The influence of glocalization on the origin of microbrewery raw materials and their integration into global production networks

The microbrewery industry is one of the most dynamically developing sectors in the last decade. The entire microbrewery industry has grown as a response to globalized beer production with unified flavors. It is trying to develop the beer industry with global trends. This makes microbreweries an interesting object of observation, as their production often cannot do without foreign ingredients. The connection to global production networks is thus interesting even in such a small industry, which first emerged as a counterpoint to these trends in the world of the globalized beer industry. In the course of my research, I collected data on the origin of raw materials from selected microbreweries, which I approached, and then conducted semi-structured interviews with them. The breweries with the highest ratings on Untappd, the largest beer rating site in the world, were selected. Out of the 16 microbreweries contacted, 9 took part in the research. The results of the research show that virtually no microbrewery can do without foreign ingredients. However, there were differences between the breweries in the degree of their integration. In order to demonstrate these differences, a categorization of microbreweries was made based on their involvement in global production networks. Key words: globalization,...