Anderson Valley Brewing promotes price stability amid Big Beer price hikes: ‘We actually like our customers’

Sometimes the best promotion is just honesty about the status quo. Our Marketing Idea of the Week goes to Northern California’s Anderson Valley Brewing Company (AVBC), which announced that while Big Beer CEOs are talking about inflation and raising beer prices, it will not be following this industry trend.

“For our part, we are holding our pricing where it is,” said AVBC President Kevin McGee. He also backed that up with some transparency on their costs and some initiatives they’ve undertaken to make this possible in the first place.

“We have a lot of the same supply chain and transportation cost pressures that others are dealing with, but thanks to some adjustments in the way we operate, like a sustainability initiative that dropped our packaging supply chain shipping needs by 75% and finished goods shipping by 30-35%, we have been able to offset these costs and maintain enough margin to keep our people employed.”

Constellation’s CFO recently said that due to inflation they’re raising prices and are going to “take as much pricing as we think the consumer can absorb.” Heineken’s CFO told Fortune magazine that because of inflation they are going to raise prices by “courageous” amounts. Many of the largest beer conglomerates in the world just booked record-breaking profit and profit margins.

AVBC believes large and publicly traded beer companies are using the perception of inflation – not the actual economic impact of inflation – as an excuse to raise prices, something they’ve been “courageously” public about.

Rather than engage in the “cynical grab-for-cash that some of the publicly traded breweries are leaping towards in an effort to balloon shareholder value,” AVBC thinks it’s a better time to keep their beers at a fair price. More power to them.

Founded in 1987 in the lower level of Boonville CA’s Buckhorn Saloon, Anderson Valley Brewing Company is renowned for its bourbon barrel aged portfolio and as innovators of Gose and fruited-sour styles. Anderson Valley Brewing Company is available in 39 states and at its Taproom in Boonville, Calif.