On Tuesday night we had the wonderfully successful Women in Craft Beverage Panel hosted by Lost Generation and our very own Brandy Holder. If you missed it, there will be another chance to get in on the good stuff for the Women in Craft Beverages: Excellence in Industry panel, Thursday, March 20, at Other Half DC, to benefit the DC-area chapter of the Pink Boots Society.
When I was prepping for the panel I kept coming across this 2021 benchmarking survey that the Brewers Association published. This was for new breweries, and since the numbers kept coming up we wanted to compare the national average for 500 breweries (136 responses and 364 coded) to our 17 breweries in DC.
“Wait…” I hear you asking, “did DC Beer say we have 17 brewers in DC?”
I did say that but I should clarify that this is the current count when you check the BA website and choose “Find a Brewery” then click DC as a state (be still my 51st desiring heart!) you will find the count at 17. You may see 14 when you first scroll down to the chart in the infographic “Number of State Breweries Operating per Year” and that’s likely closer to an accurate total.
But if I stay within the data set provided, I would shrink 17 down to 11. Atlas being one entity takes us from 17 to 16, and Right Proper being one instead of three takes us down to 14. Then sadly, with Sankofa no longer selling beer, we’re at 13. Then with City-State presumably closing we get to 12.
Out of those 12 how many are women-owned? This one requires multiple breakouts as both Right Proper and Lost Generation feature women co-owners. So if we tally women co-owned as women-owned we’re at three, with Urban Garden rounding us out.
While Urban Garden has yet to open a brick and mortar, they are listed in the data set, so we’ll say with 12 breweries, 3 women-owned, that lands us at 25%. This fits DC squarely in the range that the BA provided, with 23.7% of women-owned breweries in 2021 their 2021 data.
Check in and see how your home state stands up to the statistical breakdowns provided by the BA. Do you have suggestions for further statistical breakdowns? Leave it in the comments, and see you at Other Half on Thursday, March 20th!
