Suddenly things had to happen quickly, the opening of the outdoor catering was only a few days away. "The first beer should taste particularly good and fresh," says Stefan Seibold, one of the two managing directors of Pfungstädter. The brewery from southern Hesse disposed of 5000 liters of stale beer from its kettles and brewed new beer for the new start. But the time pressure for the company was a good, productive kind of pressure: the brewery was finally able to deliver to pubs and restaurants again. Pfungstädter left its delivery ramp open longer so that everyone got their keg. "Sometimes the innkeepers were still standing outside with the trailer late in the evening to pick up their barrels."
Since March 2020, large parts of the beer industry have suffered from another pressure: existential pressure. Last year recorded the lowest beer consumption in Germany since reunification: 94.6 liters per capita, a good five liters less than in 2019. This corresponds to the breweries' lowest total output of 87.1 million hectoliters of beer.
Every brewery feels the consequences.
"With the exception of the management, master brewers and trainees, all of us are on short-time work," says Emmanuelle Bitton-Glaab from Glaabsbräu from Seligenstadt.
13 people normally work in the owner-managed company.
The colleagues for logistics were temporarily no longer needed, the few tasks that had remained were taken care of by the master brewer alongside his day-to-day business.
Compared to the previous year, Glaabsbräu lost 30 percent of sales, at Pfungstädter it was 20 percent.
At the Darmstadt private brewery, which sells its beer under the Braustüb'l brand, liter sales of beer fell by 21.5 percent.
Small breweries in particular earn money with draft beer
But what is worse is that sales of barrels for the catering industry fell disproportionately. Smaller breweries in particular earn the most money with draft beer. Christoph Koehler, sales manager and part of the family that owns the Darmstadt private brewery, explains the problem: "Filling a lot of beer into a barrel is easier than putting the same amount in many individual bottles." Gastronomy higher. Beer is sold there at higher prices than in stores. The breweries have a better negotiating position vis-à-vis the landlords, while the large supermarket chains leave them significantly less margin.
Doing business in the supermarket is more a matter for the big manufacturers. It is true that out-of-home sales broke down for them too, but in some cases sales in food retail even rose during the first lockdown. But that was mainly an effect of the hamster purchases at the beginning of the pandemic, which evened out over the whole year. According to Emmanuelle Bitton-Glaab, the smaller breweries are nevertheless more severely affected by Glaabsbräu: "For Krombacher it was a bad summer last year, nothing more."
That sounds a little different at Binding in Frankfurt. Binding belongs to the Radeberger Group, which in turn belongs to the Dr. Oetker Group. The spokeswoman for Binding says: "If a crisis hits all breweries massively, the effects are automatically particularly great for a large group of companies." 9.8 percent, which corresponds to 177 million euros.