I heard the Craft brewers are making a fortune in Taiwan it seems to me they are seriously overcharging for the product.
I can see why you don’t want to make a statement but they just seems to be charging too much and does put me off from drinking in some places.
BUT my …major problem is with supermarkets charging 150ntd for small bottle of local craft. That’s too much.
A bar you can have fun and nice place you don’t mind paying a bit more for your beer.
Honestly I don’t think brewers are paying too much attention to how to reduce electrical consumption cost in the brewery (rates for industrial electricity is rather cheap, incentives isn’t great to take the extra effort to go green).
NT26/liter is really a burden on the alcohol industry as a whole. The only difference is that customers don’t mind paying big $$ for fine wine/whiskey, but BEER? Get outta here…
Taiwanese breweries don’t export. Only one I know that do so is Taihu slowly tapping into the Chinese market.
Heard about that! Definitely a lost of words moment when saw the news.
It’s stupid to deny that beer, as many other things, is expensive in Taiwan. Despite that, it’s always good to treat oneself with nice things every once in a while… but it’s not something I can do on a regular basis.
That’s maybe because the production cost per liter is much higher in the case of spirits. Also the high is higher…
Agreed. You can see a trend from good quality restaurants in the states are doing beer pairing, designing food around a specific beer type/brand or vice-versa.
There are definitely good local brewers that care deeply about the quality of the product, but it’s always the bad ones that spread the false information like a disease.
The ones that care are in it for the art of the craft, they care about the product and only than about the money, the others are in just for the money!
@ razor_k , your input is excellent indeed, though I think you innocently (no worries) forgot that Taiwan Beer exports quite a bit to the U.S. Can find it, usually Gold Medal or the traditional Taiwan Beer lager, in most speciality bottle shops on the West Coast and even in New York, etc.
I caught this too, but maybe it’s not Taiwan Beer directly exporting it? Maybe a different distributor?
I think he was referring specifically to craft brewers.
I’m surprised they don’t export given the tax incentives. There are quite a few Japanese brands appearing in the supermarkets lately - I wonder if they have similar reasons for targeting the export market?
Taiwan Beer, from the huge TTL government sponsored brewery and other food they produce, but not craft beers brewed in Taiwan.
When you see a bottle of beer going for 250NT and you realize you just paid 10$ Canadian for it you feel like you’ve just lost money at the casino…feel even worse after realizing you’re grabbing the bill for the night and everyone’s had about 5 each
That said there’s probably a bunch of you expats on here I’d be weary to grab a drink with…know what I mean?
That’s a no on the name then? Feel free to PM your details if it’s more comfortable, I owe @ranlee two beers…
I know a European guy who settled his brewery here and makes what I would call craft beer, selling it in several countries in Asia. He’s won also several international awards too.
You won’t get to 5 … 3 maybe 4, than you’ll possibly lift off, you know what I mean. 
Actually the price you pay for our beers compared to others is cheap if you calculate the alcohol you consume and the taste you enjoy, not the volume.
A colleague in the UK has a microbrewery right near his house, where they apparently sell their own product at the bar for 2.50 a pint (NT100), which is slightly less than you’d pay for an Anheuser-Busch product. If they can do it, I’m sure it can be done here. Eventually.
Sure why not, if you don’t have a lot of overhead and you’re satisfied with a small ROI, or you produce enormous volumes.
Well, they’re obviously doing OK or they wouldn’t bother. As far as I can tell they’re not doing enormous volumes because they are literally selling off the premises (something to do with UK law on selling alcoholic drinks, I guess).
The economics of brewing aren’t complicated, which means there’s a lot of room for efficiency gains. Brewing as if you’re a homebrewer is guaranteed to result in enormous cost overheads, and therefore a price for the consumer that most people can’t or won’t pay. For any product there’s often a ‘sweet spot’ price, shifting moderate volumes at a good markup. Apple (different industry, of course) are notably talented at finding that spot.
Some people are satisfied with the money they make and don’t bother expanding.
True enough. My point was that, unless you streamline your business processes, you can’t expand anyway: you’d fall flat on your face under the weight of bills, complexity, and stuff going wrong. You’d also have no market, because your prices would be too high to appeal to 90% of your potential customer base. I’m not saying craft beers need to be sold for Taiwan Beer prices. But they do need to be at least in the same ballpark as the rest of the world. I’m pretty sure anyone selling a good (not necessarily five-star) beer at a modest markup would capture a lot of local-market curiosity.
I don’t understand why a customer (somebody who just wants to drink a beer or two) has to pay not only for the service but the business expansion of the place where he’s drinking. I mean, the order should be contrary, right? your product is good and you sell a lot and then you make enough money and know the business so you can expand. And not “I want to expand at some point, so I’m going to factor that in in the price”.