MA Craft Brewers Pour Their All Into Making It Through Winter

BEVERLY, MA — For Justin Negrotti, and his fellow owners of Channel Marker Brewing of Beverly, the business of operating the craft brewery and tap room has gone from month to month, to week to week, now down to day to day checking weather forecasts and gauging viability for patio seating as temperatures drop amid the coronavirus health crisis.

Negrotti told Patch that sales have actually been up seven percent for the two-year old brewery this year despite the pandemic as Channel Marker has nimbly hedged its new canning operation, shifted toward sour beers from its traditional New England IPAs and secured a license to serve hot dogs to fulfill the state's food-purchase requirement for on-site consumption when a catering company or other food service is not available.

Yet, on the eve of Small Business Saturday and Small Brewery Sunday, breweries across the state that got by this summer and fall with the help of outdoor patios and beer gardens are facing the crunch of cramped indoor spaces where a fraction of the people who crowded around taps pre-pandemic can be safely served at socially distanced tables.

"We watch the weather pretty closely," Negrotti said. "We've made it that our packaging day where we put the beer into cans and kegs is Thursday. So, on Thursday we look at the weather and decide: Do we think we are going to be open for a patio course at all this weekend? We look at the data for the prior days when the weather has been similar and figure out what it’s going to look like if we open the patio, and what’s it's going to look like if we don't."

Despite unseasonably warm weather predicted for this Saturday, Negrotti said the decision was made to offer to-go can service only on Small Business Saturday.

"These are the cards we've been dealt," said Negrotti, who owns Channel Marker along with business partners Tim Corcoran and Jake Crandell. "We have to roll with the punches. We have as many hedges in place as we can."

Carefully playing those cards is a challenge many small breweries will face this winter with limited indoor capacity and tough decisions about what to do with the handful of barrels of beer produced each week. Negrotti said Channel Marker, which used to can its beers through a third-party canning company, looked at the potential length of the pandemic and the implications of social distancing in its small indoor space this spring, and decided to invest in its own small canning system to lean more heavily on its to-go service.

It was a financial risk, Negrotti acknowledged, but he said it has allowed Channel Market to brew and can to its demand each week depending on whether sales are expected to be more to-go or for those sitting down with a nice pint on premises.

"On any given day we make the call how much beer we are going to put into cans instead of kegs," Negrotti said. "It was a significant investment, but we think it will pay it off tenfold."

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Negrotti said Channel Marker has been selling between 60 and 70 cases of canned beer per week with a special release the day before Thanksgiving moving 50 in a day.

It's a similar combination of long-term educated leaps of faith and game-time decisions that most breweries in what was a booming industry across the state a year ago now face with the pandemic entering its ninth month.

"Our breweries were able to be incredibly creative this past summer given the circumstances," said Katie Sinchon, Executive Director of the Mass. Brewers Guild. "They took over parking lots, and expanded their seating capacity, and did everything possible to ensure the safety and well-being of our craft beer fans.

"Now with beer gardens and outdoor service closing, these small businesses owners face incredible challenges. The holiday season is typically the busiest time for our taprooms — company parties, get togethers with friends and New Year's celebrations — all of that revenue is now gone."

Breweries, such as Channel Marker, that used to sell beer to restaurants — Negrotti said they had eight places serving Channel Marker on the North Shore, Boston and one place on the South Shore before the pandemic– have seen those orders slow as restaurants either close or deal with their own limited capacities.

Another concern for those who have turned to to-go canning is the worldwide shortage of aluminum.

"We thought, at our size, we would never encounter trouble sourcing 16-ounce cans," Negrotti said. "Then last week I saw a story that all global supply of cans has been committed for sale through 2021. Jake got on the phone to our supplier to place an extra order for delivery and we were told all their supply has been committed.

"They said they can do the supplies once a month like we have been getting. But they can't do any more than that."

So, while beer sales have been up for Channel Marker, so has the cost of doing business through supplies and other purchases needed to stay in line with state and local safety protocols.

"The rising cost of cans, lids — all that rises the cost to push beer into a single can quite considerably," Negrotti said. "We are doing the best we can. You have to be able to react on a dime."

That includes the careful decision whether to open the 36-seat patio on Fayette Street the brewery created with the help of the city allowing sidewalk and other street use each weekend, and the decision to keep the inside of the 48-capacity space closed since March.

"We did out the math," he said of the brewing company's data-driven approach. "How do we space out the tables appropriately. How many people can we have at a time? The math never supported the investment of putting in partitions between tables because we still wouldn't have enough tables. We wouldn't see the juice."

Negrotti said Channel Market worked with the city to allow the hot dog steamer for the food requirement in the case a catering company canceled or ran out of its food early.

"We told them that this is kind of life-or-death for us," he said. "If you want us to survive, this needs to be addressed. Ultimately, they worked with us and gave us the food license with the idea that we wouldn't just be slinging hot dogs every Friday and Saturday night.

"We just had to do whatever it takes to survive."

Stinchon asked that craft beer fans keep in mind that many of their favorite breweries are in a similar spot heading into this season.

"If you love your neighborhood brewery please support them and help them survive this winter by purchasing beer to-go, gift cards and merchandise," she said. "We want to make sure all our breweries make it through to the other side of this so they can keep making amazing beer and getting it into your hands."

(Scott Souza is a Patch Field Editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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