Watson said he’ll be tracking average spend per visit in 2021 to see if those to-go sales numbers stick. Watson also walked through point-of-sale data from Arryved, which showed that revenue per site consistently outperformed visitors per site, indicating that the average spend per visit has increased year-over-year, likely indicating that consumers buying more 6-packs or cases to-go versus pints. And that doesn’t even factor in profits, which likely also dropped. In fact, the average revenue per barrel sold onsite was 7.5% lower in 2020 compared to 2019, with pint sales at-the-brewery lost for most of the year. Watson estimates that revenue losses for craft breweries last year were in the “billions” of dollars. “Obviously the government response was tighter in California, but you’ve also just got a more urban population that probably was less likely to move around anyway, and those, in combination, lead to weaker trends,” Watson said. Nevertheless, the weaker trends in California also reflect the strong response by the state’s government to the pandemic, with on-premise shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.
