The Most Intense Moments of a Taproom Visit

You all know I’m a big fan of Will Guidara and Unreasonable Hospitality. I just finished the Unreasonable Hospitality: Field Guide, an interactive workbook laced with his signature insights. In working my way through, he brought up the concept of the Peak-End Rule, created by the legendary psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Fredrickson. Will simplifies it: “we’re most likely to remember the two moments in any experience: (1) the most intense one (the peak), and (2) the end.”

The peak doesn’t always represent the most positive point. While I hope that it typically does at your taproom, it could be a moment where staff were rude to a guest, or something else equally impactful for the wrong reasons.

I want to dive deeper into Peak-End Rule because I’m a big advocate of the importance of the initial greeting (i.e. “Hi! Welcome to Andrew’s Brewery.”) as well as the end (i.e. “Thanks for coming!”). We’ve actually previously analyzed the top 5 elements of a high engagement visit and that list includes a  
“smile, ‘hello,’ or other welcoming gesture” at #4 and a “sincere thank you” at #2. Let’s refer to my theory as the Book End Approach.

These two touchpoints do have a big impact with regard to a guest perceiving that the staff enhance their experience. We can also break down a greeting into two separate moments: it happening upon entry, and also as the guest approaches the bar.

• Guests who are greeted upon entry are 81% more likely to say the staff enhanced their experience vs visits without that initial greeting.

• Guests who are greeted at the bar are 159% more likely to say the staff enhanced their experience.

• Guests who are thanked upon leaving are 154% more likely to say the staff enhanced their experience.

Those are three of the four biggest single swing factors in our whole dataset (the fourth…coming soon). I believe that a taproom that is successfully welcoming guests upon entry, and thanking them at the end, is also doing a lot of right behaviors in between.

So, in the world of taprooms, how true is the Peak-End Rule?

The fourth biggest swing factor to whether or not staff enhance a guest’s experience depends on if they are able to answer questions in a knowledgeable manner. Guests are a whopping 232% more likely to say staff enhance their experience when they check this box. Luckily for you, we see taprooms being able to offer knowledgeable responses 98% of the time.

Outside of the top four staff behaviors that impact a guest’s perception, it’s worth calling out the importance of both engaging in conversation and offering recommendations. For engaging in conversation, guests are 115% more likely to have an experience enhanced by staff when this happens.

The offering recommendations action actually represents the habit where taproom staff need the most work. The swing on this one is 38% higher on enhancing the experience when staff offer recommendations. However, staff offering recommendations is basically a coin flip. On 50.1% of our visits analyzed, staff do NOT offer recommendations. Every other major touchpoint we discussed is happening 82% to 98% of the time.

Two of the biggest swing factors happen in the middle of a guest’s visit (knowledgeable answers and conversation). The "peak" isn't defined by when it happens, it's defined by intensity. It can show up anywhere in a taproom visit. Our data shows it usually occurs in the middle, through a great recommendation or meaningful conversation, not at the door.

So my Book End Approach isn't wrong. The entry, bar, and exit greetings are still three of the six biggest moments in the data. But don't stop training after “hello” and “thank you.” Give staff the tools to create memorable moments mid-visit too. That could be through offering customized recommendations or actually taking the time to get to know a guest.

Those moments of genuine human connection are the real peaks. Those are the moments that are going to motivate a guest to come back.

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The data was collected from a set of 1398 unique taproom visits from January 1, 2024 to August 23, 2025. Each tab represents 2 guests and includes tax and tip.