Craft beer thrives on on-premise draft, both at the brewery tasting room and in restaurants and bars. The smaller you are, the more extreme this is.

To-go from the brewery is nice, but will never replace on-premise at the brewery. Bottles and can to wholesalers are actually up, but not enough replacing how much draft is down, and the margins are much tighter.

On top of the lost sales during the COVID-19 response, beer is a perishable product. The beer in kegs at the brewery, at the wholesaler, and at the bar are slowly going bad. One estimate is that it'll be $1 billion in wealth destroyed from craft beer going out of date.

Times are pretty tough. The best I've heard is that sales are about 25% of normal. The worst so far, 8%.

And these are businesses that can't sale a keg to a willing customer at the brewery, can't sell their product to bars and restaurants that want to buy, can't deliver their product to an adult's home, and effectively can't control their distribution channels. By law.

The COVID-19 response is very rough on craft breweries, but the state put up barriers to success long before. If and when this situation ends, if Alabama policymakers really want to see small business breweries succeed, it's time to talk about removing these barriers to success

/rant

By the way, I'm not even necessarily against the measures being taken. But if we MUST be restricted to protect public health and safety, can we AT LEAST get rid of the restrictions that don't have a public health and safety justification?