Amazon's Potentially Disruptive Acquisition of Whole Foods

News that Amazon expects to buy premium grocer Whole Foods for $13.7 billion sent shock waves through the grocery industry. On the day the deal was announced, chain grocery stocks took a serious dump, Amazon stock shot upward, enough to pay for the deal, apparently.

Amazon's play is certainly grocery, where it has been trying to gain a foothold for a while. It has advanced IT and delivery systems, but lacked the needed distribution network in perishables. That changes with the acquisition of Whole Foods' 440 retail stores and 11 distribution centers.

While the grocery network (Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, etc,) is petrified of what Amazon might do, there's been consternation in beer, as well. Some worry that Amazon may connive to circumvent three tier laws or use its girth to bust things up in other ways.

Keep in mind the deal is subject to regulatory review by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. Realistically, though, it's tough to see a scenario in which it doesn't get waved through with flying colors. It's a do-nothing regulatory climate at the moment and regulatory agencies are running scared.

Assuming it is approved, Amazon's Whole Foods gambit will benefit local and regional craft brands more than big beer, at least in the short run. That's because Whole Foods has never done much with the big macro brands. It serves an affluent, persnickety clientele that doesn't drink as much swill as the general population.

The focus on smaller, decentralized craft brands would represent a significant reversal of current trends, a more worrisome matter for distributors than anyone else. Current stats suggest online beer sales have been dominated by big beer, which, as noted, isn't represented at Whole Foods.

A shift to craft online represents a big deal when your're talking about so many retail outlets and distribution hubs. The majority of these outlets are licensed for beer and Amazon's reach is huge, including 80 million Prime subscribers and a presence in every major US market. Online beer sales and delivery just got a whole (haha) lot easier.

From the distributor standpoint, the good news is Amazon will buy beer from local wholesalers for now. So it's still within the three-tier loop, The bad news, given Amazon's tendency to vertically integrate everything it touches, is they may attempt to bully state laws and get wholesale licenses for their stores and distribution centers. Box office poison for distributors.

The more serious threat, I think, is that Amazon may leverage the Whole Foods private label into beer. What's to stop Amazon from building a giant brewery and developing a line of private label beer brands it can sell online and in stores? It would then be supplier, wholesaler and retailer, a potentially scary scenario.

Statistics suggest that e-commerce accounts for about 50 percent of sales in some product categories. But only about 1 percent of US beer sales happen online. What will happen now that behemoth and master disrupter Amazon is entering the fray?

Like watching a train derailment in slow motion, this ought to be fun. Grab a beer. 🍺

Summer Festivals Beat Each Other Up

The first time I attended the Oregon Brewers Festival in 1991, it was a revelation. Drinking good beer while mingling with folks in a great outdoor setting was an unknown experience in those days. It felt rather odd and at the same time pretty cool.

For years and years, the OBF was the only significant show in town. If you missed the festival experience for whatever reason, as I did when I was out of town in 1992, you were stuck waiting until the following year. Not much happening in-between.

Fast forward to modern times and things have changed dramatically. There are now numerous festivals crammed into the calendar. If you can't or don't want to be a rock star brewer, the next best option is apparently to have your own beer festival.

I blame Art Larrance and the Oregon Brewers Festival. Because if the OBF hadn't set the stage, then created and refined the template for what a beer festival should be, we probably wouldn't have all of these events popping up, competing against one another. But never mind.

The proliferation of festivals, a fact of life, has now reached the point where they threaten one another's well-being. There simply isn't enough room on the calendar to accommodate everyone, particularly during the peak summer season. As a result, events are piling on top of one another, inhabiting the same dates.

This weekend is a perfect example. We've got multiple events vying for the time, attention and dollars of beer fans. I attended Brewfest in the Park. It wasn't necessarily an easy decision. Competing events include the Portland International Beer Festival, Kriekfest out at Solera in Parkdale, and a host of worthy smaller events.

How Brewfest in the Park (formerly the Organic Beer Festival) and PIB wound up on the same weekend is sordid story. A couple of years ago, PIB unilaterally took the Organic Fest's June dates. The Organic folks caved and moved their event to August, a change that didn't work out for them. This year, Brewfest organizers decided to reclaim their original dates, putting them up against PIB. The PIB folks aren't happy. But who started this? Ezra has some answers here. Bigly!

It was evident during my Friday afternoon stay at Brewfest that having multiple events in the same calendar space is having an impact. There was never much of a crowd and it was never remotely busy. You might attribute some of that to changing dates. Fine. But I've never seen so few people at any large Portland festival, at least not in recent times. Nope.

It occurred to me that poorly attended fests are the coming reality unless there's more collaboration and cooperation among the festivals...a laughable notion. There's money to be made and everyone thinks their festival can win the war for patrons. So they'll carry on. I doubt we'll see any significant cooperation until attendance at individual fests bottoms out.

With respect to Brewfest, the updated layout of trailers and shade tents seemed pretty decent. I had as many mediocre beers as I had good ones, but I'm a snob and I didn't taste everything on the menu. I didn't miss the lack of live music. But I did miss being able to easily find drinkable water between beers, which should never be an issue. No excuse, folks.

What's the future of Brewfest? Even if this winds up being a lousy attendance year, which seems likely, the event will carry on. Switching dates is always a concern, even if competition isn't. These folks are connected to the OBF and know how to run festivals. They will be back, I'm sure.

I'm less sure how competing events are going to share space on the short summer calendar. So crowded. Maybe event organizers will eventually be forced to consider dates on the fringes of summer. I have no sense at all of how or if this is going to be resolved.

But something has to give.🍻

The Future of Blogging in a Social Media World

I've said it before. When I started writing this blog six years ago, I had no idea where it would lead. Every year about this time, I like to consider where I've been and where I think I'm going. Is this still a worthwhile project or is it time to call it a day?

The beer world has changed dramatically since 2011. Here at home, Portland's brewery count had started to rise during the great recession, but it was less than 50 in 2011. By the end of 2016, there were 70 breweries here, 105 in the metro area, 261 in the state.

That general theme repeated itself, more or less, around the country. There were roughly 2,400 breweries in the United States at the end of 2012. By the end of 2016, the count passed 5,200. That's an historic explosion. We've never had more breweries in this country.

I had no inkling of what was coming when I started, I launched this blog largely because I had nothing better to do. Laid off in the crash of 2008-2009 and with nothing going on two years later, I figured beer was something I could spend some time with while keeping my writing and research skills (such as they are) reasonably sharp.

I honestly expected to return to corporate work. That didn't happen. Instead, writing the blog drew me deeper into the beer culture here. That would eventually lead to Portland Beer, published in 2013, and to a variety of articles for local and national publications in more recent times.

A lot of what I wrote here the first couple of years is fairly embarrassing to read now. That's because, in my effort to build a wad of content, I wrote previews and reviews of stuff that wasn't worthy of the time or effort. When you've got nothing going on, that's the rabbit hole you fall into.

Although the total number of posts here is about to pass 500, the great bulk of that content was written during the early years. In recent times, my output has slowed down considerably. If I post more than once a week these days, it's a miracle.

That isn't necessarily because I'm bored or lazy. Fact is, the beer media landscape has morphed. I don't know how many beer-centric blogs are out there today, but most of them are less relevant now than they were a few years ago.

Part of the reason is craft beer grew up. It's big business that attracts the attention of mainstream media outlets, including TV and radio. While those outlets may not carry significant weight with serious beer fans, they have a reach with the general public that very few blogs can match.

The more important development of recent years is the emerging power and reach of social media, primarily in the form of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Because of the way social media feeds mingle with user interests, it has become the preeminent marketing tool of craft beer.

That's a bit of an oversimplification, actually. Because social media alone probably wouldn't have become the phenom it has had it not been such a perfect complement to the smartphone and event marketing, which together form the promotional backbone of today's craft beer industry.

It's almost unfathomable in our present circumstance, but people once visited breweries and pubs randomly and drank whatever was available. New beers were released without fanfare. Tap takeovers were unknown. And there were only a few significant festivals. How quaint.

Today, fans are herded to countless tap takeovers, release parties and makeshift festivals. Ever wonder how that works? It's simple. Events are hyped on social media. All a beer-chasing millennial has to do is pull out her phone to find out when and where things are happening. Viola!

That's a far cry from the days when breweries and promoters depended on blogs to preview events and beers. They weren't getting coverage from mainstream media and social media hadn't evolved to the point where it could be relied on. Blogs were an inefficient way to get the word out, but they filled the void. No more.

This blog has never been particularly heavy on promotional content. There are events and breweries I've supported, but that hasn't been a priority. That's fortuitous because blogs as a promotional vehicle are dead. Yep. The action has shifted almost completely to social media, a virtually clearing house for event marketing.

Returning to the original question regarding the future of this (actually any) blog, the key is clearly going to be original, objective content. That's certainly been the focus here for the last couple of years and will continue to be going forward. There is no other viable path.

Having (finally) returned to marginally lucrative corporate work, I can write whatever I want here and not be concerned about it ever making a cent. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting. As anyone who does this knows, worthwhile content does not write itself. It takes time and effort.

For those who have stopped by regularly or occasionally during the past six years, accept my thanks. I don't know how long I'll continue to do this. For now, it remains challenging and reasonably fun. 🍻

Drinking for the Boys in Green and Gold

Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I had never been to a Portland Timbers match and I honestly had no real interest in changing that. Nope. I watched as breweries, pubs, taverns and other businesses jumped on the Timbers bandwagon. Never bought in.

But along came a smarty pants, busy body friend who likes soccer. She couldn't understand why I hadn't been to a game. "What's wrong with you? It's fun! You should go to a game. Will you go to a game with me?"

Against my better judgment, I agreed. Tickets were acquired and we waited for game day, which was Saturday. Watching the weather all week, it looked like we'd be drenched. Didn't happen.

A lot of advice was passed out along the way. I was supposed to look up and learn the songs and chants. On game day, I was advised to leave my newbie scarf at home and wear one she would provide. "And don't you dare wear blue," color of the visiting bums from Dallas.

I never realized the extent to which the area around Providence Park has become a sort of pregame festing area for fans. It's tailgating without the parking lot mess and open grills. Bars and foodie joints near the stadium were fairly well packed in the hours before the game.

Our first pregame stop was a dive bar where we met up with (her) friends, a flock of pool playing millennials. The joint reminded me of busted up places where I drank illegally when I was in high school back in the dark ages. Except no draft beer. Only cans and bottles in this dump. Not many choices, either. My first (and only) beer was a Rainier. Nasty, inauspicious start.

Shortly, most of the group departed for the stadium. They had acquired wristbands earlier and were off to claim their places in the Army. Our tickets were in the same area, but on the reserved side. We had time for more beer, thank goodness. Where to? We wound up at the Civic Taproom, which was packed. One beer and we headed to Uno Mas for some pre-match food. And more beer.

After that, we made our way into the Stadium and found our seats. Also more beer. There were some decent options, honestly. But maybe more beer wasn't such a great idea in retrospect. We kept drinking and it crept up on us by the end of the night. No one was driving, fortunately

The pregame shenanigans inside the stadium were both funny and charming. Timbers fans holding up keys and chanting for the visiting bums to go home. Good stuff. Then the National Anthem and the twisting and twirling of scarfs at the end of each line. That was endearing. I might go back just for that.

Between the chanting, drinking and chatting back and forth, I'm not sure how much of the game my millennial friends caught. One of the great things about soccer is the nonstop action...well, nonstop until someone flops and they have stoppage. But constant action is a drag on social time. My friends didn't seem to be having it, chatting each other up incessantly.

At the half, we moved over to where (her) friends were sitting in the Army, a few rows from the front. There's a lot of noise, pageantry and action there. My pal suggested that I grab a flag and wave it around. She provided brief instruction. It was all good until I nearly conked a nearby fan on the head. That was more or less it for the flag.

As for the match, the Timbers scored two goals right in front of us. The first one I saw vaguely as I was headed out the tunnel for a restroom break. My friend was headed back in with...more beer. Perfect. The second goal happened as we watched from the Army. Brilliant. Confetti blast off. Dallas had some shots on goal, but never got much going. Timbers 2, Dallas 0.

Here's where we might have been smart. Having consumed a fair amount of beer over the course of several hours, maybe more beer wasn't the best idea. But the postgame celebration was on and, anyway, getting transit out of there right after a game can be dicey. We headed over to the Kingston for...more beer. Pure genius.

An hour later, someone suggested we stumble over to the nearby Mazatlan. Why not? After all, "We're still standing." So the collective somehow traversed the street, entered the bar and occupied a table. Amazing. That positioned us to place orders for...more beer. Fortunately, snacks were involved. Wise. And karaoke. Not wise, but highly amusing.

It was half past midnight when we (finally) requested a Lyft out of there. Kind of surprising how quickly the driver materialized. She was nice, clearly had some experience carting drunk folks around in the early morning hours. By now, the rain that was supposed to have arrived earlier was pinging down softly, symbolic end to a perfect evening.

There's something innocuous about these Timbers games. The nonstop action is a pleasure to behold and maybe what honest sport is all about. The players are fit and agile. The lack of timeouts means fans aren't constantly barraged with obnoxious ads. And, of course, the fan participation. It's an appealing combination of good stuff.

I now realize that experiencing a Timbers match in person is the key to getting interested. Watching on TV just doesn't do the experience justice. So I thank my kind (and awkward) millennial friend for dragging me out to the park and her friends for putting up with me. Good folks, they are.

With all that said, I recognize future games, if there are any, will require different beer rules. Hours of nonstop drinking Saturday evening tend to make for a bit of a pudgy Sunday. There's possibly a better way to do this.⚽

Fruit Beer Fest Returns to Burnside

The Portland Fruit Beer Festival, now in its seventh year, returns to its original home at Burnside Brewing this weekend, June 9-11. Organizers expect to pour more than thirty beers and ciders made exclusively for the festival, our premier fruit-oriented beer event.

They're returning to Burnside after a one-year stint at the North Park Blocks. Why? Well, there were additional costs involved in holding the event downtown. When the weather was uncooperative, the attendance necessary to justify those costs didn't materialize. Thus, the return to Burnside.

It's a reasonable move. The Burnside campus is centrally located, with easy access from all quadrants of the city. One of the reasons for the Park Blocks experiment is limited space at Burnside. That venue was packed to the gills and overly congested during several past Fruit Beer Fests.

To address crowding concerns, organizers say they'll spread the beer stations out and provide more shade and seating than in past years at Burnside. They'll also have a smaller, satellite venue across the street. It'll be a neat trick if they're able to reduce the crowding issues, and I hope they can.

When I first realized fruit infused beers were gaining favor a few years a back, I was mesmerized. It's not something I was exposed to growing up, a time when macro lagers were king. I wondered if fruit beers weren't maybe some kind of strange fad connected to the growth of craft beer.

Of course, that isn't really the case. Fruit has been used in brewing for centuries. As local author and blogger, Jeff Alworth, told me, "Except for lager-brewers in Bavaria, basically no one in the history of civilization ever thought using just grain was somehow proper."

What's happened in modern American craft beer is that tastes have expanded to embrace practices employed for centuries and abandoned during the macro lager era. Fruit is part of that and the Fruit Beer Festival has helped build interest in fruit-centric beers, a positive thing.

The beer and brewery list for this event is extensive. I arrived late to the media preview and tasted only a few of the beers. That isn't all that big of a deal since they weren't sampling the entire festival portfolio. You can view the list of standard beers and ciders on the event site here.

In addition to the standards, there will be 3-4 rotating taps dedicated to rare beers outside the regular lineup. Those beers will rotate at various times during the weekend and most will cost additional tickets. There will be special tappings from Firestone Walker, Great Notion Brewing, Crux Fermentation Project, Cascade Brewing, pFriem Family Brewers, de Garde and others.

Festival days and hours:
Friday, June 9: 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sat. June 10: 11:00 a.m to  9:00 p.m.
Sun. June 11: 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Advance tickets are available online here, with a small added service charge. Buying in advance may save you time getting into the event venue, though I can't guarantee that. Oh, you have two ticket options, basically a choice between a fancy and plain Jane glass. Up to you.

As always, you can get updated info via the event's social media channels: @FruitBeerFest on Twitter and Instagram, search Portland Fruit Beer Festival on Facebook. 🍻