In the state and across the country, stakeholders have said that craft brewers are facing an increasingly hard business climate.
The Ohio Craft Brewers Association has been trying to kickstart Senate Bill 23 during the legislature’s recess.
Reintroduced last January by Sen. Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware), SB 23 rewrites a five-decade old law regulating the franchise agreements between beer and wine manufacturers and their distributors by excluding many smaller breweries from the requirements for those often strict agreements.
Mary MacDonald, the executive director of the Ohio Craft Brewers Association, said automatic agreement renewals leave brewers without much leverage over their wholesalers. Sometimes, MacDonald said, brewers have to sue to get out from those agreements.
“All was well until the early 2000s, when we had a big boom in craft breweries,” MacDonald said in an interview. “Now, you have hundreds of small Ohio breweries against mammoth distributors.”
Three Ohio-based brewers, Royal Docks Brewing, Working Class Brewing and Listermann Brewing, all of which have closed in recent months, have testified as proponents.
But the Wholesale Beer and Wine Association of Ohio (WBWAO) has argued that SB 23 removes accountability for brewers.
“What is being requested is not fairness, it is the ability to walk away from a contract without consequence,” WBWAO Counsel for Legislative Affairs Jacob Evans said in March testimony.
SB 23 has not moved beyond its committee, but stakeholders are discussing amendments going into lame duck, including further lowering what breweries qualify as small-scale.
“Because (the brewers) would rather get something than nothing, and I think we’ve got a good chance of getting something done in lame duck,” Brenner said in an interview Friday.
Two versions of SB 23 died in 2024.
A recent law banning THC-infused beverages has eaten further into bottom lines.
In December, the final version of Senate Bill 56 banned most so-called intoxicating hemp, but gave drinkable THC and CBD more leeway, mirroring the timeline of recent federal actions against hemp. Gov. Mike DeWine used a line item veto to strike the measure that carved out beverages, saying it would cause more confusion.
