Jean Hummler, co-owner of the Moeder Lambic bars in Brussels and co-organiser of BXLBeerFest, 28-29 Sept. tells us why the 2024 is the last edition of the festival in this format. He plans to severely downsize it to a few local breweries next year. Along the way we talked about the state of beer festivals and breweries and bars in Belgium.
Some choice quotes: ‘ We lost it. The industry won the war. They are more powerful than ever….Winning the game was not the goal. Playing the game is already an achievement…..We have to come back and think about the business model. Before Covid you could open a brewery, pee in a can and it was sold out….It’s over. Now we can get back to brewing more serious stuff.’
He explains that the effort has become too much to organise the festival. Attendance has grown from 2,500 over 9 years when it first started to 6,500 pre-COVID. They were hoping to find a financial sustainability at 10,000 tickets. In 2023, about 4,500 people attended over the two days. For 2024, he is hoping for about 3,000.
‘Now it’s time to change the format of the festival to a smaller, more relaxed festival,’ he says.
