Charlotte, North Carolina-headquartered Sycamore Brewing posted another year of double-digit growth in 2021 and is poised for more of the same in 2022.
“We put aggressive growth goals in front of our distributors for this coming year and they were wholly adopted,” VP of sales Archie Gleason told Brewbound.
In 2021, Sycamore produced about 28,000 barrels of beer, a +40% increase over 2020. The brewery crossed the 20,000-barrel threshold – more than it had produced in all of 2020 – in September 2021.
Although Sycamore has expanded to new markets in recent years (Kentucky and Tennessee in 2020; Ohio and West Virginia in 2021), the bulk of the brewery’s volume growth has come from North Carolina and South Carolina.
“Most of it is organic,” Gleason said. “Almost all of it is in the Carolinas; almost all of our growth is at home.”
In particular, Sycamore’s home-market growth has been fueled by promotion and expansion within off-premise chain retailers, such as Harris Teeter and Walmart. In the on-premise channel, Sycamore’s draft volume increased 122% in 2021, after growing 3% in 2020 – “which is the equivalent to being up 1,000%,” Gleason said.
“We launched a marketing campaign around freshness and just went all over the place with it,” he added. “If we can make people equate the word ‘fresh’ with Sycamore, then we win, and so that’s what we’ve put a whole lot of effort into.”
While Sycamore does not plan to add to its eight-state footprint in 2022, the brewery will fill out its distribution territories in Ohio and West Virginia.
“We’ve been there, but just haven’t finished off the states, so that’s the plan for the near term,” Gleason said.
Given the brand’s success within off-premise chain retailers, Sycamore would consider an invitation to enter another market but the company’s 2022 goals remain focused at home.
“If chains ask us to go somewhere else we’ll consider it,” Gleason said. “We see our biggest opportunity for growth is growing just organically in the Carolinas.”
The Sycamore portfolio is anchored by flagship offering Mountain Candy IPA, its rotating IPA series and a non-IPA seasonal series. This year, Sycamore will add the Barista Series, a third rotating family of coffee beers, which will launch with Mocha Breve Stout in March.
Sycamore is no stranger to brewing with coffee. Its fall seasonal offering Pumpkin Latte Blonde – a blonde ale with cold brew and pumpkin spice – doubled in volume in 2021. Three days after the seasonal beer’s launch, Sycamore’s second largest distributor had already sold through 1,000 cases, Gleason said.
“We use a blonde as our base instead of how a lot of folks will use a darker beer like a stout or porter, so it’s a little brighter and easier,” he added. “We brew the cold brew and it goes straight into the beer.
“We follow up with a light amount of pumpkin spice at the end,” Gleason continued. “It’s almost like you’re getting a coffee beer that has a little pumpkin to it, instead of a pumpkin beer that you’re like, “Oh, is that coffee in there?’”
In past years, Sycamore waited until Labor Day to introduce Pumpkin Latte Blonde, but instead transitioned it to mid-August. The earlier release date helped increase volume.
One product that Sycamore won’t carry into 2022, however, is the company’s 77-calorie hard seltzer brand Bubs, which launched in late 2019 and is being discontinued.
“We had some great buy-in from both retailers and distributors, but at the end of the day, seltzer’s pretty enigmatic, in general,” Gleason said. “It’s just a different flavor all the time and that’s what keeps consumers engaged. And unless you’re a scale player, you just can’t stay in new cans and new labels all the time.
“We could pivot on the liquid, no problem, but what we can’t afford to do is keep buying big truckloads of cans,” he continued.
In 2021, Sycamore’s taproom sold 1,350 barrels of beer and the company recently began construction on a second Charlotte taproom, slated to open this spring.