"Highway to the Danger Zone,” the hit theme song for 1986’s “Top Gun,” plays in the background of jets revving up their engines as they take the “highway to the danger zone, ride into the danger zone.” Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, independent craft brewers have been experiencing their own “danger zone” as on-premise traffic to taprooms and brewpubs declined and volume dropped an estimated 8 percent in the total U.S. independent craft beer market, says Nathan Greene, consulting analyst for New York-based Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC).
The independent craft beer market was worth an estimated $29.3 billion in retail spending in 2019, with about 50 percent of spending occurring on-premise, Greene says. For the first half of 2020, craft beer market production volume was down around 10 percent, with improvement in the third quarter, followed by the aforementioned 8 percent year-to-date decline through August.