I recently started working at a small craft brewery in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and as a result have developed a fascination with craft beer: what goes into making a quality beer, marketing it, and selling it to customers and vendors.
Over the summer I had the opportunity to study abroad in the incredible city of Amsterdam for one month. Beer is a heavy hitter in the Dutch economy. At 50 percent, the Netherlands has one of the highest exportation proportions of beer of any country in the world, rivaled only by Mexico. To put this into perspective, the Netherlands produced approximately 24 million hectoliters of beer in 2016, which is equivalent to about 634,012,925 gallons of beer.
That’s a lot of beer.
One of the classes I was enrolled in at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam called “The Heart of Capitalism” examined the dynamics of vibrant cities in terms of business, culture, and the evolution of commerce. My newfound interest in how microbreweries work led me to examine the role the beer industry plays in fueling the Dutch economy, with a specific focus on microbreweries: what they produce, who they sell to, how they’re staffed, and who owns them.
Why should you care? Because beer is awesome and so are the people who make it.
(Pictured above is an Indian Pale Ale called Green Bullet crafted by Two Chefs Brewing out of Amsterdam, served at Calf & Bloom Cafe and Restaurant.)
The beer business is a behemoth, and Amsterdam is the birthplace of some of the biggest beer brands in the world: Heineken and Amstel.
The beer industry contributes about 2.14 billion Euros to the Dutch treasury through excise taxes on products, income tax from brewery employees and special contributions through sponsorships, and according to The Brewers of Europe, the Netherlands as a whole is currently home to over 320 active breweries. These breweries sell beer not only in their tasting rooms but many, once big enough, also distribute their beer to local restaurants, liquor stores, and other venues. For big beer this occurs on an exponentially larger scale.
These breweries play an important role not only in the international economy of the Netherlands but also in the local economies of small towns and cities, with the number of jobs for individuals directly employed at breweries averaging about 6,500 from 2010 to 2015. They also operate as cultural hubs where people from all over the world converge to share in the experience.
What all these numbers indicate is that the beer sector is a thriving one in the Netherlands, a trend that can be seen throughout the world. Large companies have capitalized on this and bought out smaller breweries, gaining a larger share for themselves in the marketplace. For instance, Heineken now owns about 50 percent of the Dutch beer market, and as of 2017 Heineken owns over 165 breweries in more than 70 countries and employees about 74,000 people.
For some, this kind of big corporate buyout is a real issue. That’s because the real bottom line in the brewing industry, especially in terms of craft beers, is not strictly financial (although it would be naive to say it does not play a hugely significant part). The real bottom line is that people care about their beer. If a recipe is changed or the quality seems to fall short of what is expected, people notice.
One of the largest and oldest microbreweries in Amsterdam, Brouwerij’t IJ, is housed inside a giant windmill, a motif in the Dutch culture. While visiting the brewery, it was immediately apparent how close the servers were to each other and to their customers, even if these customers were tourists visiting from Russia, Ireland, or America. When deciding whether to visit this brewery or the famed Heineken Experience, basically a tour of the Amsterdam facilities, every Dutch person I asked told me to visit Brouwerij’t IJ.
Their reasoning? The Heineken Experience was a tourist trap and, while still a novelty, had an aura of distant corporate marketing whereas the smaller breweries I visited were rustic and had no pomp and circumstance, just really good beer.
Above, the IPA from Brouwerij ‘t IJ in Amsterdam, sadly void of its contents.
Customers sometimes take it personally when their favorite microbrewery ‘sells out’ to big beer because there’s often a perceived close-knit culture curated by the small, family owned brewery that regulars cherish in the overall experience along with good beer. Online food and beverage media company Thrillist sums this up in a piece titled “The Great Craft Beer Sellout.”
Author Dave Infante says, “Craft beer has always encouraged an explicitly personal connection between brewers and customers. It’s asked them to get to know brewers, invest themselves in independent breweries, and give a shit about those brewers’ handiwork.” This is especially true for a start up brewery where customers are able to get in on the ground floor of the business and follow it through its growth phase.
Ramping up production to sell more beer to more people just makes sense. As business expands, so too does the reach of the company, and it becomes necessary to hire more intermediary managers to keep track of the logistics and the demand. But this is a delicate dance between quality and quantity, and quality control is often an issue with smaller breweries because they don’t have the budget for high-end quality control measures or technologies.
What’s my take on it? Just drink beer.