Our Brewery Index already found 79 US breweries carrying at least one closure signal across Google, Yelp or Foursquare. That answers which breweries have already gone quiet. It doesn’t answer the more useful question: which brewery still marked “operational” today is actually the next one to close.
So we built a simple risk score and ran it against all 679 breweries in our dataset that no source has flagged as closed yet. Two came out on top, and they’re both in Arkansas.
The score: three signals, none of them a review count
Star ratings turned out to be a poor early-warning signal in our earlier popularity paradox study, so we didn’t use them here. Instead we scored every “operational” brewery on three things that don’t depend on anyone leaving a review:
- Google flags it as temporarily closed (+3 points): Google’s own
business_statusfield saidCLOSED_TEMPORARILY, even though our consensus check still counted the brewery as operational because no other source agreed. - No listed hours (+2 points): the Google listing has no opening hours attached at all. Only 15 of 679 operational breweries in the whole dataset are missing this.
- Quiet everywhere at once (+2 points): bottom 25% nationally on Untappd check-ins, Yelp review count, AND Google review count, all three simultaneously. Being small on one platform is normal. Being small on all three, at the same time, is not.
Maximum possible score is 7. Here’s how the field actually broke down:
- 604 of 679 breweries scored 0
- 67 scored 1-2 (a single weak signal, not worth flagging)
- 7 scored 4-5
- 2 scored 7, the maximum
The two 7s: Core Brewing & Distilling Co. and StudDuck Beers, both Arkansas
Core Brewing & Distilling Co. in Springdale, Arkansas, hit all three flags: Google marks it CLOSED_TEMPORARILY, its listing has no posted hours, and it sits in the bottom quartile nationally on Yelp reviews (37, bottom 12%), Google reviews (104, bottom 4%), and Untappd check-ins (71,100, bottom 22%) at once.
StudDuck Beers in Lonsdale, Arkansas, tripped the exact same three flags, with even thinner numbers: 22 Yelp reviews, 114 Google reviews, 936 total Untappd check-ins. Two Arkansas breweries, matched independently on the same criteria, is the kind of coincidence worth watching rather than reading too much into.
A tier below, two more breweries scored 4 of 7: 1817 Brewery in Okolona, Mississippi, and Fernson Brewing Company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Neither is flagged temporarily closed by Google, but both are missing hours and sit in the bottom quartile across all three engagement metrics. Worth a watch, not a red alert.
For contrast, Arkansas isn’t a struggling market overall. We’ve reviewed Bentonville Brewing Co.’s Homewrecker IPA before, a brewery in the same state with none of these warning signs. This looks like two specific, isolated cases, not a regional trend.
To be clear about what this is and isn’t: a risk score built from public listing data is a lead, not a verdict. We have not called, visited, or confirmed the current status of either brewery. Businesses go quiet online and keep pouring beer all the time.
Why we didn’t just trust Google’s flag on its own
Five other breweries also carry Google’s CLOSED_TEMPORARILY flag, and on their own they’d look identical to Core Brewing or StudDuck. But none of them are quiet everywhere. One is Brooklyn Brewery, which Google’s system also lists as temporarily closed, and which also happens to have 4.4 million Untappd check-ins, 1,096 Yelp reviews and 1,890 Google reviews. That’s not a struggling brewery, that’s one of the most recognized names in American craft beer, almost certainly mid-renovation or between location moves, not headed for the door.
Same story for Pipeworks Brewing Company in Chicago (1.8 million check-ins) and Greenbush Brewing Company in Michigan (494,000 check-ins, nearly 1,000 Yelp reviews). A single platform’s flag, taken alone, would have told us to worry about three thriving breweries and missed nothing about the two that actually look shaky. That’s exactly why our original cross-platform check required agreement between sources before calling anything closed, and it’s why this risk score requires a struggling-everywhere pattern on top of the flag, not the flag by itself.
Location: breweries near hotels get half the engagement
Separately, we tested whether what’s physically around a brewery says anything about how it performs. Using Google Places data on what sits within 2 miles of each of the 758 breweries, three things came out significant, and one of them is a bigger effect than we expected.
- More hotels nearby, fewer check-ins. Breweries in the top 25% for nearby lodging get a median of 187,580 Untappd check-ins. Breweries in the bottom 25% get 352,657, almost double (r=-0.13, p=0.0003, n=757).
- More bars nearby, more check-ins. The opposite direction from hotels: being surrounded by other bars correlates with higher check-in volume, not lower (r=0.13, p=0.0004).
- More tourist attractions nearby, more check-ins. Same direction as bars, a smaller but real effect (r=0.11, p=0.002).
Put together, the pattern looks less like “tourism helps breweries” and more like “being embedded in a nightlife district helps, being positioned as a standalone hotel-adjacent destination doesn’t.” A brewery competing for attention among a strip of other bars pulls in more traffic than one sitting alone near a cluster of hotels, where a guest is more likely to just order from the hotel bar or a delivery app.
None of these are huge correlations on their own (r values between 0.11 and 0.13), so we’re not claiming location explains most of the variance in a brewery’s popularity. But they’re all independently significant across the full 758-brewery dataset, all point in a consistent direction, and the raw quartile gap on hotels (352,657 vs 187,580 check-ins) is a real, meaningful difference, not statistical noise.
What we checked and didn’t find
State median household income does correlate with Untappd engagement (r=0.30, p<0.0001), wealthier states show more check-in activity per brewery. State median age has a technically significant but tiny relationship with average rating (r=0.11) that isn’t worth building a headline around. And a brewery’s missing-hours listing looked like an enormous predictor of closure on its own (80% of the 75 breweries missing hours already carry a closure signal, versus under 3% of those with hours), but we’re treating that one carefully: Google tends to strip hours from listings it has already internally marked as closed, so part of that relationship is Google’s own bookkeeping showing up twice, not two independent signals agreeing. None of this touches production costs directly, we’ve covered that ground separately in our breakdown of what’s actually driving up brewery costs.
The poured-glass reality check
It’s worth remembering what a “healthy” brewery actually looks like in this dataset before reading too much into any single flag: a crowded bar, a line at the tap, someone’s glass getting filled while three conversations happen behind them. That’s the median outcome for the other 604 breweries that scored zero on every risk signal we tested.
How we built this, and where to check our work
Same 758-brewery dataset as our Brewery Index, social media study, and popularity paradox piece: Google Places, Yelp Fusion, and Foursquare Places data, cross-checked, plus Google’s nearby-amenity search within a 2-mile radius of each brewery’s coordinates. Risk scores were only calculated for the 679 breweries our cross-platform consensus check still calls operational; the 79 already flagged as closed or possibly closed elsewhere aren’t part of this analysis.
Anyone can pull the same numbers we did. The download below has every brewery’s risk score, hours-listing status, engagement percentiles, and location-signal counts.
If a location-signal like nearby bars matters this much, worth remembering our own Denver and Seattle brewery guides are built around exactly those kinds of dense taproom clusters, and we track the industry’s bigger cost and consumption trends in our annual beer statistics roundup.
Download the risk and location dataset
All 758 breweries with operational status, risk score, hours-listing status, review/check-in counts, nearby bar/lodging/tourist-attraction counts, and state demographics. Free to use, credit appreciated.
How the Score Works, and the Full Dataset
Check any brewery’s own status, rating, and engagement numbers against the ones flagged above: Open the full searchable dataset, sort or filter all 758 breweries by check-ins, rating, social reach, weekly hours, or status.
Explore the Data Interactively
The one dropdown group shows every brewery that scored above zero on our 3-signal risk score, including the 5 false positives we explicitly ruled out.
FAQ
Which brewery is most likely to close next, according to this data?
Two breweries tied for the highest risk score in our 679-brewery operational sample: Core Brewing & Distilling Co. in Springdale, Arkansas, and StudDuck Beers in Lonsdale, Arkansas. Both are flagged temporarily closed by Google, have no posted hours, and sit in the bottom 25% nationally on Yelp reviews, Google reviews, and Untappd check-ins at the same time. This is a data-based risk flag, not a confirmed closure.
Is a ‘CLOSED_TEMPORARILY’ flag on Google reliable on its own?
No. Five other breweries in our dataset carry the same flag, including Brooklyn Brewery, which has 4.4 million Untappd check-ins and is clearly thriving. Google’s temporary-closure flag needs to be combined with weak underlying engagement before it means anything.
Do breweries near hotels really perform worse?
In this dataset, yes. Breweries in the top 25% for nearby hotel density get a median of 187,580 Untappd check-ins, versus 352,657 for breweries in the bottom 25%, a statistically significant gap (p=0.0003, n=757).
Do breweries near other bars perform better?
Yes, the opposite pattern from hotels. More bars within 2 miles correlates with more Untappd check-ins (r=0.13, p=0.0004), suggesting breweries do better embedded in a nightlife cluster than positioned as a standalone destination.
What data sources went into this risk score?
Google Places, Yelp Fusion, and Foursquare Places API data for 758 US breweries, cross-checked for operational status, plus Google’s nearby-amenity search within 2 miles of each brewery’s location.
