV to our lineup,” Short’s founder Joe Short told Brewbound. “We’ve obviously built that inspired from our flagship IPA, and it’s every bit of a rock solid IPA, just in low-calorie, low-carb, low-ABV form.”
“I was surprisingly shocked at how accurate it was to the original,” Newman-Bale added.
Lil’ Huma is available in 6-pack cans and bottles, as well as 12-pack cans.
Popular seasonal offering Soft Parade Shandy, a spin off of Short’s flagship fruit ale, is also returning for the summer in 6-pack bottles and cans, as well as 12-pack cans and draft.
Add those offerings to the company’s activity in the hard seltzer space with its Beaches brand; a canned rosé wine, Canpagne, which Newman-Bale said has taken off “unexpectedly;” the Starcut Ciders line; and a resurrected Arcadia Brewing line, under Short’s Superfluid Supply Co. offshoot.
In fact, Arcadia has a full calendar of releases in 2021, headlined by Whitsun wheat ale through the summer and Sippelicious Wheat Ale September on through the close of the year, as well as four seasonal offerings.
“It’s a fun side project,” Newman-Bale said. “It’s got a really good old following. It’s one of the older brands. I don’t know if we can do it full justice for the next year or so just with capacity and planning, but we are still full steam ahead on the launch schedule.”
How the Business Changed Since the Pandemic
So what lasting lesson did Short’s take away from 2020?
“I think we’ve learned that whatever we do, we may not make a bunch of money, we may not lose a bunch of money, so we might as well just do what we want to do,” he said. “So we’re probably less focused on barrel growth than we are on profitability, but having fun and doing what we want in the community.”
“Not that we’re taking our hands off the wheel, but we’re rather putting the foot on the clutch and the other hand on the stick shift,” Short added. “We just want to keep our supply chain stacked but probably thin the herd a little bit as far as offerings and then allow capacity to make up with just more Huma and more Soft Parade and less fun stuff and just work on more of those during the shorter seasons.”
“Just to be clear, I’m still confident that we will release more beers than anyone else in a year,” Newman-Bale said. “When we talk about simplifying, ‘Instead of doing 150 different beers in package, let’s do 140.’ It’s not abandoning the craziness of what we were doing.”
Short’s is currently focused on meeting the “massive summer spike” the company encounters each year, Newman-Bale said. In an effort to meet that demand, the company has added a 6,000 sq. ft can storage warehouse. The company is also exploring other efficiencies to ensure its production and packaging turnaround time is as fast as possible, Newman-Bale added.
Short’s is also hoping to draw drinkers to their locations with more direct-to-consumer packages from its Bellaire and Elk Rapids locations in the future.
Community Focus
Beyond barrels and profitability, Newman-Bale and Short said they’re focused on doing good in the communities where they operate. For Newman-Bale, that means serving as the president of the Traverse City Area Public Schools Board of Education, while for Short, it’s sitting on several boards.
“COVID’s really taught us that we need to support each other, and so it doesn’t matter if we make money or don’t make money as long as we’re making sure that as a community we’re growing,” Newman-Bale said.
“Supporting the community, provides us with the community supporting us,” he added. “And that’s a circle that is showing itself really strongly during COVID, and we want to make sure that we strengthen that circle. So I think that’s gonna be a big focus of our year, in general, is just trying to help everyone else recover.”