Brewers’ Square Footage in H-Town: Beer Warehouses Boom: 256 Percent Increase

Favorite Brands, a distributor of craft beer, wines and spirits, leased space in northwest Houston.

In Houston, Demand for industrial space from brewers is spiking across Houston. A few short years ago, Houston was home to 18 craft breweries occupying 225,272 sq ft of manufacturing and warehouse space. Today, 64 breweries using 570,933 sq ft are serving it up in the Bayou City, a 256% increase in just six years, as stated by research from NAI Partners.

That growth shows no signs of stopping. Fueled by a 2013 law passed by the Texas legislature allowing brewpubs to sell directly to consumers, a new bill passed this year set to go into effect on September 1 will enable production-only breweries the same right, creating more opportunities for craft brewers.

Unchanged from its #46 ranking of breweries per capita in the county, per the Brewer’s Association, there’s plenty of room to accommodate the growth. Despite the low per capita ranking, the craft brewing industry still has a $4.5 billion economic impact on Texas’ economy, third highest in the United States. Putting out 1,144,563 barrels of craft beer per year, Texas is now brewing 1.7 gallons of premium beer for ever drinking age adult in the state, as stated by the Brewers Association.

Texas’ meteoric rise in the craft brewing industry has attracted national investor interest. Prominent craft brewing operations like DFW-based Revolver Brewing, Four Corners Brewing and Houston-based Karbach Brewery were recently purchased by larger beverage conglomerates.

The largest craft brewers in the state remain Gambrinus, the company behind the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner and Houston’s Saint Arnold Brewing Co, both distributed far and wide. Operating at a scale far larger than the prolific brewpubs and microbreweries driving the growth of the industry, the two brewers still account for the vast majority of craft beer brewed in Texas as stated by the Brewers Association.