Data: most popular Christmas beers + how to deal with new competitors

Josh Hurst has seen a lot throughout his time at Pies & Pints, a beer and pizza chain with locations in the midwest, interior east, and south.

We talked to Josh about his strategies for dealing with new competition. Takehomes:

• Stay focused on what you do best. It's hard not to pay attention to the external change (the new competitor), but the most effective thing you can do is turn your attention internal: how can you double down on what you're best at?
• If you're doing things right and being the best you can at what you do, you'll have a place where people want to work, where people want to eat and drink, and you're going to be successful.
• This works because of the wagon wheel theory: customers have a series of places they go to. When a new place opens up, it's bright and shiny, so customers may give it a try. It's possible the new place may even get into that person's regular rotation of restaurants. But as long as you're the best at what you do, you won't permanently lose your spot in customers' wagon wheels, so you'll be safe.
• It's possible you'll still lose some customers. But that doesn't mean other customers aren't visiting you for the first time. If you give those customers a great experience, you could get into their rotation. This is why it's important to treat every customer like they've never been to your business before.

'Tis the season!

We were curious which Christmas beers consumers are looking for, so we dug into the data to understand two things:

• What Christmas beers are most popular so far this year?
• How does this year compare to last year?

Takehome: The lists include almost exactly the same beers (just one difference), only slightly rearranged, and basically all of them are classics—there aren't any dark horses on the list.

Here are the lists, in descending order (#1 at the top).

2022

	Great Lakes Christmas Ale Spiced Beer · 7.5% · Cleveland, OH
	Tröegs Mad Elf Belgian Strong Ale · 11.0% · Hershey, PA
	Breckenridge Christmas Ale Winter Warmer · 7.1% · Littleton, CO
	Bell's Christmas Ale Scottish Ale · 5.5% · Comstock, MI
	St. Bernardus Christmas Ale Quadrupel · 10.0% · Watou, Belgium

2021

	Great Lakes Christmas Ale Spiced Beer · 7.5% · Cleveland, OH
	Tröegs Mad Elf Belgian Strong Ale · 11.0% · Hershey, PA
	Sam Adams White Christmas White IPA · 5.8% · Boston, MA
	St. Bernardus Christmas Ale Quadrupel · 10.0% · Watou, Belgium
	Bell's Christmas Ale Scottish Ale · 5.5% · Comstock, MI

Where's the data from? Pageviews to each beer's page on BeerMenus.com. Data is from the last 30 days (11/13/22 through 12/12/22) and from the same date range last year. We looked at all well-known Christmas beers as well as all beers that included "Christmas" or "Santa" in their name.

• The American Craft Spirits Association presented full sales and volume data from 2021. It showed that craft spirits have recovered from the pandemic and are headed for boom times.
• Looks like AB-InBev is going to be pushing harder into the NA beer segment. No surprise at all there.
• Great Chicago-based beer news site Guys Drinking Beer looked at the the headwinds facing the craft brewing scene there.

This newsletter is brand new (this is only the second edition), so we're still figuring out what works and what doesn't. We'd love to hear what you think!

If you could, please reply to this email and answer 3 questions:

• What section (the interview, the data, the headlines, the meme) is most valuable to you? Why?
• Is there anything here that you don't think is valuable?
• Are you likely to refer friends or colleagues to receive this newsletter?

We'll randomly draw the name of one of the people who replies and we'll send them a $50 Visa gift card next week!

And finally, please enjoy our meme of the week: