Savoring select Belgian beers is a worthy endeavor. Photo by Charlie Papazian
Continued from part 1 Belgian Beer Culture Threatened.
Small brewers of Belgium created an image and marketing campaign to promote their specialty beers worldwide, called Belgian Beer Paradise. It helped save many breweries when their own market eventually declined and exports proved to be their temporary savior. But times have changed and the dollar to euro exchange rate has begun to price Belgian specialties higher than the American made Belgian styles now competing with them.
Verstl makes her observation that the Belgians are not proactive to the dramatic changes in the marketplace:
ESTRAGON: Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.
VLADIMIR: Let’s wait and see what he says.
ESTRAGON: Who?
VLADIMIR: Godot.
ESTRAGON: Good idea.
Verstl reveals some interesting facts, “With average consumption slightly in excess of 80 litres, Belgians drink far less than their neighbors. Which is remarkable, given that Belgium traditionally used to be a beer country. However, if you acknowledge that Belgians in the course of a year knock back quite a few bottles of their strong high-fermented beers, they do not compare unfavorably with others.”
More interesting insight:
- Market leader AB-InBev has not increased its firm grasp over Belgian beer consumption. Its market share is 57 percent, followed by Alken Maes (Heineken) with 11 percent, Haacht (Primus) with 4 percent, Palm (Palm) with 4 percent and Duvel Moortgat (Duvel) with 3 percent. All the other brewers share 11 percent, while private labels represent 10 percent.
- AB-InBev owns four of Belgium’s top 10 beer brands – Jupiler, Stella Artois, Maes, Leffe, Primus, Hoegaarden, Cristal, Palm, Duvel and Carlsberg. Perhaps contrary to our readers’ expectations, AB-InBev’s leading brand in Belgium is a pils called Jupiler. It dominates the market by a wide margin and outsells the number two brand – Stella Artois – by 6:1.
- Beer style and variety are disappearing. Pilsner beers have about 70 percent of the market. There has been flavor proliferation in the other 30% but has not reversed the trend.
- A decline in out of home consumption has threatened the survival of beer cafés.
The country’s big brewers have begun to offer huge discounts to supermarkets andcafés in an effort to push pils volumes. This practice has jeapordized the future of not only small brewers, but also distributors.
Photo right: A proliferation of Belgian beer can be a good thing. Photo by Charlie Papazian
Verstl specifically reveals, “[Belgian] Distributors especially have begun to complain against these practices since the big brewers are already poaching in their domain by doing direct distribution. To most distributors, AB-InBev is both a client and a competitor, which is awkward at the best of times. But distributors now quite willingly admit that without carrying a full range of beverage products they would not be able to survive if they depended on AB-InBev’s products alone.”
This is serious stuff that makes many American distributors hair stand on end. American distributors are currently rethinking their relationship with the brewers who supply them, since two companies AB-Inbev and SABMiller-MolsonCoors supply about 80% of the U.S. beer market. There is a perceived cloud of uncertainty in the USA, while according to Verstl it already seems to be raining in Belgium.
In Belgium Verstl predicts large brewers pilsener price wars will spill over into the specialty market and hurt small brewers.
Any enthusiast of beer is left to wonder, what will indeed become of Belgian beer paradise?
In high school I took a class in Modern European History. In English class we read Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot. Today I drink, breath and think beer. Three threads have momentarily merged revealing what is and what could be.
ESTRAGON: Oh yes, let’s go far away from here.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We have to come back tomorrow.
ESTRAGON: What for?
VLADIMIR: To wait for Godot.
Verstl closes this chapter of her Belgian Beer story with:
“For decades, theatre-goers have wondered who Beckett’s protagonists Estragon and Vladimir represent. I say: they could be anybody and everybody. Surely, Belgian brewers with their acute sense of the absurd will agree. More on Belgium’s brewers in January 2010 at www.brauweltinternational.com”
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