Perfect Beer Talks #4 The Future of Beer

 Chad Wodskow is an experienced global brand manager with a demonstrated history of working in the food & beverages industry. Skilled in Sales, Market Research, Management, Trade Marketing, and Marketing Strategy, he has much to bring. He previously worked with SAB Millers for 15 years and now in Molson Coors for more than 5 years. 

As Trade Brewer for MillerCoors, Matthew Geary and his team are responsible for creating and implementing the award-winning, best-in-industry Beer Champion education program. He works as the Senior Manager of Innovation. Beer is a family business for him. He also supports MillerCoors’ commercial organization, primarily national large-format accounts. He works on the creation and execution of volume-driving retail solutions, including an emphasis on beer and food programming.

They are now working jointly on a draft beer technology project to carry it to the future. Thanks to our brilliant experts, we created one of the most fruitful episodes ever (maybe not as much as Belgian Blue Moon).

Points Worth of Mentioning from Chad, Matthew and Can

What we understand as beer culture will gain new meanings and change from today’s beer culture with the developing technologies in the beer industry. Beer culture shifts from traditional methods at an accelerating rate thanks to companies like Pubinno. According to Chad, this trend will help small breweries get the upper hand to compete with big players. Also, big breweries will put more effort into their existing products to make them more premium for their customers. Young consumers today, especially GenZ consumers, drink less but better. This shift means that we are at the beginning of a craft and premium beer age.

”I think we’re gonna see two things in the beverage industry in general. It will continue to fragment and specialize. With technology being much more accessible to smaller businesses, the barrier to entry into drinks will become lower and allow more people to experiment. This proliferation will force suppliers or producers to be better at what they’re currently doing or become more localized”

Digitalization will create immense effects on the industry in the future. As Chad puts it, it is a symbiotic relationship that will accelerate as it is being used in the industry. Companies like Pubinno will bring exciting developments to the industry in the future.

”Smart Taps being able to process payments as cryptocurrencies will be highly beneficial to consumers and retailers. Digitalization can create incremental benefits and can disrupt the industry. But it is a symbiotic relationship. As these technologies create value for the consumers, consumers also create value for these technologies. Digital technologies will continue to evolve at a much faster rate. I think it’s extremely exciting what it’s able to do and how it’s going to disrupt traditional business.” Chad Wodskow

The Importance of Data for The Future of Beer

Data is more important than ever in the contemporary beer market. Whether you are a big company like Molson Coors or a local brewer, data is essential to your business. With developing technologies, now we are able to examine consumer-base in more detail than ever. Like in our platform Smart Hub, breweries can see the consumption in liters by the specific location and time. Further, they can even access the quality scores in real-time. In our data-driven industry., it is crucial to rethink how to do business.

The difference between Puerto Rico, the US, Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Chile is many. Cultural differences are imminent when you think about the brand. But people are people. The first thing you always do is look at the data. What is the size of the category, what are the beer occasions, the size of those occasions, who are the people within those occasions, who do you want to talk to, etc. So you start with a lot of data and narrow it down the focus. After deciding where do you want to put your time and attention, you build a business plan around that.

We must build a sustainable future 

Sustainability has to be at the very center of everything related to beer. For brewing a liter of beer, we spend almost 102.5 liters of water. Further, more than 20% of our draft beer is wasted when traditional methods are used. So far, Pubinno has saved almost 500,000,000 liters of water thanks to its innovative technologies. Although there have been some major developments in the industry, especially in recent years, there is still a long way to go to secure the future of beer. 

”You’ll probably never find an industry that’s more focused on sustainability than the brewing industry because it’s at the core of its products. If you think about what beer is, it’s barley, yeast, and water. But it’s primarily, almost purely water. So sustainability has been a big talking point over the past decade, but breweries have focused on it like for the past 50 to 100 years. It is not just a marketing trend. It is just a fact that if we want to survive in this world, we have to make a better way of brewing beer.” Chad Wodskow

The Future of Draft Beer: Pubinno

Draft beer is a form of art, a complex form of art. Countless factors can affect the taste of the beer, and even if one of them is not like it is supposed to be, your draft beer experience won’t be perfect. Pubinno achieves perfection with technology. As Matthew puts it, there is a huge opportunity to improve the draft beer, and Pubinno is ready to help both the bar owners and breweries make their draft beer perfect.

”Draft beer can be a better experience than packaged beer. Somebody pour a proper pint of beer using the Pubinno Smart Tap for the perfect amount of beer and foam, a clean glass presented to you, being in an appealing environment… It doesn’t get better than that. But it has to be done right. There are so many examples of it done just poorly. They don’t clean the lines, and it tastes like vinegar or butter, the glass is dirty, there is no proper amount of foam on the top… There are many ways that the draft beer industry does itself a disservice by these mistakes. So, there is a huge opportunity to improve the industry, educate the people, and offer technologies and new ways to develop draft systems that allow retailers to more easily keep their systems clean and create awareness.” Matthew Geary

Thanks to both Chad Wodskow and Matthew Geary for being with us at the 4th episode of the Perfect Beer Talks. We covered a lot in this episode and highly suggest you to watch the whole conversion from the link down below. It is amazing how they approach the industry in a revolutionary way and have so much to talk about consumption and technologies, data management, problems of draft beer, and beyond.