North American craft beer has always been the Wild West, pushing the mainstream envelope on ingredients, style, and flavor. However, even just a few years ago, few could have predicted just how “anything goes” the industry would become. Breweries of all sizes are strategizing about how to succeed in a market currently driven by changing consumer preferences, share-stealers such as ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs), and plenty of competition.
There is no shortage of options for branching out in ways that make sense for your brewing business. Many of these options come down to branding, packaging, and label design.
How do you stand out on shelves in this environment? Is it time to ditch esoteric beer names in favor of straightforward information that every consumer can easily understand? Does that extend to producing and marketing one, two, or a few beverages that spotlight fruit flavor above all else? Should you make a light lager? Put it in 12- or 16-ounce cans? Do you put those cans in six-, 12-, or 15-packs? Decisions abound.
To help make sense of them, let’s look at some of the most relevant packaging and design trends now, focusing on why and when they’re effective.
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QR Codes And Interactivity
The past decade has been stop-and-start for QR codes, with breweries using scannable technology to connect consumers to different experiences.
A few recent examples:
- In Rochester, New York, Rohrbach Brewing uses QR codes to connect customers and their smartphones with more information than could ever fit on cans, including behind-the-scenes looks at the brewing process.
- In summer 2022, Tradesman Brewing in Charleston, South Carolina, debuted Know Your Zone, a “hurricane season lager.” The can’s QR codes bring up a hurricane safety guide.
- Earlier this year, in North Wales, Pennsylvania, McAllister Brewing started printing cans with QR labels that allow customers to buy NFTs that represent part ownership in a “virtual speakeasy” plus access to VIP perks such as limited-edition beers and brewer meet-and-greets.
Not everyone’s scanning, though, and much of that information could just as easily live on your website. There is one overarching route for impact here: making sure that QR codes—as well as newer options such as virtual and augmented reality–compatible labels—actually elevate the experience of drinking that beer.
Is this content that you’re sharing true to your brewery? Does it tell the story of your beer? Does it feel unique and exciting, promising to engage the buyer? “Today’s beer customer doesn’t want to be pressure-sold to by big corporate entities,” says Julie Rhodes, the consultant behind Not Your Hobby Marketing Solutions. “They crave personal attention and connection, and interactive marketing techniques fit the bill.”
For its Big in Japan IPA, New York’s SingleCut Beersmiths placed QR codes on labels connecting to secret playlists of bands that are “big in Japan”—a special Easter egg for fans, says general manager Dan Bronson. Upping the engagement factor, in 2021, SingleCut labeled its Notes IPA with scannable labels that lead to an augmented-reality filter; the filter turns the can into a guitar fretboard that can help teach drinkers to play four chords.
In St. Louis, Schlafly Beer prints QR codes on its annual Stout Bout variety pack; drinkers can vote on which stout variations will make it into next year’s pack. Schlafly marketing director Kelly Ennis says this gives consumers some ownership in the packs. Plus, because the brewery can monitor the number of scans, the devices used, and their locations, it also helps Schlafly understand more about their customers.
Different Can Sizes
The topmost but tiny tier of behemoth breweries have recognized consumers’ demand for convenience and thrift with 19.2-ounce, single-serve cans of (often) high-ABV IPAs, such as New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA and Sierra Nevada’s Big Little Thing. The surging ubiquity of bigger beers in bigger cans has opened up the size conversation, and some breweries might be wondering whether they need to diversify. (See “The Stovepipe Challenge,” page 30.)
The truth, however, is that this stretch doesn’t make sense for smaller breweries with modest distribution footprints. Bigger cans “are most often used by macrobreweries as a tactic to dominate the marketplace,” says Stasia Brewczynski, a writer and marketer in food, drink, and hospitality. “Quickly introducing new can sizes in accordance with fast-changing trends is expensive, which means it’s an area where macro brands can relatively easily outshine their micro competitors.”
A brewery needs not only a canning line capable of scaling up, but also distribution into chain retail across multiple states to make the investment worthwhile. Given that these cans are often priced at about $3 or $4 each, it’s challenging for smaller breweries to make the margin math work.
What about the smaller end of the spectrum? Eight-ounce shorty cans have been a thing for barrel-aged stouts from Brooklyn’s Evil Twin and Colorado’s Westbound & Down, as well as the 4.2 percent ABV Lil Buddy lager from Chicago’s Hopewell. Smaller cans offer a different experience for consumers, whether it’s logically smaller (and less expensive) pours of boozy beers or playfully diminutive servings of light lager.
However, these have the same caveats as bigger cans: Breweries that use them need canning-line flexibility, while shortages and supplier minimums can make diversity in can size an added challenge.
Different Pack Sizes
Cans aren’t the only place some breweries are shaking up size. In this tricky climate, when both competition and prices are up, many are considering how to provide consumers with extra value. Brewing up light lagers, for example, and packaging them in ways that evoke the macro brands of yore can be a way to appeal to craft drinkers’ sense of nostalgia.
Accordingly, we’re seeing 12-packs of 12-ounce cans from breweries such as Bent Paddle in Duluth, Minnesota, and even 15-packs from Garage Beer in Columbus, Ohio. (Garage also offers 24-packs and sixers of 16-ouncers.)
Breweries are smart to “meet drinkers where they [are],” says Josh Bernstein, longtime New York–based beer journalist and author of The Complete Beer Course. Light lager has long dominated U.S. beer sales, and there is economy in the larger packs. On the other hand, if reaching more mainstream consumers is the hope, many breweries might be disappointed. “People expect these beers to be really affordable,” he says.
As with different can sizes, this trend makes the most sense for breweries with both the machinery and the readily available audience.
Minimalism
Breweries such as Maine Beer have successfully made their spare, elegant labels pop amid a cacophony of cartoony or kaleidoscopic cans for years now.
More recently, we’re seeing a design trend that food-and-beverage branding firm CODO Design calls “minimal plus.” With examples that include Half Acre’s Tome hazy pale ale—whose can looks like a simple, colorful retro surfer T-shirt—to the entire line of Brooklyn’s EBBS, with spare sketches and chunky letters in black and white, the idea is to strike a balance between understated and individualistic. Broadly, these labels still feature a brewery’s signature style, while a single piece of eye-catching artwork tends to jump from a white background.
The most important thing to consider when deciding on your design direction is how you can provide enough information about the beer.
“In the case of minimalism, this involves asking oneself, ‘Does my packaging tell the consumer enough about what the product is and why they should buy it?’” Brewczynski says. “In the case of maximalism, it’s asking, ‘Does my packaging prevent the consumer from understanding what the product is and why they should buy it?’”
There is growing demand for information and transparency, Rhodes says, especially from Gen Zers. Minimalist labels can provide a canvas for answering that need in a non-cluttered way.
Maximalism
Maximalism in can art remains strong, but not in the arms-race, how-wild-can-we-get manner of years past. Now, it’s a tool for building an ongoing recognition for your brewery with consumers: They can spot your cans on the shelf, and many get excited about new labels.
“Sensational label art will never disappear from the craft-beer space,” Rhodes says. “It just aligns with industry values so well—creativity, uniqueness, et cetera. It’s not super-dominant at the moment, but established brands known for this type of artwork are doing it really well.”
Rhodes stresses the need for label art to fit the brand’s personality. Make sure your art connects with something for consumers, from familiar graphic novel–type styling to modern art approaches; make sure you can still clearly convey information; and make sure every design feels unique to your brewery.
Brooklyn’s KCBC, for example, has a full-time, in-house artist—Earl Holloway—who creates their comics-inspired art. Cofounder Zack Kinney says the art is both in line with what the brewery team loves aesthetically and with the creativity of their beers. Anchored by consistent typography for clear info from graphic designer Christy Borg, Holloway has developed characters … devoted KCBC fans know well, from Sally the octopus to “intergalactic space penguins.”
“Customers can be very fickle and difficult to predict,” Kinney says. “Sometimes all they seem to want is something new. Other times, they only want something familiar and comfortable. Obviously, you have to have a great-tasting product, but that’s not usually enough in and of itself. What we’ve tried to do is trust that by being as authentic as possible, both with our product and with our packaging design, we’ll … stand out to enough customers, who will then continue to buy our beers and recommend them to others. But you can’t be boring either!”
Photo: Courtesy Westbound & Down
Retro-ism
Retro is a separate design trend that’s emerged alongside the resurgence in craft lager, but it need not be limited to those styles—New Belgium’s redesigned labels for Fat Tire Ale, for example, lean into that familiar, old-fashioned look.
“It’s that cyclical nostalgia,” Bernstein says. “We saw this with pastry stouts harkening back to our childhood, labels reminiscent of sweet things everyone loved. Now, [craft light lagers] are going back in time, giving us fond memories of beers we started out on.”
Cans of lager from breweries such as Big Lug in Indianapolis, Fair State in Minneapolis, Lamplighter in Boston, and Zilker in Austin are conjuring up memories of longtime regional brands such as Genesee, Hamm’s, and Schlitz.
“Gen Zers and millennials are very fond of retro or ‘throwback’ designs on anything, honestly,” Rhodes says. For example, “embracing the retro style of Coors Banquet or High Life. Throwback branding is carrying over to the craft world as well, with the likes of the new Fat Tire rebrand, which is very reminiscent of old school Miller Lite cans—which is not a dig on them, but smart marketing.”
For smaller breweries looking to scratch drinkers’ nostalgic itch, retro designs are a much more approachable route than navigating multiple package sizes.
Flavor-Forward Labels
As with 19.2-ounce cans, flavor-forward labels are a trend filtering down from bigger breweries—yet it’s one that’s much easier and more affordable for even the smallest breweries to adopt.
Producers such as Boston beer—with its Samuel Adams Epic Squeeze packs of fruit beer—are recognizing how newer drinkers prioritize flavor over beverage category or style. Much like how hard seltzers and RTDs have leaned less into booze details and more into the promise, for example, that “this will taste like watermelon,” we’re seeing more beers where the fruit or other flavor is printed bigger and bolder than the beer style.
“This trend is probably the most relevant and important thing on this list at the moment,” Rhodes says. “It’s directly tied to shifting consumer tastes. The current [legal drinking age] consumer just wants to know what your beverage tastes like, what type of flavors they can expect. Honestly, a lot of them don’t really care about what type of alcohol it is or what’s in it; they just want to know what they are about to experience.”
In addition to the flavor-forward trend is printing labels with crystal-clear characteristics. The esoteric beer names that once went hand-in-hand with maximalist beer labels—another outlet of unbridled creativity—are giving way to breweries’ understanding that today’s drinker just wants to know what something is going to taste like and what the experience is going to be.
Seasoned beer geeks might appreciate wink-wink names and be willing to search for tiny-print info—or even to go in blind—but younger and newer consumers need to plainly see what style that beer is, what flavors it promises, the ABV, and any other stats you can provide. (Bernstein cites Fair State’s Köld—customers may not know exactly what a Kölsch is, but with the name Köld and the beer’s tagline, “crisp everyday golden beer,” anyone can understand exactly what they’re getting.)
Taking this one step further, some breweries have started adding just a few evocative, approachable tasting notes to cans. Atlanta’s Elsewhere clearly prints three notes; for example on Gest, their popular Czech-style dark lager, appears “rye bread, dried dates, chocolate.”
Elsewhere cofounder Sara Kazmer, who has a marketing and branding background, says nailing the terms is a collaborative process with director of brewing operations Josh Watterson and management. The aim is to “simplify things for customers,” she says. “Over the years, can design has gotten pretty wild, and we think there’s a desire among consumers to be able to quickly glance at a can and get a comprehensive idea about what kind of beer is inside.”
These notes are “an elevator pitch” for the beer, Kazmer says, explaining that people new to craft beer or a particular style might not know where to start and might not even try. So, a few indicators of what they can expect invites them in.
While different can and package sizes don’t make sense for every brewery—and we’re still seeing how bells and whistles such as augmented reality will progress—it’s safe to say that every brand can respond to a growing consumer demand for transparency and engage more drinkers with info, info, info.
