Craft Beer Co-opetitors

Yesterday afternoon I had a long meeting with one of my partners at GifmeBeer. We met in a local coffee shop and I decided to take a "cortado" while waiting for him. Cortado means "cut" and it is a variety of coffee drink where you get an expresso black coffee with a very small amount of milk. A similar drink is called "macchiato" in Italy as a macchia is stain so it is adding a stain of milk to the expresso black coffee. I just learned it is called "pingado" in Portugal.

After a two-hour working meeting, we decided to have a beer at a place close by. It is a new bar I have been following in social media, they opened up only 5 months ago but are very active and have several events every month.

The place is called Noumades as besides selling they also outsource the production of their own craft beer. There are some craft beer companies that prefer not to invest in production facilities and outsource their production and focus on beer design and sales, they are so-called Nomad Craft Beer companies. Noumades is owned by a couple from Brazil and they have a good mix of craft beer, including their brand, wine and food. I personally prefer to have a chance to eat something while taking a beer but some places only serve beer and no food.

I recognized the logo of Maresme Brewery in the event they are having on April 24th offering oysters with a new stout variety from this brand. I decided to explain to them about our service and offered them to try it. One of the most interesting aspects of this industry is to see how most of them cooperate, you can feel they do not see each other as competitors but as co-opetitors as in a way, they compete but they also cooperate. You can find this type of relationship in many other industries but the percentage of cooperation in this one is way higher than in other industries and this makes it nicer to deal with your potential clients as you can refer them to what you are doing with their colleges.

While talking to them, they also told us they offered a workshop in the past edition of the Barcelona Beer Festival and they were also helping the organization to get in touch with the Brazilian breweries who joined this year's edition. I now have a new place to learn and taste some of the beers from that country!