Whenever possible, I like to get straight to the source, trying great craft beer in the same building it was produced. But sometimes it’s late at night, or sometimes I just need to shoot pool, or sometimes I have the inexplicable urge to sing in front of a room full of strangers, and so I visit my local bar.

The one down the road from me has no kitchen, Minnesota sports memorabilia plastered across its walls, crushed velvet bar seats (#classy), and karaoke plenty of nights per week. It also has a very solid local craft tap list.

Last time I stopped in, it got me wondering: what’s happening in American bars these days, and what does that mean for the craft brands showing up on their taps?

Draft + Craft

For many craft brewers, if they’re distributing into on-premise drinking places, they’re making inroads on the tap list. So, let’s begin with a look at draft. Pop quiz: how much of total beer volume at drinking places is sold on draft vs. packaged?

If you’re anything like me, you default to thinking of brewery taprooms and you’d overestimate draft share. In fact, according to Nielsen’s CGA dataset, draft made up just 49% of overall beer volume sales in 2025.

This is actually somewhat higher share than during (and prior to) the COVID pandemic, when draft share hovered from 46-47% from 2017-2022. Craft has had a somewhat similar trajectory with recent years outperforming the late 2010s.

The notable difference, though, is that craft continues to significantly over-index on draft compared to beer overall. Whereas beer overall has sold less than 50% draft by volume each year since 2017, craft has hovered around 80% draft at bars over the past decade.

At the same time, craft’s share of on-premise beer sales (both draft and packaged) tells a slightly more complicated story. It held relatively steady pre-pandemic (23-24% of volume between 2016-20), dropped meaningfully in the years immediately after (21% between 2021-22), surged back in 2023 (26%), and has since stepped downward to closer to where it was in 2019.

One way to read that: craft drinkers didn’t rush back to bars post-pandemic, but when they eventually returned in 2023, they came back in force. And it’s worth remembering that craft’s share of beer overall at on-premise drinking places has been consistently 10+ percentage points higher than across all channels (13.3% in 2025).

What’s Moving in Bars?

Of course, there is some variability in what’s successful at drinking establishments. Pale lager is still the dominant style on-premise drinking places, accounting for about 63% of volume. But that’s down from the 68% just a few years ago (2021 and 2022). It’s also notably lower than the 82% of off-premise sales volume that’s accounted for by pale lager.

Most other major styles have declined versus pre-pandemic benchmarks, including many of the usual craft suspects. There are a few exceptions that have found growth (namely, stout and blonde/golden ale), but it’s not a long list.

Here’s that same chart with Low/Non Alcoholic Beer overlaid. Volume was up roughly 5x from pre-COVID levels, more than 2.5 times the growth of the next best performing style group.

Changes to “Drinking Place” Composition

Looking at drinking places broadly, the total number of these establishments seems to be stabilizing after more than a decade and a half of steady decline.

Not all drinking places are evolving the same way, however. CGA data from Q1 2026 shows the number of neighborhood bars (+0.4%) and sports bars (+5.1%) growing modestly year-over-year, while casual nightclubs (-3.4%) and premium bars (-26.9%) are declining.

This evolution matters because the environments that are growing aren’t the ones that have necessarily leaned into craft. Of course this varies establishment to establishment, but this trend puts more impetus on brewers to tell a compelling story for how their products can achieve meaningful velocity in neighborhood and sports bars.

Additionally, employees per establishment at drinking places have been rising for years. There are a few possible explanations: consolidation into larger concepts, more labor-intensive offerings (cocktails, food), or just the economics of running a bar in 2026 with more employee-friendly labor laws.

Whatever the cause, the direction seems clear: fewer, more heavily-staffed drinking establishments. The surviving drinking places are often higher-volume, less-specialized accounts, while the more curated, premium environments are under pressure. This of course has implications for what gets poured and how often it rotates.

The Big Picture: A Stable (Not Expanding) Channel

Zooming out, the number of drinking establishments in the U.S. appears to be stabilizing after a long, steady decline. That’s the good news.

The less good news is that a steady state does not necessarily afford easy access to craft brewers seeking new points of distribution. The space for both draft and packaged beer in the on-premise is not currently an expanding pie. For breweries (and their wholesale partners), that means the game isn’t about riding channel growth. It’s about competing within that relatively fixed pool.

None of this is catastrophic, but it is hopefully helpful in setting expectations. Bars still matter, especially for draft and especially for craft. But, winning in on-premise is less about getting into more places, and more about performing once you’re there.

If this information is helpful and you’d like me to take a similar look at restaurants in a future post, let me know. There’s a different set of dynamics at play there that may be just as interesting for craft brewers.