Watch the full conversation on YouTube — listen on Spotify.
Craft beer had a rough first half of 2026. Nationally, craft volume was down 4% compared to the same period in 2025, and the number of operating breweries fell to 9,344 — down 1.8% from a year earlier, with regional breweries, microbreweries, and taprooms all shrinking. Silver Branch Brewing has kept expanding anyway, growing from one taproom to three operating locations, with a fourth and fifth already in motion — not by beating the market, but by paying close attention to what each of its own communities actually wants.
Brett Robison, the co-founder and COO of Silver Branch, didn't offer a secret playbook for beating a down market when he joined Behind the Tab live from the Virginia Brewers Conference in Richmond. He offered something more specific: stop guessing what each location needs, and start tracking what it actually sells.
Is the craft beer industry actually shrinking in 2026?
Yes. The Brewers Association's 2026 midyear report found craft volume down 4% nationally through the first six months of the year, with the total number of operating breweries falling to 9,344 — a 1.8% year-over-year decline, driven by closures among regional breweries, microbreweries, and taprooms in particular. Still, the same report found 54% of surveyed craft brewers reporting growth despite the headwinds, rising to 59% among breweries producing more than 10,000 barrels a year. Scale and shrinking aren't the same story for every operator, even in a down year for the category overall.
How is Silver Branch Brewing able to keep expanding?
By treating each location as its own market instead of a copy-paste of the flagship. Founded in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2019 by Robison and head brewer Christian Layke, Silver Branch added a Rockville, Maryland taproom in 2025, is reopening a rebuilt Warrenton, Virginia location on October 9, 2026, has a fourth location planned for Leesburg, Virginia, and is already lining up a fifth in Wheaton, Maryland. Robison's explanation for why that expansion has worked isn't about beer recipes — it's about refusing to assume one location's numbers predict another's.
"As long as you can actually track that data, you can make your decisions based on it rather than just making assumptions." — Adam Howe, host, Behind the Tab
"I can't imagine life without being able to track that data. Otherwise, you're flying blind." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
What does "brew for your market, not your palate" actually mean?
It means a brewery's decisions about what to pour, sell, and program should follow local sales data rather than the founders' personal taste. Robison had just come off a Virginia Brewers Conference panel built around that exact phrase when he sat down for Behind the Tab, and he was candid about the instinct it pushes against: most people get into the beer business wanting to brew what they personally want to drink.
"A lot of people get into the beer business with the idea of, like, oh, man, I'm going to, like, brew the beers that I want. I'm going to name them the way I want. I'm going to put my mark on the universe." But there's "this other side, which is the reality of having a symbiotic relationship with your tap room or your wholesale distribution business and understanding what beers you need to make." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
In practice, that shows up as specific, sometimes surprising, location-level patterns Silver Branch tracks and reacts to rather than tries to predict in advance: hefeweizen outsells every Maryland property in Warrenton, Virginia; wine does better there too, likely thanks to proximity to Virginia wine country; and Silver Spring, the most urban of the three markets, skews harder toward cocktails. A maker's-market event format that reliably draws a crowd in Rockville and Warrenton has flopped every time they've tried it in Silver Spring — for reasons Robison admits he still can't fully explain, which is itself the point: the data told them to stop running it there, even without a tidy explanation.
This is the same instinct behind GoTab's Manager Dashboard, which rolls up sales, labor, and product-mix data across every location into one view and lets an operator drill into any single property — so a multi-unit brand doesn't have to wait for a monthly report to notice that one taproom's guests want something different from another's. Lovey by GoTab, the AI assistant built into the Manager Dashboard's GoChat, goes a step further: an operator can ask a plain-language question about their own data — sales and performance across locations, customer ordering patterns, inventory usage, menu trends — and get an immediate answer and visualization pulled straight from GoTab's Data Hub, using their own authorized business data rather than generic benchmarks. For a brand the size of Silver Branch, that's the difference between waiting on someone to pull a cross-location report and just asking the question directly.
How does Silver Branch stay recognizable across five different locations?
By keeping one consistent "through line" and letting everything else flex locally. Every Silver Branch taproom serves lager out of the same five styles of branded glassware, modeled on European beer-service tradition — the detail Robison points to first when asked what makes a location unmistakably Silver Branch. Past that, each property gets its own name, its own colorway on the logo, and its own Instagram and Facebook accounts, rather than one shared brand feed.
"No matter which Silver Branch location you go to, that's the through line that's going to be consistent... But then on the flip side, there has to be this symbiotic relationship with the community that you're in." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
Host Adam Howe's read on that balance is a useful shorthand for any multi-unit operator managing the same tension: "It's like having multiple kids... you are still both my kids, but you are your own individuals."
What happens to an expansion plan when a location burns down?
You rebuild, and you find out how much the community actually missed you. Silver Branch bought its Warrenton, Virginia property in 2023 and opened it that September — then lost the building to a fire two days before Christmas in 2024. After nearly two years of insurance and financing setbacks, it's reopening on October 9, 2026, with some former staff returning.
"The amount of outpouring and just like people reaching out and being like, oh my God, like we miss you guys so much. I really want a Dr. Juicy and a hot Roni pizza again. So, so small but mighty and vocal is the town of Warrenton." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
It's a reminder that growth isn't always a straight line even for a brewery that's otherwise expanding — and that the strength of a local following can be the thing that makes a comeback worth the two-year wait.
What's actually driving Silver Branch's next location?
Reputation, more than a real estate search. The planned fifth taproom, in Wheaton, Maryland, came about because Montgomery County itself invited Silver Branch to take over retail space at the foot of its own permitting services building — a direct result of the brand's standing in a county it had already spent years serving.
"I think if you drink beer and you live in Montgomery County, there's a pretty good chance you've heard of Silver Branch. And I think we have a really positive reputation because we're very open-arms kind of establishment." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
What's the unglamorous part of scaling a multi-location brewery?
Standard operating procedures and meetings — not real estate or recipes. Asked directly what made the jump from one location to three (soon five) possible, Robison skipped past anything that sounds exciting and went straight to back-office structure: consistent systems across every property, weekly meetings between general managers and the marketing team, and quarterly meetings that put every location's leadership in the same room specifically to stop locations from operating as silos.
"It's really back office operations and it is standard operating procedures and it's getting your team to use a consistent set of systems across locations... I cannot tell you how many companies have a story exactly like that in this space — we're doing a $5 discount and the GM's like, what do you mean? I found out on Instagram." — Brett Robison, Co-Founder & COO, Silver Branch Brewing
It's the same operational discipline GoTab's own brewery platform is built to support — a single system and a single reporting view across every taproom, rather than a different setup (and a different blind spot) at each one. For breweries hitting this same wall at high volume, GoTab's guide to choosing a POS for high-volume breweries covers the same consistency problem in more operational depth.
FAQ
What is Silver Branch Brewing?
Silver Branch Brewing is a craft brewery founded in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2019 by Brett Robison (Co-Founder & COO) and Christian Layke (Co-Founder & head brewer). It operates taprooms in Silver Spring and Rockville, Maryland, is reopening a rebuilt Warrenton, Virginia location on October 9, 2026, and has fourth and fifth locations planned for Leesburg, Virginia and Wheaton, Maryland.
Is the craft beer industry growing or shrinking in 2026?
Per the Brewers Association's 2026 midyear report, national craft beer volume was down 4% in the first half of the year, and the number of operating breweries fell 1.8% year-over-year to 9,344. Even so, 54% of surveyed craft brewers reported growth over that period, rising to 59% among breweries producing more than 10,000 barrels annually.
What does "brew for your market, not your palate" mean?
It's a philosophy, voiced by Silver Branch co-founder Brett Robison, that a brewery's product and programming decisions should follow what local sales data shows guests actually want at each location, rather than the founders' personal taste or assumptions about what should sell.
How does Silver Branch Brewing keep its brand consistent across multiple locations?
Every location shares the same core identity — most visibly, five branded glassware styles used to serve lager at every taproom — while each property also gets its own name, logo colorway, and separate social media accounts to reflect its specific neighborhood and community.
