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The Australian Craft Beverage Movement – Reshaping the F&B Landscape

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The Australian Craft Beverage Movement – Reshaping the F&B Landscape.

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The craft beverage movement has been building significant momentum over the past 10 years and has subsequently reshaped the liquor industry as we know it. With craft brewing, small scale local distilleries and small batch wine production capturing greater market share year on year, we are seeing a shift in the market towards quality over quantity and experiential over mainstream.

This renaissance in the booze industry has come at a time when consumers are more discerning than ever. Whilst marketing companies will tell you that these customer expectations have been pertinent for far longer than the inception of the craft booze industry, it is the unwavering demand for these experiences in the liquor industry that continues to propel the growth of the craft beverage sector.

Customers expect more than just liquid in a glass; they are seeking some background, a story about provenance, an experience, a lesson and most importantly a memory that they can share with friends and family, in person or via their socials. Regularly engaging with customers is paramount for any small business to achieve success, and has further shaped the industry as we experience it today. A visit to a farm, production facility, brew pub, cidery or cellar door are regularly scheduled into most excursions or weekends away into regional towns around the country, as a way of experiencing the local’s tipple of choice.

“It’s not just, ‘We make beer ­– here, come and drink it.’ There must be something that provides an enticing and satisfying experience for the visitor, to ensure that they will tell their friends and come back.”

- Dr. Alison Dunn 2018 | How Tourism can support the local craft beverage industry.

This sector relies heavily on tourism bringing the customers to the source, which is a dependence that not all producers in the industry are comfortable with and a risky business model to base your sales strategy around. Another constant challenge for those operating in regional locations is how to get their product to customers in the cities. Whether it is tyranny of distance, limited resources for sales reps, challenges with supply chain or simply the sheer competition for space on bottle shop shelves, there is a need to devise astute strategies to entice the customers to the product.

The modern consumer is not afraid of travelling great distances if they are rewarded with great experiences. Brands like Bass and Flinders Distillery in Dromana Victoria, offering tastings, masterclasses and the ability to blend your own botanicals for a customised gin to take home, sees them booked up most weekends. Cape Byron Distillery in McLeods Shoot, inland from Byron Bay NSW, offer the obligatory tastings and distillery tours, however, this is taken a step further with guided tours through their rainforest to see, smell and touch many of the native rainforest botanicals they use in the production of their gin.

The need to enhance the customer experience is seen across the entire hospitality industry and the craft alcohol industry has been at the forefront of driving this, to attract customers, drive sales and to safeguard repeat visitation. When competing with the global giants of the liquor industry, there is the need to deliver more personal experiences, that provoke engagement and spawn a connection between producer and consumer.

The opposite side of this coin is also reaping great reward as we have seen more recently in the major cities and CBD’s, where some operators have opted for a strategy of bringing not just their product to the customer, but the entire experience.  Through becoming more accessible, providing new and unique experiences for their customers and capturing greater exposure for their brands through strategically positioning themselves near their major target audience has seen these operators reshaping the city with a craft beverage focus.

The creation of urban cellar doors popping up around the country are firsthand expressions of this and can be seen from inner city locations such as Moore Park to Chippendale in Sydney, North Melbourne to South Wharf in Melbourne and Myaree in Perth to Goodwood in Adelaide. These new concepts are bringing the cellar door experience to the city and engaging with greater customer numbers on a more regular basis.

The latest benchmark for this will be the new city site for retail and restaurant brand Calia, due to open in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne with a cellar door operated by Yarra Valley’s Levantine Hill Estate, bringing a similar experience on offer at the winery, to the bustling streets of the Melbourne CBD. 

And it is not just the big brands looking at capturing greater market share, we are seeing the emergence of small operators such as Rouleur Wine Co, who selected the site of a dilapidated and run down old milk bar in the back streets of North Melbourne, to transform into their own newly renovated ‘Urban Tasting Room’, bringing the product and the experience to the people.

Given that our wines are from 2 regions, in two different States, why not put our home base somewhere in the middle that is easily accessible for all and a nice home for us when we’re not in the vineyard or winery, says Owner and Winemaker Matt East.

As a small producer we love to do things in house, to source the fruit, to make the wine and presenting the wine to our customers seems to complete the circle and ensure we have full visibility over the entire process.

Four Pillars Gin has been based out of Healesville in Victoria’s Yarra Valley region since 2013 and has established an enviable reputation as one of Australia’s leading craft gin distilleries. With bookings required and wait lists for tastings on weekends, it is no surprise that they have chosen to expand their operation and simultaneously increase their prospective customer base.

The Laboratory is Four Pillars’ long-awaited entry into Sydney’s vibrant gin scene. A Disneyland of gin, this Crown Street hub features a retail shop for the award-winning Yarra Valley-based distillery, as well as a cocktail bar called Eileen’s and the Four Pillars Drinks Lab, where you can take masterclasses and a modest distilling operation produces small-batch gins for exclusive use within the bar.

The Crown Street-fronting shop sells small-batch gin varieties created just for Sydney, as well as chocolates and soaps infused with the same botanicals found in the signature Rare Dry gin, and marmalade made from the spent oranges used in the distilling process.

- Broadsheet, June 2020.

Expanding into new markets will provide not just greater opportunities for Four Pillars as a brand and a company, but provide greater opportunity to engage their many devout admirers and a new discerning market in the inner eastern suburbs of Sydney.

Four Pillars’ standing in the market has provided them with a foothold to remove themselves from their initial home, where their foundations were built around provenance and localisation, and expand their horizons into new markets with the potential of establishing the same reputation in a new city. Whilst this will unlikely be the case for most craft beverage artisans in their lifetimes, it does show how the industry is gaining traction and possible opportunities exist if you are able to establish such a strong reputation, quality product and unique point of difference in highly competitive market.

Stomping Ground Brewing Company, a proud independent craft brewery based in the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, hit the scene with a buzz in 2016 with the opening of their highly acclaimed Brewery & Beer Hall. Since establishing itself as a leader in the craft brewing scene, through a broad range of bespoke beers, combined with their unique venue that delivers holistic brewery and beer hall experiences for all customers, Stomping Ground have raised the bar and delivered a first for Australia and only the fourth for the world – a working brewery inside of an airport. With a permanent location within Terminal 3 at Melbourne Airport, the craft beverage industry has reached previously unexplored heights, with Stomping Ground setting a new benchmark and proving what can be achieved, even for the small independent brands, in a market where the demand is high. 

From the regions, to the inner suburbs, to the Shopping Centres, to the CBD and now to the airport, craft beverage operations are fast becoming the hottest property in modern food and beverage mixes as they deliver not only a great and diverse product offer, but experiences, storytelling and a connection to all that is good and local.

Regardless whether these operations choose to remain in the regions or expand into the city, most craft beverage operators have wised up to the fact that they have to offer something unique and something exciting to capture sufficient market share of the thirsty customer base.

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Cover Image via Stomping Ground