Update, Feb. 22, 2023: Platform Beer Co. has closed its Ohio brewery and taprooms, news first reported by Cleveland.com. A brewery spokesperson tells Good Beer Hunting the closure is the result of “the changing industry and operational challenges,” but the beer brand, owned since 2019 by Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI), will continue to exist as three IPAs (Haze Jude IPA, Odd Future Imperial IPA, and Canalway IPA), presumably brewed at other ABI facilities.
Platform declined to say how many employees were laid off; a spokesperson only confirmed that “a number of employees were impacted and we’re working to assist them through this transition.” A former Platform employee tells Good Beer Hunting that some Platform sales staff were offered sales jobs within ABI’s consolidated The High End and Brewers Collective teams, but that all production and taproom staff were laid off. This story will be updated.
The original story follows.
THE GIST
As the smallest and most recently acquired of the craft breweries within Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI)’s stable, Cleveland’s Platform Beer Co. has become a test of the global company’s ability to scale and sustain the growth of a locally focused brewery with an eclectic portfolio. More than two years after ABI announced the acquisition of Platform in summer 2019, the report card isn’t positive.
Despite ABI’s distribution muscle, Platform’s volume sales in chain retail are set to end the year at their lowest level since 2017, its first full year in chain retail tracked by market research company IRI. It gets worse:
In addition to production layoffs in August, a former Platform employee says some Platform sales reps were also laid off this summer as ABI restructured its sales team.
The brewery’s Columbus taproom remains closed following a staff walk-out in February 2021 during which employees alleged low wages and unsafe working conditions. Its Cincinnati location is also closed; its menu was last updated in early April. The brewery continues to operate its Cleveland taproom and Phunkenship, a dedicated sour beer brewery and taproom, also in Cleveland.
Even in figures estimated by the Brewers Association, Platform has lost significant volume, going from a high of 28,000 barrels in 2018 to 22,500 in 2021. This decline includes the period after ABI acquired the company, which is almost unheard of within the multinational’s craft portfolio. (New York’s Blue Point Brewery, acquired by ABI in 2014, has also declined total production in this recent timeframe.)
WHY IT MATTERS
Platform sells all of its beer tracked in chain retail within the state of Ohio, and has seen volume there plummet -31% for the latest 52-week period, which ended Dec. 4. That underperforms the rest of ABI’s craft portfolio in the Buckeye State (-25%), which is highly unusual given that Platform is a local brand. Typically, breweries have their strongest sales in their home town and nearby, with diminishing returns the farther beer travels from that epicenter
General manager Joe Balish is still bullish, saying in a written statement that 2023 will use a "focused strategy to build winning brands for future growth," but didn't elaborate on how the company would turn around their sales slump. (Platform did not make anyone available for an interview and did not respond to written questions, opting only for the statement from Balish.) Despite solely selling beer in Ohio chain retail for the past two years, he also noted that Cleveland and Ohio will "continue to be our top sales priorities, and we have spent time this year working to set up Platform for success moving forward."
In lieu of discussing ways to turn around sales, Balish mentioned a new IPA that will launch next year (but didn't provide details) and noted that "our portfolio is focused but includes offerings for every beer drinker and preference." Packaging changes and new IPAs are typical strategies to bump volume sales: Anchor Brewing did this recently, as has Lagunitas Brewing Co. and Great Lakes Brewing Co.
Platform’s slump is a peculiar turn of events for ABI, a multinational company that had already acquired 10 U.S. craft breweries before Platform and had a dedicated team focused on growing those businesses. Along with Platform’s steep drop-off in stores, 2022 will be the second straight year of in-store total craft volume declines for ABI, a company renowned for its distribution might and focus on chain retail. But perhaps, given the scale of ABI’s U.S. and global operations, Platform’s misfortune—or even slippages within the craft division in total—are merely a minor irritation.
Certainly, ABI has proven it can accelerate chain retail sales for a few select craft beers. But while it was originally prized by ABI for its diverse lineup of beers, Platform now appears to be lost in the shuffle as other ABI craft IPA brands such as Wicked Weed Brewing’s Pernicious IPA (+18% nationally for the 52-week period ending Dec. 4), Goose Island Beer Co.’s Beer Hug family of IPAs (which debuted this fall), and Elysian Brewing’s Space Dust (-6% nationally for the 52-week period ending Dec. 4) take precedence.
Inconsistent sales priorities and changes within ABI’s craft sales force appear to be contributing to the Ohio brewery’s decline. Leadership for ABI’s High End—a division that includes acquired craft breweries as well as Michelob Ultra’s Pure line of organic beers and imports such as Stella Artois and Estrella Jalisco—did not mention Platform in an early December interview with Brewbound about the division’s 2023 priorities. Instead, changes to ABI’s craft portfolio seem to have left Platform as a footnote, even in its home state.
The lack of attention is strange because Platform once excelled at the kinds of beers ABI now sees as key to regional and national sales. Carrie Shafir, vice president of marketing for the High End and Brewers Collective, told Brewbound earlier this month that the sales team’s craft priorities include fast-moving IPAs and Wheat beers.
Platform’s Hazy IPA, Haze Jude, grew volume sales modestly (+1.3%) in 2021, but is set to finish this year down roughly -30% in Ohio stores.
The brewery’s fruited Wheat, called Open Market, will finish 2022 with roughly a third of the volume sales it tallied last year.
A former employee who worked in multiple roles at the brewery between 2019-2021, which includes time after the ABI acquisition, says that the sales team often struggled to maintain focus to build particular brands. (This person asked not to be named because they still work in the Ohio beer industry.)
“Sales priorities changed at Platform pretty frequently and it was hard to get a grip on what our goals were,” the former employee says. “One week, bars were starting to reopen after COVID and the goal was to get as many draft placements as possible. So we spend time dedicating resources to that, then two weeks later, it’s, ‘Oh we need you spending as much time in convenience stores as possible to get as many Haze Jude placements as possible.’ There was semi-frequent back-and-forth like that.”
Prior to sales director Stephen McGirr joining Platform in August 2020 (after working in sales for ABI-owned Wicked Weed Brewing), this employee says Platform had been without a director or vice president of sales for roughly a year. During that time, they say, the Platform sales reps in each major metro market within Ohio, including Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, operated with a market manager in each city, but little cohesion beyond that. When McGirr joined, these teams tried to find a collective focus while Platform’s portfolio was shifting to prioritize core brands like Haze Jude.
“Each market was doing their own thing a little bit and then were trying to get on the same page while AB[I] was changing priorities, moving away from those specialty one-off can releases to trying to build the more sustainable core sales,” they say. “We tried a few brands that didn’t work and dropped those and changed some seasonals that we were expecting to have.”
Overall, they say, a fast-changing lineup combined with mixed signals about which brands to prioritize likely slowed Platform’s sales momentum. In 2022, it ground to a halt.
The brewery’s changing lineup has received mixed reviews at retail. Todd Lacy, beverage manager for Weiland’s Market, an independent grocery store in Columbus, says Platform “is certainly not highly sought-after in this market.” Lacy cites Muni, a Hazy IPA that Platform brews in partnership with the Cleveland Browns, as performing “OK” in the fall. He says Weiland’s will also stock six-packs of Haze Jude “from time to time when we have space.”
The former Platform employee speculates that having the Columbus taproom closed indefinitely since the walkout almost two years ago, combined with cuts to the brewery’s Ohio sales force, has made Platform’s beers less relevant on its home turf. This is a strange development at a time when nearly all breweries experience the opposite: Sales are strongest close to the brewery.
“Usually, having that [taproom] space for people to come in helps drive sales not only there but out in the market. That staff walkout at the taproom as well as not really having the staff in general, that probably hit sales a bit,” they say.
It seems Platform is also still struggling to find a balance between rotational, specialty beers and core products. A varied collection of one-off or limited releases is what the brewery built its reputation on: At the time it acquired Platform, ABI described it as “widely known in its local market for innovative seasonal offerings, limited taproom releases and seltzers.” (Platform discontinued its hard seltzer variety pack in 2022 but still lists seltzers on draft at their taprooms.)
But ABI’s sales team—representing a large collective of breweries spread across the nation, all with different beer lineups—isn’t well structured to support a lineup of one-off, ever-changing releases. Prioritizing strong-selling brands that are available regionally or nationally, such as Goose Island Beer Hugs or Wicked Weed Pernicious, is a more efficient and unified strategy, but risks leaving smaller breweries like Platform by the wayside. Platform is arguably the first example from ABI’s craft collection to show how sales are impacted when this happens.
At World of Beer in Columbus, product manager and assistant general manager Katie Elekes is illustrative of this tension. She has high praise for Platform’s portfolio generally, but she’s still not always able to get her staff’s favorite Platform product: its Martian series of fruited Sour beers, which the brewery lists on its website as a core product.
“There was a rotation between a couple different [Platform] reps and availability for things was all over the place,” Elekes says. “Maybe some more availability for the variants of Martians would be nice … It would be nice if they had a variety pack of that. But that’s what it is. That’s what makes you want it more, you have to wait for them to come out with the next variant and flavor.”
The difficulty Platform is having connecting with what should be its core audience at home spells trouble for ABI’s portfolio beyond its craft volume leaders. With ABI’s move to consolidate sales portfolios across craft, imports, and premium brands, it’s not clear where a quirky, small brewery like Platform fits in—or worse, it shows that the brewery never really did.
Words by Kate Bernot