Beer Marketer's Insights - 19.2s Soar Over Summer as Craft Struggles; Top Gainers in Key Pack are All Shapes, Sizes

From the largest brand fams in the segments to far smaller up-and-comers, the top-15 biggest growers in 19.2oz craft cans over the summer reveal the breadth of players leveraging this increasingly important pack. Yet such strong growth in this corner of the segment suggests some other corners are fading fast. In all, the 15 craft brand fams putting up the biggest $$ sales gain with 19.2s collectively added $20.8 mil in sales to well over $104 mil for 13 wks in Circana multi-outlet + c-store data. That's according to look at list provided by No-Li Brewhouse owner John Bryant, pointing out the co's outsized punch in the packsize. It ranks #10 for growth nationally, despite only selling in 2 states, way more than doubling its 19.2 sales for 13 wks to over a half-mil $$. Indeed, No-Li ranks #3 by rate of sale in the pack given its tight footprint, John pointed out (see below for more on No-Li's locally-driven growth). It's among smaller players on the list, joined by Breakside at #12 and Creature Comforts at #15, each with all incremental $$ sales of about a quarter mil $$ and $164K for 13 wks.But biggest craft brand families really leaned into 19.2s, natch. And no one comes close to New Belgium. At almost $56.6 mil in 19.2 sales for 13 wks, +15%, it's over 4x bigger than #2 player, Sierra Nevada, +18%. A pair of AB-owned craft brand fams outgrew Sierra during the period, though: #3 19.2 fam Goose Island (+33%) and brand-new range of big cans from Wicked Weed, already #10 player in the pack. Blue Moon also found strong growth in 19.2s for 13 wks, its biz in the pack up 61%, $1.3 mil, the #5 grower. Monster's Cigar City and AB's Elysian (the #5 19.2 craft portfolio in all) each added over $1 mil with the big single-serve cans this summer.Big drop-off in gains from there to #8 grower in the pack, Bell's, up by over a half-mil $$, 22%. Rhinegeist grew its 19.2 biz by 63.5%, $324K for 13 wks, just ahead of No-Li. Rounding out the list: Stone's 19.2s (+11% to #9 portfolio in the pack), SweetWater (+16%) and Troegs, which tripled its biz in 19.2s.Yet, if these 15 brand fams grew this part of their biz by a quarter, the rest of craft is even softer. Recall, craft $$ down by around 5% this period in Circana MULC. So these 19.2s gained considerable share of the segment. Rest of craft down more like 7%, these stats suggest. And tho much of the growth of these single-serve cans continues to be in c-stores, 19.2s are also picking up the pace in other off-premise outlets, including foodstores. Is that yet another indication that consumers are especially attuned to convenience and value these days?

19.2s Soar Over Summer as Craft Struggles; Top Gainers in Key Pack are All Shapes, Sizes

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