What Comes Next?

So things have been shaky for hospo for a while now, and for beer in particular.* Following the (ongoing) global pandemic, a number of recessions and economic slumps worldwide, supply chain issues and rising costs all over the globe, we are beginning to see some cracks in the foundation. Breweries are dropping all around us – selling to collectives and international colossi or closing their doors entirely. Some, like Two Birds, doing all three – joining Fermentum, being acquired by Lion, and finally being shut down only a few weeks ago. Epic – an instrumental label in my own (and, I’m sure many other people’s) craft beer journey is in liquidation, we lost Future Mountain a few months back and any number of other breweries and taprooms closing across this country and others. This holds true for cafes and bars too.

*Also… <gestures broadly at everything>

               So what does this mean? Some might say, with a touch of callousness that this is just the way of things. A robust marketplace means boom and bust, survival of the fittest with some businesses making it and others failing to do so. Others might point at signifiers of economic downturn, and the first luxuries up against the wall when it comes time to tighten our belts. People immediately take to heart the fiscal sensibility of austerity, and the abandonment of small pleasures like barista coffee, craft beer, meals out or drinking in bars and pubs. Still others may say that craft beer was a bubble and was due to burst, being a fad and never really being any sort of replacement for more familiar macro produced brews.

               Those of a more optimistic bent will say craft beer was never meant to replace macrobrews, rather to act as a supplement for a different, possibly more discerning demographic. They also might say that it means it is time for an evolution of the industry. A facelift for a tired space, new offerings and new experiences. This doesn’t necessarily need to mean anything drastic, but rather a re-evaluation of why people go out in the first place – to seek something new, something novel, something exciting. To forge bonds of community, to see something different to the familiar walls and events that surround them.

               Maybe that means updating the traditional pub events. Trivia, Sunday roast, steak night, meat tray raffle, etc. Now, I’m not going to lie – these sound like a good time to me. But perhaps they don’t appeal to the next generation – perhaps there are more people about now who consider being a nerd to mean ‘someone who wears a Spiderman t-shirt’ rather than ‘someone who knows that the word trivia comes from a Latin one meaning the meeting of three roads‘. Perhaps there are enough conscientiously healthy eaters or plant-based peeps that a meat tray or a big Sunday roast is a repellent concept. Perhaps steak night is just… tired?

               So what to do? Molly Rose, for eg, has introduced fine dining to the taproom experience. This instantly makes it a destination for multiple demographics – boozers, beer nerds, foodies, to name but three. It makes a point of difference for a brewery that does really good work but honestly doesn’t get all the love that it deserves. The sheer novelty of a menu that isn’t pizzas, burgers, bbq or traditional pub food alone makes this an intriguing model, and it’s sure to spawn a spate of imitators.

               Combining two hitherto discrete experiences – fine dining and fine beer (the beer lists at high end restaurants are often sadly lacking in complexity, variety and interest) is certainly one method, but is by no means the only way to pique the interest of a city like this. Perhaps it means a facelift – the grungy, improvised-furniture industrial space may be uninviting for those who grew accustomed to the comforts of their own home over six separate lockdowns. Perhaps it just means amping up what you offer as a venue – more live music and entertainment. Perhaps it means being more in tune with your clientele, catering to their experience while actively safeguarding against dickheads, sex pests and creeps and providing a more welcoming experience. Perhaps it just means really carving out a narrow, specific niche and being the go-to destination for your people, whoever they are and really catering to and building your community, propping them up and leaning on them in turn. After all, whoever aims to please all, pleases nobody, as the old saw goes.

               Can’t be too reactionary though. The end result of many a narrative is that home is where the heart is – despite many a threshold crossing, many a grand adventure, many exciting battles and personal developments, the joy and purpose of a character is found in the return home again. The hobbits returning to the shire, Dorothy returning to Kansas, Odysseus returning to Ithaca. Every chef that busts out into the scene and realises that rather than the attempt to complexify everything, the best food is the simplest; quality ingredients, treated plainly but well. Every craft beer enthusiast who chases the novelty all around the globe (metaphorically or literally) before realising that, hey, actually, some of what I used to drink is not so bad. Like the jaded fine diner who realises that the best food is what mama used to make, or that the best meal is probably something simple, salty and smoky, maybe eaten around a fire with friends.

               You don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. For those of us who were there, man, and remember drinking cheap beer on milkcrates at St Jerome’s, or Ponyfish, or on the packing crate tables at Goat when they were just small, unassuming drinking spots in a city full of them, there is a kind of truth that is hard to escape – we figured a lot of stuff out long, long ago, and have learned to boil it down to its essentials. Sometimes you just don’t need more in order to get it right. We’re inquisitive, us humans. We don’t just sit and look at things and go “well, its just how it is, I guess”. No, we figure stuff out. We break it apart, and we try to understand it, and we try to improve on it. This is an ongoing process, presumably has been since we split from our earlier branch on the evolutionary tree and became what we understand humans to be now. And for that reason, some young buck comes along and says “I can do it better. I can reinvent this classic. I can deconstruct this icon. I can improve this beloved favourite.”

               And you know what? Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they elevate a thing beyond what it was. But more often than not they realise that we nailed how to cook a burger years ago. They find out, after going through god knows how many different boxes of leafy greens, that iceberg lettuce just can’t be bettered for certain things, that lager is the only correct choice sometimes, that the best way to cook something might be the exact same way some proto-human did it hundreds of thousands of years ago, over coals and naked flame.

               So I don’t know what the answer is to the question “what comes next for the hospitality and brewing industries?”, but I am interested to see what comes of it all. I hope that we can weather the worst of it and return to fine fettle before too long. I am trepidatious about that, but I am also excited to see how people react to it and try to improve things, breaking them apart and rebuilding them better than ever. I look forward to trying new things, as well as revisiting beloved favourites – seeing evolution in action, and enjoying the fruits of the next generation’s labours. Not just ‘I’ve configured the croissant into a different shape again’ but what the next big idea is for all of us to come together and share the experiences of our lives. Hopefully it comes about before I start ordering my coffee extra hot and complaining that these beers don’t even taste like real beer anymore.