Agreed - the three tier system is awful for both craft beer and craft whisk(e)y.
Big Beer is in bed with Big Distribution, and they've been able to circumvent the "protections" for years now. There's effectively two tiers, and allocation of popular beers like the annual Bourbon County release being based on sales of AB InBev products show that the second tier isn't actually able to resist the other part in an effective manner.
You also have breweries that are tiny in comparison to Big Beer that have to do silly things to sell their own beer in the taproom - most states have 'brewpub' type licensing at this point, where really small breweries can sell packaged beer to go, but then as they get bigger (But still a fraction of a percent of the size of AB InBev or MillerCoors) they have to convert to a regular brewery license. Then, if you're in a state that allows regular breweries to sell packaged beer to go, in most of them, you have to sell your beer to a distributor and then buy it back to sell in the taproom. It will never go into their possession, and you will wheel it from your packaging room to your tap room, and you'll effectively have paid a distributor 20% of your cost to do literally nothing.
It's a racket, and the idea that the three tier system as it stands now is a good thing for craft beer is insane.
It's similarly bad for the craft whisk(e)y industry, and I imagine for craft liquor in general, though I am less familiar with things outside of whisky. When doing American distribution, it is uneconomical to provide a variety of small batch offerings and extremely limited bottlings. American retailers and bars get a rather generic lineup of whisky that has a standard set of years and a few variations on barrel types.
Now go to a high end whisky bar in Asia, like the Mash Tun in Tokyo, or the Drunken Master in Taiwan - you'll find a huge variety of small batch whiskies done with bottle limits in the low hundreds, often specially bottled for a collection of these bars. And the prices to the consumer will be tiny in comparison to America, even with these being expensive cities. They can get these directly from the distilleries without the distribution markup or red tape overhead and it lets them get unique bottles and flavor profiles at a low enough cost that consumers can feel free to experiment with new whiskies without breaking the bank. I've had tabs for ~$100 that based on aged years alone would have been $500+ in the US, without even taking into account the rarity. I could never afford to do that in the US, and it's a shame, because the only people being protected in this case are middlemen and big businesses.
Big Beer is in bed with Big Distribution, and they've been able to circumvent the "protections" for years now. There's effectively two tiers, and allocation of popular beers like the annual Bourbon County release being based on sales of AB InBev products show that the second tier isn't actually able to resist the other part in an effective manner.
You also have breweries that are tiny in comparison to Big Beer that have to do silly things to sell their own beer in the taproom - most states have 'brewpub' type licensing at this point, where really small breweries can sell packaged beer to go, but then as they get bigger (But still a fraction of a percent of the size of AB InBev or MillerCoors) they have to convert to a regular brewery license. Then, if you're in a state that allows regular breweries to sell packaged beer to go, in most of them, you have to sell your beer to a distributor and then buy it back to sell in the taproom. It will never go into their possession, and you will wheel it from your packaging room to your tap room, and you'll effectively have paid a distributor 20% of your cost to do literally nothing.
It's a racket, and the idea that the three tier system as it stands now is a good thing for craft beer is insane.
It's similarly bad for the craft whisk(e)y industry, and I imagine for craft liquor in general, though I am less familiar with things outside of whisky. When doing American distribution, it is uneconomical to provide a variety of small batch offerings and extremely limited bottlings. American retailers and bars get a rather generic lineup of whisky that has a standard set of years and a few variations on barrel types.
Now go to a high end whisky bar in Asia, like the Mash Tun in Tokyo, or the Drunken Master in Taiwan - you'll find a huge variety of small batch whiskies done with bottle limits in the low hundreds, often specially bottled for a collection of these bars. And the prices to the consumer will be tiny in comparison to America, even with these being expensive cities. They can get these directly from the distilleries without the distribution markup or red tape overhead and it lets them get unique bottles and flavor profiles at a low enough cost that consumers can feel free to experiment with new whiskies without breaking the bank. I've had tabs for ~$100 that based on aged years alone would have been $500+ in the US, without even taking into account the rarity. I could never afford to do that in the US, and it's a shame, because the only people being protected in this case are middlemen and big businesses.