Switching from Bottles to Cans: the pFriem Case Study
pFriem is one of the three partners who supports this blog. This post came about organically, however; I got a press release from the brewery about a shift from bottles to new cans, and thought there was a story there.
It’s hard to believe that the craft segment started experimenting with cans twenty years ago, when Oskar Blues debuted Dale’s Pale Ale in that format. To quote the old saw, the subsequent conversion happened gradually, then suddenly. For a decade, few followed suit. Things changed when breweries started putting hazy IPAs in taproom-only releases seven or eight years ago, finally separating the can from an earlier association with cheapness. Still, a lot of breweries stuck with their tried-and-true bottles. It wasn’t until Covid hit that the craft segment went through a wholesale shift to make the grocery shelves an overwhelmingly can-focused landscape.
When I got the press release announcing pFriem was scrapping their 500 ml, German-style bottles, it felt like the final nail. No brewery had more carefully branded its scores of annual releases by the bottles they came in, each one signaling a different product category, than pFriem. If that most deliberative of breweries was making the move, we may conclude that the age of bottles has ended.
Consumers have Spoken
The package any brewery uses is part of its branding. It’s the advertisement that calls out to consumers from the cold case. That means switching to an entirely new package is both a risk and an opportunity. Some breweries adapt their old bottle labels to cans—low risk, low reward—while others redesign and effectively rebrand themselves (higher risk, higher reward). Given that pFriem is such a deliberative brewery, I wanted to hear the process they went through. Co-founder Josh Pfriem and I spoke a few weeks past.
We started with the impetus for the new cans. pFriem has already shifted their flagship to 12-ounce six-packs, but they had stuck with their 500 ml bottles for most of the rest of their line. What changed? In some cases trends start organically, as companies begin to follow each other’s cues. In some cases, though, structural factors force a brewery’s hand. With cans, there really wasn’t a choice.
The 500ml bottles pFriem is replacing.
“The grocery store is looking at what sells well and fast,” Josh explained. “Whatever is selling well, they push that through. Whatever is not selling well goes away.” Grocery store shelves are a constant battlefield where different products, segments, and ultimately companies battle for space. There has never been a greater pinch than now, because in addition to the spiraling number of new breweries, that cooler is being crowded by RTDs, FMBs, seltzers, and ciders. This turf war not only affects who can participate, but in which package. Shelves contain fewer spaces for six-pack bottles or larger-format single bottles.
“Some breweries have a glass version, a can version, and some sort of large format version,” Josh said, noting that pFriem was one of them. “To offer more diversity of brands, grocery stores have cut into that: ‘You can use cans or you can use bottles. That has forced producers to assess what is selling better. Looking at all the trends across the board, the consumer is heavily leaning toward cans.”
What’s Outside a Can, but Also What’s Inside
The next steps will be familiar to breweries who have made the shift. First, pFriem had to make sure the quality didn’t drop with the new package—and ideally they hoped it would improve—then they had to work on a design for the cans. Josh believes smaller-scale canning lines are better than comparably-sized bottling lines, and they were happy with the results in terms of quality. But here’s something I wouldn’t have anticipated: the character of the beer seemed to change, too.
“We prefer the flavor coming from a can more so than a glass. For us, when we get to what we really like out of the can—we haven’t really been able to quantify it—is that there’s this softer texture that is more hop-expressive,” he said. “For lagers, as we’ve got that more dialed in, is we’re able to keep the oxidative properties down lower. Sulfur—sulfite, right?—is a preservative in beer, and that has held up better long-term in a can.” He quickly added, “for us,” noting that these observations may just come from the equipment—in other words, your mileage may very. Still, a fascinating discovery.
In terms of the look of the cans, that presented a bigger challenge. Bottles offer less real estate than cans, but more definition. pFriem has a front label, a back label, a neck ring, and differently-branded caps—four discrete locations to place a message. Cans give breweries more space, but fewer spaces to work with—it’s all one undifferentiated space. The current trend in can design is bright, geometric, abstract, and youthful. pFriem’s design ethos is a throwback to established European breweries: dark, detailed, representational, and classic. They wanted to stick with a similar design, but offer something new. That wasn’t easy. “It’s really hard to out-do the last work that you did, because you put so much work into it. It puts a lot of pressure on the situation.”
In coming up with a classic look that seemed pFriem-like, they didn’t turn to Europe or beer, though. “We were actually inspired by really high-end cigar labels,” he said. I wasn’t familiar with them until I did an internet search, but the likeness is clear. The labels are definitely off-trend, but they have been since pFriem launched. The gold-on-black pops, and they are even able to use the can itself as part of the design, using gold-colored tops with black pull-tabs. With a redesign like this, a brewery never knows until they land on shelves and consumers encounter them in the wild. Time will tell how the transition worked.
I’ll leave you with a comment Josh made near the end of our call. He summarized the project in a way I hadn’t considered—beer as entertainment. I think he’s right, though. Beer is, as Patrick often observes on the pod, an “experience good.” This is how it plays out for the brewer:
“That’s always been our M.O. Each aspect, from the package to the draft presentation—all these are sensory experiences. It’s not just sitting in a closet in the dark. "We humans are very sensory-driven and start making assumptions as soon as we see something. The beer business is closer to being in the entertainment business. We’re trying to give people a great experience the whole way through; that’s our goal.”
These packages should be out now at your local grocery store, and if not, soon.