Last Call For Low-Cost Craft Beer Prices; Aluminum Can Shortage Driving Up Expenses For North Texas Breweries
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The price of a can of beer could increase as shortages of aluminum are driving up costs for local breweries.
It's another hiccup in the return back to pre-COVID pandemic life for brewers.
"Over the last 2 years it's been extremely difficult to actually have any kind of consistency. Supply chains have been stressed and at times we were not able to get anything," said Jon Powell, Owner and Brewer of Hop and Sting Brewing Company in Grapevine, "The aluminum manufacturers just can't keep up. Since COVID happened everyone shifted to packaged goods so not just the beer industry, it's also the soda industry, juice industry everyone is selling more to-go products than they were pre-COVID."
It's the same issue at Turning Point Brewer in Bedford. They've had to get creative and instead of investing in more aluminum cans, they've bought more kegs.
"That kind of helps alleviate the issue of getting cans brought in because we're putting them in kegs. We did have to purchase more kegs and that's stainless steel, those prices have gone up too," said James Peery, Co-founder of Turning Point Brewery.
The breweries told CBS 11 the price of aluminum has doubled or even tripled in recent weeks but right now, they say they'll eat the cost and not pass the buck on to the customers yet.
"Bumping up prices isn't necessarily going to be very good right now because consider people are budgeting and beer is a commodity," added Peery.
It's a tough decision for these brewers as they'll try to balance the books when the margin for profit is thin.
"It will obviously affect the bottom line of our businesses especially we're not in a position to raise our prices. With all the price increases that are going on in the world today we want to make sure we are able to keep our beer affordable," said Powell.
Besides aluminum, the price of electricity, steel is going up and because of drought, hops is also in short supply this year.