American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
Scenario: You’re a local, small to midsize brewer of amazing craft beers. You’ve climbed the ranks, paid your dues, spent hours on end perfecting your line of recipes and are at a point of demand, and have the distributor relationships and capital to make the jump and sell in grocery stores, corner stores, and beer emporiums everywhere. There’s just one teensy issue – you don’t have a facility, the equipment, or expertise to package said amazing beer. Enter stage right: The Can Van.
Yes, canned craft beer is superior to bottles in a few ways. For the brewer, you’re able to bring in a dedicated team that knows what the hell they’re doing, which saves on equipment and operational costs as well as handling the labeling. It’s a better platform for the product because it keeps out light and oxygen, makes it easier to store and ship, plus there’s none of that breakage issue you get with bottles. Oh, and that big old Mother Earth thing we live on each day? Good for her too by being recyclable. Lighter and more compact, cans require less fuel to transport, equaling more options for you to drink local.
The Can Van is a by-product of a grad school project and a collective love of good beer. While at the Sustainable MBA program at Presidio Graduate School, the two-man, three-woman team took that love of craft beer, wrapped it in a sustainability theme, and bore this idea. At the same time, they ended up filling a gap within the craft beer industry.
Just barely past the one year mark, The Can Van is certainly poised to make our can drinking experience a lot more enjoyable by filling them with IPAs, Ambers, Sours, Saisons – all the great beer styles craft brewers can be experimental with. As of now, they’re focused on the Northern California brewery scene, which is a perfect storm since an increasing amount of brewers are now making the jump from amateur to pro. Rent and space in NoCal is also at a premium, which makes remote canning especially attractive.
There’s a high minimum order for labeled cans for a smaller brewer, which can be incredibly expensive and could result in an unnecessary amount of cans lying around (great for kick-the-can games, but not so great for the bottom line of a business). One of the unique things The Can Van does is print the labels and adhere them to the cans, making it easy to do small batch and seasonal runs at practical costs.
Want to grab and hold some of their creations? Right now when you see Devil’s Canyon out of Belmont, CA, and Ruhstaller out of Sacramento in your store, know it came from this here entrepreneurial mobile operation.
The more diversity we have in our beer selection, the better. This team is making that possible. 2013 will be a busy one for the van, as the business fulfills Northern California orders, expands its services to other breweries, and maybe even capitalizes on the Southern California craft boom with a Can Van operation there. But, for now, hit the store, grab some craft canned beer, and enjoy it knowing it’s better for the beer & Mother Earth, which will make your belly oh so happy with you.
