Microbrewery in Greece: Reasons for its Development

Abstract

The paper looks into the reasons for the impressive development of microbrewery in Greece the decade of 2010’s. It was constructed through using a questionnaire to microbreweries in Greece based on six hypotheses related to the existing literature on microbreweries and to the particularities of Greece. A distinction between microbreweries on the Greek islands and continental Greece was maintained in order to obtain more precise results. In the first set of hypotheses our findings are quite close to that found in the literature. This set is comprised of three main hypotheses, which are: firstly, that social media and the internet have an important role; secondly, that microbrewers adopt an argument different to the big brewery industry; thirdly, that localism has an important place in the policy. The second set of hypotheses has not been discussed in the previous literature; these hypotheses examine the role of the unemployment and the public financial help on the creation of this craft industry and the tourism effect on the development of microbreweries. Contrary to what was expected, unemployment and the search for work were not reasons to create microbreweries; microbreweries received financial help but it was not the main reason to invest; tourism had a crucial role in the development of microbreweries, particularly in those on the islands and on continental Greece near to the coast.