Crafting growth together

Figures & data

Figure 1. Data structure

Table 1. Economic capital problems and potentialities

Cash Flow	Investment and Growth	Economic Capital and Context
Cash flow problems, e.g.: duty before income	The dilemma of whether to grow or not	Craft breweries positive impact on the local economic context
Exporting as a cash flow driver (up-front payment)	The grounded nature of growth, in spatial economic capital	Spatial economic capital: provenance, constraints, and possibilities
Mass-selling beers (versus innovative diversity)	The desire and need to invest in productive capacity	Institutional impact on capital investment opportunities
Collective action/buying to reduce costs

Table 2. Cultural capital problems and potentialities

Institutional Cultural Capital	Objectified Cultural Capital
Knowledge of crafting beer, as aesthetic excellence	The constant, passionate pursuit of diversity and innovation, sometimes in collaboration
The need for business skills (especially exporting and marketing)	Customers’ simultaneous desire for discovery/choice, and local provenance
Institutionalizing craft beer quality and skills	Innovation embedded in place
Educating customers, the supply and distribution chain

Table 3. Social capital problems and potentialities

Local social Capital and Collaboration	Building social capital with customers and distributors	Building national and international social capital
Collaborating with local craft brewer peers	Developing personal relationships with distributors	Building new national brewers’ associations through relationships/strong ties
Brewer-led groups and associations; strong ties with other brewers	Social media as a vehicle for building and enacting social capital	Engaging with formal business networks and the public sector, at national level
Working with other local craft and artisanal producers		Building on relational links to international brewers (and others) to drive exporting
Engaging with other local small firms, especially tourist ventures		Benefits of weaker ties in bridging to new export markets

Table 4. Symbolic capital problems and potentialities

Craft beer narratives	Institutionalized symbolic capital	Risks to symbolic capital
Clear, consistent stories	Awards and rankings crucial within beer sector	Poor quality breweries and brews affect the whole sector’s reputation.
Locality is crucial- spatial symbolic capital	Especially important for international growth	Temptations and risks of inauthenticity, especially in export marketing
Social Media as locus for enacting symbolic capital		Negative perceptions of craft beer and its drinkers
Myth making: David and Goliath

Table

	The Global Craft Beer Field	The Emerging Irish Craft Beer Field
Economic Capital	Fiscal regimes can aid or abet small scale brewers, and have done so since antiquity. Cabras and Bamforth 2016, 631; Danson et al. 2015	Recession (2008–2011) as catalyst for new brewery openings; retailer effort/interest; and consumer re–focus on value as quality. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
	Licencing laws and alcohol regulations have framed craft brewing opportunities, from Hammurabi, to the present day. Argent 2017; Danson et al. 2015; Tremblay et al. 2005, 321; Cabras and Bamforth 2016, 634; 628; Woolverton and Parcell 2008, 52–53	Legislative challenges prohibiting on-site tasting. (The law was then changed, after organized lobbying to parliament, on a regional development and beer tourism agenda). (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
	Exploitation of resource–scarce spaces, using capitals overlooked by large scale generalists. Clemons, Gao, and Hitt 2006, 152; Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay 2015, 724; Carroll and Swaminathan 2000; Carroll 1985; Argent 2017, 3; Cabras and Bamforth 2016, 626–628	Structural economics saw craft breweries being crowded out of mainstream national distribution systems, dominated by major players. Craft beer pubs are an already over-supplied local niche. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
		Access to Economic Capital: Risk aversion from banks; a need for patient capital; and the importance of regional support and development funding for some breweries in marginal areas. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018) Traditional funding sources are complemented by (dearer) alternative sources, like crowd funding. This tended to be very localized, and sought to build customer commitment, rather than sourcing operational input. (Mac an Bhaird et al. 2019).
		Combining strengths to achieve competitive strategic scale
	Emergence of small–scale specialists. Clemons, Gao, and Hitt 2006, 152; Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay 2015, 724; Carroll and Swaminathan 2000; Carroll 1985; Argent 2017, 3; Cabras and Bamforth 2016, 626–628	From macro-brewers, back to authentic craft basics; more commercial business models, drawn from previous business experience; emergence of a hybrid business model balancing commerce and craft. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018) Authentic small-scale crafting – contrast to mainstream (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
Cultural Capital	Home brewing as a route to craft brewery start-up. Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay 2015; Danson et al. 2015	From home brewers to beer entrepreneurs. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
	Hyperdifferentiation, and continual experimental NPD of novel beers, to meet passionate consumer demand. Clemons, Gao, and Hitt 2006, Woolverton and Parcell 2008, 59, 60; Danson et al. 2015	Hyperdifferentiation – norms of innovating and experimenting. Market demands for diversity, authenticity, quality and passion. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
	Humanization of brands through local folklore, myths and heroes, time and place; historical identity. Hede and Watne 2013; Argent 2017; Lamertz et al. 2016)	Brand humanization through personalization – social media. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
Social Capital	Collaboration and co-operations between craft brewers. Danson et al. 2015; Cabras and Bamforth 2016, 634	Shared communal ethos of collaboration, e.g., “cuckoo brewing”/sharing production facilities; loaning brewery equipment; sharing start–up knowledge, contacts and advice. (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
	Dense networked community of brewers, home brewers, consumers. Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay 2015, 731–2	Engaging with customers as home brewers and bloggers; collaborative brews; (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
Symbolic Capital	Neo-localism, branded embeddedness and provenance. Argent 2017; Danson et al. 2015	Embedded craft – coming home to Ireland; local place names; local recipes and ingredients; place and local myths; history and tradition revisited (Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018)
		Great quality is essential for the entire sector
Table adapted and extended from Drakopoulou Dodd et al. 2018, p 642, Table 1(with permission, and thanks).

Table

Participant identification code	Type	Country
P1	Academic	Slovenia
P2	Academic	UK
P3	Academic	Ireland
P4	Academic	Slovenia
P5	Academic	Italy
P6	Academic	Spain
P7	Academic	Germany
P8	Academic	Spain
P9	Academic	Finland
P10	Academic	UK
P11	Academic	Germany
P12	Academic	UK
P13	Academic	UK
P14	Academic	UK
P15	Academic	UK
P16	Academic	Norway
P17	Academic	UK
P18	Academic	France
P19	Academic	Italy
P20	Brewer	Slovenia
P21	Brewer	UK
P22	Brewer	UK
P23	Brewer	Slovenia
P24	Brewer	UK
P25	Brewer	Italy
P26	Brewer	UK
P27	Brewer	Finland
P28	Brewer	UK
P29	Brewer	UK
P30	Brewer	Ireland
P31	Brewer	Germany
P32	Brewer	UK
P33	Brewer	Finland
P34	Brewer	UK
P35	Brewer	Spain
P36	Brewer	Italy
P37	Brewer	UK
P38	Brewer	Germany
P39	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK
P40	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK
P41	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK
P42	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK
P43	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK
P44	Support/policy/industry body representative	UK

Table

Participation Mode	Artefact/Data
Workshop One
Introduction: presentations and Q&A session with 3 brewers of varying size	45 minutes video 7187–word transcript
12 teams of 2–3 participants	12 x Present and Future Business Model Canvas (Individual Brewery Level)
4 teams of 6–7 participants	4 x Challenges and Opportunities Grids (Sectoral Level)
Round-robin presentations of challenges and opportunities grid – all participants	45 minutes video 6273-word transcript
Vox-Pop Interviews: 3 academics, 1 support professional, 2 brewers	40 minutes video 6360-word transcript
Workshop Two
Introduction: Summative report on Workshop 1, authorial team	41 minutes video 5928–word transcript
17 teams of 2–3 participants	17 x Entrepreneurial Capitals Map (Individual Brewery Level) See Appendix 4 for samples
5 teams of 6–7 participants	5 x Collaborative Action Plan Matrices
Plenary presentation of Action Plan Matrices – all participants (in the same teams of 5)	48 minutes audio 7766-word transcript
Vox-Pop Interviews: 3 brewers	12 minutes video 2148-word transcript

Table

Examples from raw data	First-order codes	Second-order themes
‘they can … pay upfront which is quite good for business that you get the money before you ship the product, so it’s quite a good arrangement’ (Group3, E1, round-robin presentations).	Cash flow	Economic capital
‘we’re a four-barrel brewery; we’ve always been a four-barrel brewery, we don’t think we’re going to get bigger any time soon’ (P24, E1, intro presentations).	Investment and growth
‘how craft breweries create new jobs in the rural regions’ (Group1, E2, presentations)	Economic capital and context
‘that ability to have a passport as it were with an agreeing sector to say, I know this person is appropriately qualified, I can recruit them, or I can give this person a qualification, therefore I can reward them and retain them’ (Group1, E1, round-robin presentations).	Institutional cultural capital	Cultural capital
‘the consumer wants to stay more local than ever before – although they do want to find discovery brands … what I think we see now is a lot wider portfolio of drinks, or repertoire drinking’ (P22, E1, interviews)	Objectified cultural capital
‘it’s not seeing your competitors as competitors, you see them as an opportunity to network and build upon your own brand essentially’ (P43, presentations).	Local social capital and collaboration	Social capital
‘because that is the way that most people seem to engage with new ideas, new thoughts’ (P32, E2, interviews).	Building social capital with customers and distributors
‘We are here as XXX to help businesses to collaborate, so whether it’s looking at the model or looking at the legals and the structure or the members’ agreement of how to work together. We’re here to help. It’s a free service and we’ve helped other businesses in sectors across the food and drink industry, for example, the craft distillers’ co-operative, doing very similar things.’ (P40, interview)	Building national and institutional social capital
‘already now we have high quality and special taste associations connected to the craft beer, and we have this David versus Goliath kind of myth going on’ (WS2, group feedback).	Craft beer narratives	Symbolic capital
‘if you’re talking to somebody in Europe … the first thing those people will do when you mention your beer is clackety, clackety, clackety, clack on the keyboard, look you up on Untapped, on RateBeer, on all that. They check your beers. So, if your beer comes up saying “oh, it’s won this award, it’s won that award”, you are far more likely to be successful in developing that market. So symbolic capital is very important there’ (Group3, E2, presentations).	Institutional symbolic capital
‘for a brewer exporting to the US, you might have to ham up. So, you might put a picture of the Union Jack on your bottle of beer … to say put a picture of baby Charlotte on the; Theresa May on the label, send it over. The Trump lovers would love it, wouldn’t they?’ (WS2, CMB, group feedback).	Risks to symbolic capital

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