Beverage manufacturing

The buyer pool is small, shrinking at the brewery end, and has already been sold to three consolidators — so an entrant would be fighting owners with payment and distribution networks for a few thousand customers. TTB's own count of brewery permits that filed an operational report fell from 8,199 (2022) to 7,888 (2024) and 7,228 (2025, before late filings); in 2025, 4,781 of them made 1,000 barrels or less and 1,040 made nothing at all [A]. Distilled-spirits permits are still rising (4,036 at the start of 2022, 5,069 at the end of 2024) [A], but they are the smallest pool. In Canada the whole beverage-manufacturing group is 1,862 establishments, 859 of them with fewer than ten employees (per the 3121 operating record) [A]. The vendors have consolidated around those buyers. Brewery and distillery production belongs to Ekos — bought by Next Glass (Untappd, Untappd for Business, Ollie; backed by PSG) in October 2025, with 1,200+ active producers and a two-year price freeze for existing customers [B]. Winery direct-to-consumer (ecommerce, POS, wine clubs, reservations) belongs to Commerce7, a British Columbia corporation owned by Fullsteam, which bought WineDirect's SaaS division in January 2025, VineSpring in 2022 and WinePulse in 2025, and says 3,500+ wineries use it [B/C]. Winery production is split between InnoVint and vintrace — and vintrace now sits inside Encompass Technologies, which VIP (the beverage-distributor software house Warburg Pincus agreed to buy for about $1B in February 2025) acquired on 14 September 2026 [B]; OrchestratedBEER's old domains now redirect to Encompass too [C]. The compliance work is real but it is a feature, not a moat an entrant can own: US producers file the Brewer's Report of Operations (TTB F 5130.9, or quarterly 5130.26), the Report of Wine Premises Operations (5120.17), the distilled-spirits monthly production, storage and processing reports (5110.40, 5110.11, 5110.28) and the excise return (5000.24) [A]; in Canada the CRA levies beer duty per hectolitre under the Excise Act and spirits and wine duty under the Excise Act, 2001, with the reduced rates on a domestic brewer's first 15,000 hL cut in half and the annual CPI adjustment capped at 2% for two more years by Bill C-30 (royal assent 18 June 2026) [A]. Every incumbent already generates these. How this differs from its neighbours: 3121 Craft Beverage Production is the operating business (taps, shelf listings, excise as a cost); this record is the software that business buys. 722511 Restaurant Operations Software is Toast's market — it meets this one only at the taproom POS, where Arryved sells against Toast and Square. 3241 Process Manufacturing is refinery-scale simulation; the national brewers in Canada run enterprise ERP and are not buyers of anything here. Market size decides it: a few thousand mostly sub-1,000-barrel producers, already captured by owners who earn on payments (Fullsteam, Next Glass PaySmart) and distribution data (VIP).