A softening market does not compress opportunity equally across every brand in a category. It concentrates it. The brands that understand what a contracting environment actually makes possible are the ones that come out of it with more than they had going in.

Athletic Brewing would hold three of the top 30 craft beer spots in grocery if Circana's data included it. Non-alcoholic beer is now the fastest-growing segment in the channel. Here is what that shift actually means for the industry.

Stone Brewing sold to Sapporo for $165 million in 2022. Here is what the deal reveals about craft beverage brand equity and what founders should think about before they exit.