Craft Beer Stores Are Adapting to a Post-Boom Market | SevenFifty Daily

These are trying times for the American beer store. During craft brewing’s 2010s surge and summit, drinkers flocked to proliferating beer shops to buy cans, bottles, and growlers filled with fresh beer, the rarer the better. Fans tailgated delivery trucks carrying IPAs from Lawson’s Finest Liquids and the Alchemist, and customers queued every Black Friday for Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout.

The mania has subsided, and “margins on retail are so tight that if people are just coming for a four-pack, that’s not making ends meet,” says Brian Jensen, the founder of Bottlecraft, a chain of five southern California beer stores. 

Increasingly, long-running beer stores are shuttering nationwide. The Craft Beer Cellar franchise filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2024, the same year that City Beer Store in San Francisco concluded its 18-year run. Last fall, Top Hops went dark after 13 years on New York City’s Lower East Side, while John’s Marketplace shut one of three locations around Portland, Oregon, in December.

To better meet shifting consumer habits, beer stores are offering cocktails and wine, adding food, and catering to communities. A warm welcome will draw more people than another cold beer. “It’s tough to get people to travel for a double IPA,” says Joshua van Horn, the co-owner of Gold Star Beer Counter in Brooklyn.

For SevenFifty Daily, I explore the present and future of the American beer store.