Where are we going as an industry?

If it was my money I was spending to get the word out about mead I would start an association, get anyone who would stand to profit from the PR to pitch in, and the hire this lady to spearhead it for me:

Janet Switzer

Co-author of the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller "The
Success Principles" and creator of "How Experts Build Empires:
The Proven System Experts Use to Earn Millions From Information
Products"

She developed the media campaigns, direct mail campaigns and specialty market campaigns for Chicken Soup for the Soul and other stuff.

I don't think it's something that'll grow on it's own, that's for sure. If growth depends on people grabbing a bottle on a whim, or the advice of a friend, liking it, and continueing to buy as well as passing along the info to friends - that's going to be some seriously slow growth if there's only 250 cases being sold (200 of which are perfectly fine, but sweet as hell, turning off probably a great deal of the people who try it).

This is one you need to hear from B.Nektar on - Brad's the master of creating demand for his product, and from what I've seen he seems to do a large amount of it through footwork (holding tastings at his meadery as well as at liquor stores, etc).

It's one serious challenge!

I really feel advertising would do a lot for the industry. It seems like so many people don't even know what mead is to begin with. I certainly didn't until January, and just the description of mead I read about was enough to turn me on to the idea. I've been giving some bottles of JAO away to my friends and many of them hadn't even heard of mead either, and many who did thought it was just a type of wine.

When I daydream about opening a meadery, I do generally imagine that I would like to contact other meaderies and try to join forces. I'd rather have all the meaderies selling in the area concentrated into one single liquor store instead of 3 or 4, and through this concentration of product make an attempt with the store owner to get an actual mead display happening.

Right now mead is spread all around my city, a bottle here a bottle there - if they could all just cooperate and narrow it down to fewer stores, but bigger displays ("bigger"... who am I kidding, they don't have displays or signage at ALL right now!), I think it would benifit all their sales honestly.

Right now mead is just hidden amongst the wine, nearly impossible to find even if you're looking for it. If you were able to get enough product in one store for them to create it's own section that was actually labeled "mead" I think this would be a big deal (even if it's only one shelf on a shelf and stuck amongst the weird "wine" like port and sherry and so forth).

It would make mead more visible, whether the person was looking for it or not, would point out to people that this is in fact it's own kind of product, not some spin-off of wine, and seeing several brands of the product together would make it look less lik some super-niche product.

That's just my opinion though, and my crazy imaginings of what I would try to do if I had a meadery. I don't have one, so I don't know what would be really involved in attempting this.

EDIT TO ADD: Advertising is great, but it is seriously, seriously expensive (assuming it's not the cheap adds you can get in the local free/indie paper).

One reason why they sell so much of the national brand that we all know of is extremely simple: it's on the shelf at every BevMo I've ever visited, and any other shop that sells mead. That, and the one that's not really mead but white wine sweetened with honey.

We need to get with the BevMo people and organize a tasting/pairing with their corporate/regional/even local bigwigs so they can then educate their people about mead as a trendy alternative to wine. People go in there to get recommendations, and if the employees don't know about mead, they won't recommend it. And if they won't recommend it, they won't sell it, and if they don't sell it, they won't stock it.

We can't expect this to happen all by itself. Why not invite the people we want to reach to MCI? Offer a seminar to wine buyers so that they know what mead is, what varieties there are (people will be very surprised at this), and let them taste it. Have the pros set up vendor booths to share their meads to the buyers, have a pairing event just for them. I would think that if the pros among us had the chance to do something like this they'd jump at the chance to pour a little gratis mead for the people who are responsible for buying choices, from BevMo on down, and would probably be willing to pick up the tab for the pairing event as well.

MCI seems to me like the perfect venue for something like this, and if the MCI PTBs get on planning it now--with input from Brad and Ian and the rest, I think it would grow to be extremely successful for all involved.

Also, invite the wine editors of major foodie magazines, websites, etc. Heck, even minor ones. If they write about it, people will want to try it.

I came to my "international" perspective on the mead industry during the denouement of the International Mead Association, now defunct for the past three or so years. During the wind-down, it appeared to me that an association of professional meadmakers was not going to be automatically self-sustaining, principally because many (if not most) of the meadmakers in North America are so busy trying to make a go of it themselves, that they generally did not have the time/money/resources to devote to any national/continental/international development of the market. That, coupled with perceptions that the association principally benefited a few of the members more than others (whether fair or unfair, the perceptions were there), led to the failure, and eventual dissolution, of the association.

In my opinion, a trade organization dedicated to building the market for mead is the most efficient way to kick-start the industry, to elevate it from just a couple of large players and many cottage-industry locals, to something that can effectively compete for a larger share of the beverage market on an international scale. However, that trade organization will need to be run as an independent advocacy voice, much like the Brewer's Association has become a voice for craft brewing in North America. To that end, and to ensure that it will not be beholden to just a few entities, it will need to be made up of folks both in the industry and those who are not professionals, but are still champions of mead.

BTW - To those of you suggesting more MCI involvement in mead industry advocacy, we've already been thinking along those lines. While we are limited in what we can do from year to year, we have already been actively reaching out to the public (and to media) to promote the recognition of mead as an alternative to wines or beers, and you will see more of this in future years as the MCI continues to grow.

I ask for mead in every liquor store I enter. Binny's carries some.

I'm with Alan, advertising is expensive, and not worth it.

Let's hear it for Word of Mouth!

It might also be worth while to get support from the honey producers; the honey board and any associations they have. Let's face it, mead making takes a lot of honey. In one 5-gallon batch, I'm likely to use more honey than the average family of four will consume over the next 2 years. If you want to see honey sales go up, a bunch of thriving mead producers will drive it through the roof.

Medsen Fey said:

It might also be worth while to get support from the honey producers; the honey board and any associations they have. Let's face it, mead making takes a lot of honey. In one 5-gallon batch, I'm likely to use more honey than the average family of four will consume over the next 2 years. If you want to see honey sales go up, a bunch of thriving mead producers will drive it through the roof.

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Oh, yeah, have some honey producers at MCI too, to pimp their wares to pros and homies alike. But then it'd have to be opened up to be much more than it presently is, may not be either desirable or doable. Dunno.

Do honey people have trouble selling their stock every year?

IanB said:

2. Is it craft brew alignment that we need?

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Sobering indeed. I know that wine bars and brew pubs have done LOTS to get me interested in diverse beverages.

Would it be possible to sell a keg directly to a brew pub? You could sell it to them for cost - they could sell by the glass and maybe make a little money, and hopefully that will develop a handful of fans that will go directly to you to buy bottles...?

I don't know the legal ins and outs, but it seems like having mead on tap at a local establishment would do lots.

My 2 cents worth.

I know this is long, but you asked...

1. Advertising. While it would be nice, who is going to pay for it? As a hobbyist I would love to see mead made more mainstream but I’m not going to pay for advertising. The commercial mead makers I know aren’t making the kind of money to do it. Maybe if they all banded together and spent their advertising dollars as one?

2. Craft Brewing. Most craft brewers are already aware of mead at least. Expanding the number of craft brewers making mead is good and would be helpful, but Craft brewers will tend to make their own and not buy much commercially, I don’t see that making a big difference in a hurry. As to selling it I suspect that the type of person who likes to try different beers would be a good market, but because of cost and alcohol content of most mead it would have to be served and priced in quantities more comparable to wine then beer. (See # 4 for more thoughts about pubs)

3. Footwork – This is important if done correctly, especially for the individual mazer, but again it only makes for small incremental increases in sales overall. The better option for national recognition would be to look into different ideas for Guerrilla Marketing. I have a couple of books on it and there are some great ideas. Basically you have to come up with something that catches the eyes and attention of the general public, without spending much money. Perhaps as a group we could come up with some good ideas.

4. Brew Pub (and pubs in general) Opening a brew pub is a very different business from making mead (or beer), I helped a friend open his, while successful it was a lot of work and very little of that had to do with brewing the beer. Also a single mead based pub while possible a great business is strictly local and won’t do much for anyone outside of their client base.

Pubs in general - I’ve talked a good number of different pub owners here in the Los Angeles area about this. Several of them said they would be glad to try it, but doubted if it would be worth their while to keep it, and these are pubs that specialize in specialty micro brewed beers. The problem is to be cost effective for a pub, you have to keg it, bottling as you know adds a big cost to the system. This means pouring it from a tap at which point the public thinks of it as a beer and wants beer pricing instead of wine pricing. If you pour it from a bottle as with most wine, they don’t think it would sell at all, at least in bars that specialize in micro beers. The wine bars I’ve talked to say their clientele generally come in wanting something different in their kind of wine. Person A likes Chablis, person B likes Merlot, while they are fine with trying a new Chablis or Merlot, they generally won’t try a new Burgundy, let alone a mead.

Having said this though I do believe that getting into pubs and getting it accepted in pubs is critical if we are going to make any kind of mass inroad in the acceptance of Mead.

5. Partnership with a food product. I’m not sure which food product you would partner with, and in today’s market I would suspect that most major food producers would be leery of being paired with an alcoholic product, especially one that has no proven draw to enhance their sales. So the question would be how would you tie them together in the consumers mind without being tied to a specific product? Something like the Avocado growers here in California linking Guacamole with the Super bowl and beer? When the Super bowl is over, the association with beer lingers.

6. Mascot, gets back to the Guerrilla marketing idea.



If I was going to open a meadery here in Southern California here is what I would pursue.

1. Partnerships with the local specialty beer bars, you have to have an outlet where people can easily try your wares. This would include doing tastings at the bar regularly so that the patrons would have a chance to try it before buying it, along with any other gimmick I could think of.

2. Find locations where mead would be acceptable to start with and build a database of potential customers. Rabbits Foot has a perfect venue with the Renaissance Faires here in California. People form long lines to drink their mead. I’d do tastings and get everyone’s email address for mailings and special offers; I suspect you could build quite an impressive mailing list very quickly that way.

3. Become associated with some of the beer and wine of the month clubs

4. Talk Vicky and Oscar into doing the Mazers cup to L.A. and then renting a conference center and put together a food and mead expo. They do it very successfully here with wine. I’d have all the commercial meaderies there to show their products, and the local restaurants and specialty food suppliers all come and set up booths with the idea of showing how their products will work well with mead. I’d then make sure that all of the news channels and food channels here in LA covered it. If done in conjunction with the Mazers cup it would mean that the commercial meaderies were already here and a core group of people that understand mead to wander the floors answering questions. I’m not sure of the viability of this, but I suspect that if done right it would introduce Mead to a large number of people and you would make some money to boot.

5. A tie in with a T.V. show. This is the reason I’ve now done several tastings for people in the T.V. industry, with the hopes that one of them would think it was neat and write it into one of their scripts. Just imagine, all the meaderies in the country wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand if say the cast of Friends had decided it was their latest favorite drink. Unfortunately to have this work, we would need to already have at least a limited supply chain set up. This would mean both the ability to go into the specialty wine/beer stores and buy it and have it on tap in at least some of the pubs.


Some of these would be a job for the local meadery, however some of it would work far better with as many meaderies as possible co-operating together to make it happen. Who and how is a different discussion.


If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading


Cheers
Jay

Great points, Jay.

Something else to think about.

Most meaderies are still small, so any increase in demand puts a burden on them because they already have limited supply. Unfortunately mead is not a product that can have production increased and decreased on demand. To increase production, you either have to turn your fermentation vessels faster, buy more vessels or buy larger ones. All but the first option requires capital, which most don't have because they are still small.

I am with everyone else, we need more mead on the shelf. I feel that before we can do that though, more meaderies need to increase production so that we can get them into the distributors, and then from there, work with the stores/pubs/etc to get them stocked, then start the marketing/PR.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Michael

I can see a scary problem there - indeed there needs to be more on the shelf for it to sell more, but most producers want it to sell more before they'll produce more! So we end up with a little game of leapfrog with this chicken/egg problem, a small increase in sales may result in a meadery upping it's production a little more than supply demands, which may eventually cause a few more sales, and the process repeats.

Asking a meadery to take a large jump on the production side of things is a tough request though - if I was running a meadery there's no bloody way I'd be happy about taking that kind of risk, and that's assuming I even had the capital to do it in the first place (and yes - increasing turns of mead through fermenters does indeed also require more capital - because in this scenario we're assuming sales will lag behind any production increases for a while, so money wouldn't be replenished any faster than before, but the meadery would be trying to produce more than before... which can be a recipe for going broke!).

In the short term growth creates negative cash flow. Without adequate capital (or access to sufficient credit) rapid growth can cause a company to run out of money.

IanB said:

My question is, how do we grow our market share in the stores? How do we establish mead as a main-stream beverage?

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One foot in front of the other.

One bite at a time.

One bottle at a time.

We're in for a long and bumpy ride. But it sure beats workin' for a livin'.