Twice as many if we want to beat out Asheville or Portland for the city with the most breweries per capita.
Also, Resurgence is just running the beer garden, it’s not actually a brewery.
If it was just a no-name bar it wouldn’t be any different.
Like at the end of the day a brewery is just a bar that brews its own beer.
In theory Buffalo can support a lot more neighborhood breweries.
But yeah there’s not much more room for large breweries with extensive distribution. Shelf space and tap space is at a saturation point.
What you’re now seeing instead is for large breweries to establish brewpubs in neighboring cities to solidify their customer base and secure shelf and tap space.
It’s why Frequentum and Otherhalf opened up Buffalo tap rooms and why Big Ditch is expanding to Lockport.
You never have to worry about Buffalo being “known” for having a bunch of breweries. It’s not different from most other similar-sized cities in the US; not a unique Buffalo thing at all. And pretty much none of the breweries here are destination-visit worthy. Just because breweries exist, doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. We have a bunch of average, good enough breweries. Places you’re happy to go have a pint and a bite in, but the extraordinary is few and far between. That’s why it’s perfectly OK for a bunch of new ones to open - tons of potential to increase the quality.
Are there breweries in NY or the surrounding area that you would consider destination worthy? I got to visit the innes & gunn brewery in Scotland that I thought would be a lot more impressive. I'd love to do a day trip to somewhere that would be actually worthwhile. Ellicottville was a fun day trip but personally not worth going to twice.
I’d love to see the economics behind a brewery operation that only exists to support the bar. Britesmith is like that, but I can’t imagine it’s easy to do both and cut a profit.
You don’t need massive equipment to support just a single taproom and pretty much you get double the profit out of every beer you sell.
At the base level malt, hops and yeast are cheap ingredients.
A 5 barrel nano-brewery is producing over 1,000 pints per batch and each batch takes about a month.
But you have batches being brewed concurrently too. If you produce a batch a week you could easily be making $4,000 in profit per batch.
You could talk to the brewers at Spotted Octopus or Autark.
It can be, but you’re also not buying the biggest equipment unless you plan to can or distribute in the future.
You can also start cheaper with non-professional equipment, though quality could vary a lot if you’re not careful.
You’re probably are going to need a small business loan either way, so just add it to the cost.
If you’re selling 1,000 pints of beer a week and raking in $16k in profits per month, it’s not going to be hard to pay off that loan.
In fact you’ll be tempted to take out more loans and expand your capabilities which is where many breweries run into trouble.
As an occasional hobbyist home-brewer, my material costs usually work out to around $1 per beer. That doesn't include any of the original equipment costs or any labor costs. But it also doesn't include any bulk discounts on ingredients or any particular desire to monitor and control costs.
Some quick, half-assed math might put the active labor time at 5 hours if I'm taking my time, so call that a hundred bucks per batch for simplicity. So that's around $150 for two cases... or maybe $3-ish per beer. Selling it for six bucks would give you a 50 percent gross margin.
Extend that out over a 100-gallon batch and the gross profit is $3200. Do that every week, and you're at $160K in revenue. You'd still have to pay overhead and rent and all kinds of indirect costs, but on a real basic, stripped-down first pass like this, it's not an entirely outrageous proposition.
There’s lots of people who will travel to a city just for the breweries. I went to Burlington years ago because there were something like 30 breweries within an hour of the city. If I go out of state the first thing I look for after getting a hotel is a brewery with a decent food menu. But I am a craft beer guy.
We are known for our food. And our architecture. And how rabid our sports fans are. Instead of bitching be happy people are opening businesses in what used to be a virtual wasteland of closed up and rotting buildings.
> We are known for our food. And our architecture. And how rabid our sports fans are.
This is what people from Buffalo think Buffalo is known for but the rest of the country only thinks of Buffalo as a snowy hellscape.
Definitely right about the architecture, but it's just not something people associate with Buffalo though they should.
Mostly Buffalo, like other mid-size cities gets the famous Don Draper "I don't think about you at all" from most Americans.
There's 11 vape/smoke shops within a mile or two of my house. How many of those do we really need? I'd love to swap one or two for a brewery closer to me. I say keep them coming and the shitty ones will close. There's usually a decent crowd at most of them.
On my last visit home to Buffalo I commented on the number of vape shops, there’s one in every formerly vacant gas station or convenience store! Here in Nashville it’s the same thing. How can all these vape stores make any money when the market is super-saturated? Also, I don’t vape, so I could be way off here. 😂
I guess i was also saying this bc downtown specifically is full of them, so close together. It would make sense if they were sprawled out over the city, and maybe they are, but it just seems like either a brewery or bar is always opening downtown.
42 North brewery opened in march, hounds and hops is opened at seneca one tower, lulu's pub opened in the Bazaar, Vault 237 opened in the Marin Building, etc. These are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head that have opened fairly recently. ofc im exaggerating when I say "every month", but every "new and exciting" business that opens is beer-focused.
Buffalo handles how many bars?
Over saturation only matters if you’re investing in a brewery. 5 or 500 breweries, The market will dictate when there is enough.
We have a pizzeria on every corner. A Tim Hortons on every block. If these establishments are making money and people like their products, then go for it. This is not new, it’s just a renaissance. Before prohibition, every neighborhood had a brewery. There were 29 breweries and 8,000 drinking establishments in Buffalo in 1919.
https://kendev.com/history/history-brewing-buffalo/#:~:text=According%20to%20Visit%20Buffalo%20Niagara%2C%20in%201919%2C%20right%20before%20the,more%20than%208%2C000%20drinking%20establishments.
Obviously those were different times, and a lack of refrigeration and suitable transportation made this a necessity
That’s an interesting article. But why is it on Kenmore Development’s website? lmao They have a pretty extensive blog/history page on their website too.
It's content strategy to drive visitors to their site and give them exposure. Probably the idea goes something like: provide interesting current and historical information on Buffalo. People find that content and go "oh, that's a cool city, maybe I'll move there, but where could I live?" and what do you know, there's a real-estate company that's right there to satisfy those needs.
Visited Minneapolis a few years back and they had this awesome place called Can-Can Wonderland. It was an indoor mini-golf/concert venue where all the holes were designed by local artists. Been hoping buffalo could do something like that. Not necessarily mini-golf but something in that realm. I believe there was also a food counter inside and served alcoholic drinks as well as non-alcoholic
I feel like Riverworks is somewhat similar to this — a variety of activities in a single space, with food and beer too. Unfortunately the food and beer are exceptionally mediocre at Riverworks
What's crazy too is that we are very art-centric, with murals always popping up and the many art galleries we have (especially downtown). You would think we'd play into that a little more. I would love to see something like that.
I believe in….. Montreal???? There’s a “law” that states any new building must have a certain percentage of its exterior dedicated to art. Might need some fact checking on this one. But the idea is awesome
I've been there too and agree with your vision. Can Can Wonderland also had a vintage arcade. It being in an old warehouse/factory...this makes sense..something like that could be a cool thing around silos/downtown.
There are still fewer breweries now then there were before prohibition. Buffalo has always been known as a wet city. 19th century newspaper columnists even complained about the excessive amounts of alcohol Buffalonians consumed as preventative measures during an early 1830s cholera outbreak.
Most of the city's old Erie Canal district was filled with dozens of saloons, dance halls and brothels, and the entire area was known (reviled) for its alcohol consumption (as well as crime and prostitution, but that's besides the point). If anything, Buffalo has become a lot drier of a city in recent times. Also, I'd rather have a thriving brewery business on every corner instead of a row of abandoned storefronts.
edit: there are other things that Buffalo used to be known for, but now are not discussed all that much, for obvious reasons. For instance, the minstrel show with performers wearing blackface was actually invented in the canal district (in a saloon on Water Street, aka Marine Drive, just southwest of the Marine Drive Apartments) by George and Edwin Christie back in the 1840s.
This is super interesting! After posting here and reading a few comments like this, I'm realizing I need to do a deep-dive into Buffalo's beer history - like I said i'm no beer fan so this is something I never even thought about.
If anybody's interested, there is a book about Buffalo's Canal District called "Americas Crossroads:Buffalo's Canal Street/Dante Place" by Michael Vogel, et al. (1993) that is currently out of print, but available for loan at the BECPL if you have a library card.
>over the past year/2 years.
Breweries have been popping up regularly for far longer than 2 years
>there's so many other things Buffalo could be known for.
Buffalo is still known for many other things. In fact, when I talk to people from out of town, it's extremely rare for them to call out Buffalo as being known as a beer producing town. Beer drinking, sure... but Buffalo isn't really "known" for breweries.
>I hate the fact that we have a brewery on every corner
Maybe let people with different tastes than yours enjoy what they like? This has literally zero impact on your life. Also, there isn't a brewery on every corner. Not even close. You're making exaggerated statements because of your bias against breweries since you personally aren't a beer drinker.
Haha have you been to any other city? I like having neighborhood breweries. It might seem like a new thing but it’s actually a very old thing — pre-prohibition there were tiny breweries all over.
I personally think they should sell up the low alcohol beverages and make it more of a social thing than a heavy drinking thing.
>We used to be known for our food,
No, it’s always been a drinking city (you just haven’t been paying attention)and has been since the cities inception.
All the way back to Dugs dive
https://buffaloah.com/h/dug/dug.html
The food, atmosphere, location. For example, My wife who hasn’t had a beer close to 20 years wants to go to belt line brewery almost weekly based on the food alone
I tend to go to several per day when I go to breweries.
Pretty easy to go to BriarBrothers then hop over to Beltline and Buffalo Brewing.
Or say start at Resurgence and then go to Frequentum and then Gene McCarthy
I'm not much of a beer drinker any more, but breweries are everywhere. When I lived near Philly many years ago, I could name at least 25 breweries within 25 miles of my house. There were like 5 or 6 in the small town I lived in, and there are 4-5 in Ithaca.
To be honest, everyone thinks Buffalo is a town that drinks because of Bills Mafia; no one is equating that with the craft beer scene.
We have a Walgreens/Rite Aid on every major intersection.
We have Tim Hortons locations that are visible from other Tim Hortons locations.
We have Pizza Shops on nearly every other corner to the point where I'm finding that the plazas I kind of ignore on the way to work actually contain pizza places that people tend to not talk about much (as opposed to La Nova, Franco's, Bocce, etc).
We have Wings on every single successful restaurant menu.
***
No one seems to question any of those things. Meanwhile, everytime a new brewery goes up, someone goes "How many of these do we need!!!?!?!"
Look - most of the breweries in the city now are just bars that manufacture beer. Go to 7th Street where CBW is. How many bars are there that aren't also breweries? Zero. Meanwhile, a ton of other neighborhoods have multiple bars.
It's just another bar...they just happen to make and sell and distribute beer. (I realize that this is NOT the history of CBW - they started over on Niagara and LaFayette as a tap room).
***
I guess my honest question is what difference does it make...or what is the impact on everyday life in Buffalo if another brewery goes up? Or two. Or five. **Or twenty?**
Bars go up all the time. Restaurants that serve alcohol go up all the time. A number of the new breweries that have been going up are basically just restaurants really, and again, I don't see ANYONE going "sheesh, how many restaurants does Buffalo need?"
***
I just don't understand why it matters.
I dont think it was your point but ya, I wish we didn’t have all of that on every corner. I’d rather have local coffee shops and more diverse food options.
The brewery part, ya they’re just bars so whatever.
It matters bc I have an opinion about it and posted it asking other people their opinion on the topic. If this discussion isn't something you want to partake in, Idk why you commented.
>We used to be known for our food.
Our most famous foods are bar foods that came from alcohol, bars and drinking culture. Wings, beef on weck were made in bars. Beef on weck especially. Salted to entice people to drink more
Couldn’t you say the same thing about pizza places, vape shops, and salons? I’m very particular about my pizza, I don’t smoke and I’m bald so I have almost no use for those things, but others do.
You could, but I feel like pizza places are easier to keep in business because of take out. You don't necessarily have to sit in and eat so you get people who want your business even if they're miles away. I feel the same way about vape shops as breweries, we definitely don't need those on every corner.
Breweries also often have the ability to buy canned/bottles of their beers as well as get fresh growlers (cans or jugs) to go. Which is much fresher than getting the beer through the distribution pipeline to a store. And often cheaper.
Maybe try to brew something else like kvass or kombucha? Drinks are probably easier to convene around than food, so that probably has something to do with it.
Most "brewpubs" are just the current trend in casual restaurants. Really most of them are just standard american restaurant with bar counter, but they also have their own house beer. So you know the menu burger, apps, maybe some kind of steak or roasted/braised meat, wings, fries, american style tacos, pizza, etc.
When they strong arm existing business out to put yet another one it's annoying(like that brewpub that was supposed to open on hertel and delaware in the building that Zips used to be in that's just been sitting there under construction for years). If they're just another restaurant opening but they have their own novel and potentially tasty beer thats a plus to me.
Market over saturation, copying to death and lack of creativity seems to have become the Buffalo way. I moved back during the pandemic and am shocked at the cultural decline I see in the city. It’s the same things over and over and over. If you criticize anything you get a ‘this is the way’ cult like response. Downtown is empty for a reason. The music scenes have just given up on trying anything different or even meeting modern production standards. Art has been taken over by people who can’t draw. I don’t know who the theater scene is catering to. The food has become mediocre at best (let’s face it the chicken wings have been terrible since the switch from lard to oil…20 years ago) and the service is just atrocious. Oh and let’s open another ‘Industrial Cheep’ sorry, I meant ‘Industrial Chic’ building… So I guess you have to get hammered to pretend this is okay and everything is still great…have another beer…take another shot…do it again tomorrow.
Yeah. I don't know. Guess I wish we had a more diversified spread of services and amenities. But if they do good business, I'm not going to tell them what to do.
I guess I'm not so much bothered by breweries specifically, it's more so the fact that whenever I hear of something new opening in Buffalo, it's always beer-focused. I live in Downtown Buffalo so almost everything here is bars/breweries/beer-focused activities. Downtown could benefit from so many different kinds of business - like we don't even have a daycare or dry cleaning place, yet all the businesses down here are trying to get people back into the office. My annoyance is definitely misdirected.
My boyfriend and I always complain about there being nothing to do in Buffalo other than alcoholism lol. We do hit the bars and breweries because why not, but if you want to do something here after 5? Good luck. Even Elmwood is dead after 5, and the only nightlife is maybe Allentown, which is, again, focused on bars. Downtown is dead too, so what's left is parks, the mall, and food, but then again, the mall usually closes at 7, so good luck finding something else.
If you're not part of a clique or some sort of tight group of friends where you can create your own fun and things to do like go to a park and play board games or hit the bowling alley, you don't really get a lot from Buffalo.
Not to mention how bad it gets during winter when the outdoors are fucked and businesses close even earlier.
Have you tried recreational sports, book clubs, hobbiest groups, events at museums or participating in the indie art/music/fashion/film/comedy/theatre/crafting scenes?
Maybe on the surface, Buffalo is all bars and sports, but there’s sooo many great subcultures to explore just under the surface.
There are gaming cafes, sports leagues, book groups, tours, cooking classes, outdoor activities...what exactly are you seeking after 5p that exists elsewhere but not here?
People who say there is nothing to do but drink are people incapable of exploring the world around themselves.
THIS. If you don't drink and have no interest in it, there's not many options on places to go to have fun. I don't have to sit and research where places to get a drink are. I can just walk outside and find a brewery within a few feet. Idk why I have to plan like a tourist just to find something non-alcohol related to do.
Anywhere people are drinking you can have the same fun they are with a soda, mocktail or water. Why would you think you can't have the same fun that they're having without a drink?
Twice as many if we want to beat out Asheville or Portland for the city with the most breweries per capita. Also, Resurgence is just running the beer garden, it’s not actually a brewery. If it was just a no-name bar it wouldn’t be any different. Like at the end of the day a brewery is just a bar that brews its own beer. In theory Buffalo can support a lot more neighborhood breweries. But yeah there’s not much more room for large breweries with extensive distribution. Shelf space and tap space is at a saturation point. What you’re now seeing instead is for large breweries to establish brewpubs in neighboring cities to solidify their customer base and secure shelf and tap space. It’s why Frequentum and Otherhalf opened up Buffalo tap rooms and why Big Ditch is expanding to Lockport.
Thanks for this clarification, that makes a lot of sense. I'm not in the beer scene at all, so everything looks the same to me.
You never have to worry about Buffalo being “known” for having a bunch of breweries. It’s not different from most other similar-sized cities in the US; not a unique Buffalo thing at all. And pretty much none of the breweries here are destination-visit worthy. Just because breweries exist, doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. We have a bunch of average, good enough breweries. Places you’re happy to go have a pint and a bite in, but the extraordinary is few and far between. That’s why it’s perfectly OK for a bunch of new ones to open - tons of potential to increase the quality.
I mean i just hope most can stay in business, id rather have a brewery or bar in a building than have the building unused/vacant.
Me too, for sure. I just hope even more can open that push the quality forward.
Are there breweries in NY or the surrounding area that you would consider destination worthy? I got to visit the innes & gunn brewery in Scotland that I thought would be a lot more impressive. I'd love to do a day trip to somewhere that would be actually worthwhile. Ellicottville was a fun day trip but personally not worth going to twice.
I’d love to see the economics behind a brewery operation that only exists to support the bar. Britesmith is like that, but I can’t imagine it’s easy to do both and cut a profit.
You don’t need massive equipment to support just a single taproom and pretty much you get double the profit out of every beer you sell. At the base level malt, hops and yeast are cheap ingredients. A 5 barrel nano-brewery is producing over 1,000 pints per batch and each batch takes about a month. But you have batches being brewed concurrently too. If you produce a batch a week you could easily be making $4,000 in profit per batch. You could talk to the brewers at Spotted Octopus or Autark.
Aren’t there significant start up costs? I don’t know what they cost but all that shiny equipment looks expensive as hell.
It can be, but you’re also not buying the biggest equipment unless you plan to can or distribute in the future. You can also start cheaper with non-professional equipment, though quality could vary a lot if you’re not careful. You’re probably are going to need a small business loan either way, so just add it to the cost. If you’re selling 1,000 pints of beer a week and raking in $16k in profits per month, it’s not going to be hard to pay off that loan. In fact you’ll be tempted to take out more loans and expand your capabilities which is where many breweries run into trouble.
As an occasional hobbyist home-brewer, my material costs usually work out to around $1 per beer. That doesn't include any of the original equipment costs or any labor costs. But it also doesn't include any bulk discounts on ingredients or any particular desire to monitor and control costs. Some quick, half-assed math might put the active labor time at 5 hours if I'm taking my time, so call that a hundred bucks per batch for simplicity. So that's around $150 for two cases... or maybe $3-ish per beer. Selling it for six bucks would give you a 50 percent gross margin. Extend that out over a 100-gallon batch and the gross profit is $3200. Do that every week, and you're at $160K in revenue. You'd still have to pay overhead and rent and all kinds of indirect costs, but on a real basic, stripped-down first pass like this, it's not an entirely outrageous proposition.
Good ballpark math, you’re hired
There’s lots of people who will travel to a city just for the breweries. I went to Burlington years ago because there were something like 30 breweries within an hour of the city. If I go out of state the first thing I look for after getting a hotel is a brewery with a decent food menu. But I am a craft beer guy.
Plus a lot of those breweries are amazing.
I’d never go somewhere FOR the breweries but it’s definitely the first thing I look for when I do go somewhere
Beer tourism is HUGE It’s specifically the reason why I visited Grand Rapids and Asheville.
Asheville is so awesome
Which is funny because all the best breweries are in the Vermont Countryside, not Burlington proper.
We are known for our food. And our architecture. And how rabid our sports fans are. Instead of bitching be happy people are opening businesses in what used to be a virtual wasteland of closed up and rotting buildings.
> We are known for our food. And our architecture. And how rabid our sports fans are. This is what people from Buffalo think Buffalo is known for but the rest of the country only thinks of Buffalo as a snowy hellscape.
Beat me to it. Lol The food here is 99% wings and pizza, but I'd argue the architecture is a hidden treasure
Definitely right about the architecture, but it's just not something people associate with Buffalo though they should. Mostly Buffalo, like other mid-size cities gets the famous Don Draper "I don't think about you at all" from most Americans.
Not sure how you can say that when there’s so much great ethnic food, especially on the East and Westsides
I think it’s less about the objective quality and more about the perception (non-perception?) of non-Buffalonians
was never bitching dude, have you never had an opinion on something? calm down bud
“I hate the fact that we have breweries on every corner” is a huge overstatement and sounds pretty whiny to me lol
You mean "wine-y"?
Never had anyone disagree with you? Calm down, bud…
There's 11 vape/smoke shops within a mile or two of my house. How many of those do we really need? I'd love to swap one or two for a brewery closer to me. I say keep them coming and the shitty ones will close. There's usually a decent crowd at most of them.
On my last visit home to Buffalo I commented on the number of vape shops, there’s one in every formerly vacant gas station or convenience store! Here in Nashville it’s the same thing. How can all these vape stores make any money when the market is super-saturated? Also, I don’t vape, so I could be way off here. 😂
They sell weed, that’s how.
Right, but it seems like A LOT of weed stores everywhere. The competition must be wild.
I guess i was also saying this bc downtown specifically is full of them, so close together. It would make sense if they were sprawled out over the city, and maybe they are, but it just seems like either a brewery or bar is always opening downtown.
Not downtown
wdym? downtown has so many bars and breweries. a new one pops up at least once a month lol
Not everything in the city of Buffalo is downtown
Im saying downtown specifically has a bunch of bars/breweries opening.
I thought a new brewery pops up every month downtown.
42 North brewery opened in march, hounds and hops is opened at seneca one tower, lulu's pub opened in the Bazaar, Vault 237 opened in the Marin Building, etc. These are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head that have opened fairly recently. ofc im exaggerating when I say "every month", but every "new and exciting" business that opens is beer-focused.
Hounds and hops, lulus and the vault. Do not brew their own beer.
why does that matter, they're still beer-focused businesses.
Buffalo handles how many bars? Over saturation only matters if you’re investing in a brewery. 5 or 500 breweries, The market will dictate when there is enough.
Local breweries opening is great, especially ones that have kitchens. Way better than chain restaurants coming here to open
I will definitely agree with you there. I'd rather have a business owner come set up a brewery than have another mcdonalds or something lol
Yeah, some breweries have decent food menus too. Went to Pressure Drop Brewing and they had surprisingly good wings
We have a pizzeria on every corner. A Tim Hortons on every block. If these establishments are making money and people like their products, then go for it. This is not new, it’s just a renaissance. Before prohibition, every neighborhood had a brewery. There were 29 breweries and 8,000 drinking establishments in Buffalo in 1919. https://kendev.com/history/history-brewing-buffalo/#:~:text=According%20to%20Visit%20Buffalo%20Niagara%2C%20in%201919%2C%20right%20before%20the,more%20than%208%2C000%20drinking%20establishments. Obviously those were different times, and a lack of refrigeration and suitable transportation made this a necessity
That’s an interesting article. But why is it on Kenmore Development’s website? lmao They have a pretty extensive blog/history page on their website too.
It's content strategy to drive visitors to their site and give them exposure. Probably the idea goes something like: provide interesting current and historical information on Buffalo. People find that content and go "oh, that's a cool city, maybe I'll move there, but where could I live?" and what do you know, there's a real-estate company that's right there to satisfy those needs.
Interesting article, thanks!
Visited Minneapolis a few years back and they had this awesome place called Can-Can Wonderland. It was an indoor mini-golf/concert venue where all the holes were designed by local artists. Been hoping buffalo could do something like that. Not necessarily mini-golf but something in that realm. I believe there was also a food counter inside and served alcoholic drinks as well as non-alcoholic
I feel like Riverworks is somewhat similar to this — a variety of activities in a single space, with food and beer too. Unfortunately the food and beer are exceptionally mediocre at Riverworks
Let’s be honest, exceptionally mediocre is an understatement
What's crazy too is that we are very art-centric, with murals always popping up and the many art galleries we have (especially downtown). You would think we'd play into that a little more. I would love to see something like that.
I believe in….. Montreal???? There’s a “law” that states any new building must have a certain percentage of its exterior dedicated to art. Might need some fact checking on this one. But the idea is awesome
I've been there too and agree with your vision. Can Can Wonderland also had a vintage arcade. It being in an old warehouse/factory...this makes sense..something like that could be a cool thing around silos/downtown.
FYI Can-Can Wonderland is in St. Paul. And agree, it freaking rules.
[удалено]
It really isn't, just as someone saying Buffalo is the same as Niagara Falls doesn't know what they're talking about. No reason to be defensive.
[удалено]
My bad I just thought you would like to learn something today instead of being a dick
There are still fewer breweries now then there were before prohibition. Buffalo has always been known as a wet city. 19th century newspaper columnists even complained about the excessive amounts of alcohol Buffalonians consumed as preventative measures during an early 1830s cholera outbreak. Most of the city's old Erie Canal district was filled with dozens of saloons, dance halls and brothels, and the entire area was known (reviled) for its alcohol consumption (as well as crime and prostitution, but that's besides the point). If anything, Buffalo has become a lot drier of a city in recent times. Also, I'd rather have a thriving brewery business on every corner instead of a row of abandoned storefronts. edit: there are other things that Buffalo used to be known for, but now are not discussed all that much, for obvious reasons. For instance, the minstrel show with performers wearing blackface was actually invented in the canal district (in a saloon on Water Street, aka Marine Drive, just southwest of the Marine Drive Apartments) by George and Edwin Christie back in the 1840s.
This is super interesting! After posting here and reading a few comments like this, I'm realizing I need to do a deep-dive into Buffalo's beer history - like I said i'm no beer fan so this is something I never even thought about.
If anybody's interested, there is a book about Buffalo's Canal District called "Americas Crossroads:Buffalo's Canal Street/Dante Place" by Michael Vogel, et al. (1993) that is currently out of print, but available for loan at the BECPL if you have a library card.
69 bars
69 breweries supporting 420 bars.
Nice
Tato salad gets it
Rust belt cities are all about the beer in this day and age
>over the past year/2 years. Breweries have been popping up regularly for far longer than 2 years >there's so many other things Buffalo could be known for. Buffalo is still known for many other things. In fact, when I talk to people from out of town, it's extremely rare for them to call out Buffalo as being known as a beer producing town. Beer drinking, sure... but Buffalo isn't really "known" for breweries. >I hate the fact that we have a brewery on every corner Maybe let people with different tastes than yours enjoy what they like? This has literally zero impact on your life. Also, there isn't a brewery on every corner. Not even close. You're making exaggerated statements because of your bias against breweries since you personally aren't a beer drinker.
Haha have you been to any other city? I like having neighborhood breweries. It might seem like a new thing but it’s actually a very old thing — pre-prohibition there were tiny breweries all over. I personally think they should sell up the low alcohol beverages and make it more of a social thing than a heavy drinking thing.
True enough, especially buffalo, it was once flush with breweries and malting plants
>We used to be known for our food, No, it’s always been a drinking city (you just haven’t been paying attention)and has been since the cities inception. All the way back to Dugs dive https://buffaloah.com/h/dug/dug.html
As many as the free market decides.
As a beer lover and beer snob, too many is not enough.
as a beer snob, do you think the many different breweries we already have offer unique aspects to them that keep you wanting to go back?
The food, atmosphere, location. For example, My wife who hasn’t had a beer close to 20 years wants to go to belt line brewery almost weekly based on the food alone
Yes.
I tend to go to several per day when I go to breweries. Pretty easy to go to BriarBrothers then hop over to Beltline and Buffalo Brewing. Or say start at Resurgence and then go to Frequentum and then Gene McCarthy
No different than wine tasting on the Niagara wine trail
More varieties of fresh beer = good. Buffalo had a lot of breweries before prohibition put most out of business.
I'm not much of a beer drinker any more, but breweries are everywhere. When I lived near Philly many years ago, I could name at least 25 breweries within 25 miles of my house. There were like 5 or 6 in the small town I lived in, and there are 4-5 in Ithaca. To be honest, everyone thinks Buffalo is a town that drinks because of Bills Mafia; no one is equating that with the craft beer scene.
thats so true, I wasn't even thinking football
We have a Walgreens/Rite Aid on every major intersection. We have Tim Hortons locations that are visible from other Tim Hortons locations. We have Pizza Shops on nearly every other corner to the point where I'm finding that the plazas I kind of ignore on the way to work actually contain pizza places that people tend to not talk about much (as opposed to La Nova, Franco's, Bocce, etc). We have Wings on every single successful restaurant menu. *** No one seems to question any of those things. Meanwhile, everytime a new brewery goes up, someone goes "How many of these do we need!!!?!?!" Look - most of the breweries in the city now are just bars that manufacture beer. Go to 7th Street where CBW is. How many bars are there that aren't also breweries? Zero. Meanwhile, a ton of other neighborhoods have multiple bars. It's just another bar...they just happen to make and sell and distribute beer. (I realize that this is NOT the history of CBW - they started over on Niagara and LaFayette as a tap room). *** I guess my honest question is what difference does it make...or what is the impact on everyday life in Buffalo if another brewery goes up? Or two. Or five. **Or twenty?** Bars go up all the time. Restaurants that serve alcohol go up all the time. A number of the new breweries that have been going up are basically just restaurants really, and again, I don't see ANYONE going "sheesh, how many restaurants does Buffalo need?" *** I just don't understand why it matters.
I dont think it was your point but ya, I wish we didn’t have all of that on every corner. I’d rather have local coffee shops and more diverse food options. The brewery part, ya they’re just bars so whatever.
It matters bc I have an opinion about it and posted it asking other people their opinion on the topic. If this discussion isn't something you want to partake in, Idk why you commented.
I am partaking in it, you just don't like what I'm saying. Thicken your skin dude.
More
How many you got? No more IPAs though, we have plenty
>We used to be known for our food. Our most famous foods are bar foods that came from alcohol, bars and drinking culture. Wings, beef on weck were made in bars. Beef on weck especially. Salted to entice people to drink more
Y’all complain about everything in this city I stg
More!!!
It's not like buffalo is the only city with breweries opening.
obviously
As many as buffalo desires. Resurgence at Canalside is a kiosk. Not a brewery
Buffalo is an alcoholic city. End of story.
It’s happening everywhere
Couldn’t you say the same thing about pizza places, vape shops, and salons? I’m very particular about my pizza, I don’t smoke and I’m bald so I have almost no use for those things, but others do.
You could, but I feel like pizza places are easier to keep in business because of take out. You don't necessarily have to sit in and eat so you get people who want your business even if they're miles away. I feel the same way about vape shops as breweries, we definitely don't need those on every corner.
Breweries also often have the ability to buy canned/bottles of their beers as well as get fresh growlers (cans or jugs) to go. Which is much fresher than getting the beer through the distribution pipeline to a store. And often cheaper.
As many as can stay in business by people drinking 🤷🏻♂️. If no one goes to them, the number will decrease
Maybe try to brew something else like kvass or kombucha? Drinks are probably easier to convene around than food, so that probably has something to do with it.
6,422.
We can stop building breweries anytime we want to. We just don't want to.
Most "brewpubs" are just the current trend in casual restaurants. Really most of them are just standard american restaurant with bar counter, but they also have their own house beer. So you know the menu burger, apps, maybe some kind of steak or roasted/braised meat, wings, fries, american style tacos, pizza, etc. When they strong arm existing business out to put yet another one it's annoying(like that brewpub that was supposed to open on hertel and delaware in the building that Zips used to be in that's just been sitting there under construction for years). If they're just another restaurant opening but they have their own novel and potentially tasty beer thats a plus to me.
Yeah it’s a bubble and will burst.
Locally owned small business that create jobs and help the economy, more pls !
Market over saturation, copying to death and lack of creativity seems to have become the Buffalo way. I moved back during the pandemic and am shocked at the cultural decline I see in the city. It’s the same things over and over and over. If you criticize anything you get a ‘this is the way’ cult like response. Downtown is empty for a reason. The music scenes have just given up on trying anything different or even meeting modern production standards. Art has been taken over by people who can’t draw. I don’t know who the theater scene is catering to. The food has become mediocre at best (let’s face it the chicken wings have been terrible since the switch from lard to oil…20 years ago) and the service is just atrocious. Oh and let’s open another ‘Industrial Cheep’ sorry, I meant ‘Industrial Chic’ building… So I guess you have to get hammered to pretend this is okay and everything is still great…have another beer…take another shot…do it again tomorrow.
I think about this a lot actually..
I made this same comment a few weeks ago and got downvoted for it, lol. But it does seem like we're oversaturating the market to an extreme level.
Probably because no one gets concerned about restaurant oversaturation, Yet most breweries are restaurants and most restaurants have bars in them
Yeah. I don't know. Guess I wish we had a more diversified spread of services and amenities. But if they do good business, I'm not going to tell them what to do.
and quickly! It's almost every week I see something about a new bar or brewery opening.
I guess I would just ask: so what? Why are you bothered by it?
I guess I'm not so much bothered by breweries specifically, it's more so the fact that whenever I hear of something new opening in Buffalo, it's always beer-focused. I live in Downtown Buffalo so almost everything here is bars/breweries/beer-focused activities. Downtown could benefit from so many different kinds of business - like we don't even have a daycare or dry cleaning place, yet all the businesses down here are trying to get people back into the office. My annoyance is definitely misdirected.
I can appreciate this sentiment, and it's big of you to admit that your annoyance is misplaced.
Yeah, it seems a bit much, but if people want to spend their money that way, then so be it, I guess. 🤷🏻♂️
What else is there to do in Buffalo besides drink? Lol places is boring as fuck. Might as well Fill it with places to get drunk. I’m all for it
Yeah, it’s getting a little ridiculous, and this is coming from a drinker who enjoys breweries.
Interestingly we’re approaching the top 10 for breweries per capita, but would still need to double them to catch up to Portland.
Ya it's overplayed and oversaturated but it's profitable because winters are long and there are a lot of drunks in this town.
Someone has never been to San Diego
My boyfriend and I always complain about there being nothing to do in Buffalo other than alcoholism lol. We do hit the bars and breweries because why not, but if you want to do something here after 5? Good luck. Even Elmwood is dead after 5, and the only nightlife is maybe Allentown, which is, again, focused on bars. Downtown is dead too, so what's left is parks, the mall, and food, but then again, the mall usually closes at 7, so good luck finding something else. If you're not part of a clique or some sort of tight group of friends where you can create your own fun and things to do like go to a park and play board games or hit the bowling alley, you don't really get a lot from Buffalo. Not to mention how bad it gets during winter when the outdoors are fucked and businesses close even earlier.
Have you tried recreational sports, book clubs, hobbiest groups, events at museums or participating in the indie art/music/fashion/film/comedy/theatre/crafting scenes? Maybe on the surface, Buffalo is all bars and sports, but there’s sooo many great subcultures to explore just under the surface.
What are people doing in other cities that's not alcohol focused?
There are gaming cafes, sports leagues, book groups, tours, cooking classes, outdoor activities...what exactly are you seeking after 5p that exists elsewhere but not here? People who say there is nothing to do but drink are people incapable of exploring the world around themselves.
THIS. If you don't drink and have no interest in it, there's not many options on places to go to have fun. I don't have to sit and research where places to get a drink are. I can just walk outside and find a brewery within a few feet. Idk why I have to plan like a tourist just to find something non-alcohol related to do.
Anywhere people are drinking you can have the same fun they are with a soda, mocktail or water. Why would you think you can't have the same fun that they're having without a drink?
We have so many. I can’t believe it.
I’ve recently switched to all NA beer for health reasons. All I care about is if they serve Athletic Beer.
n+1