When Am I Going to See You Next?
It shouldn’t be goodbye. It should be “when am I going to see you next?”
In a transactional encounter, it’s one and done. Staff are going through the motions. Maybe the customer comes back, maybe they don’t.
When you up the hospitality, this is when your team forms a meaningful connection with a guest and they’re already excited about their next visit before they leave.
There’s a whole plethora of ways to do this (i.e. all the little things add up to the big picture), but today, let’s focus on giving the guests a reason to return.
On every taproom visit, two specific things should happen that encourage a guest to return. First, your team should always thank the guest for visiting. And second, during their visit, a guest should be made aware of upcoming events. This is a tricky one as we all know that guests don’t always do the best job of reading signage (sorry, guests!). However, it’s important to almost overdo it with regard to the opportunities you give a guest to learn about future taproom events.
Staff are doing a pretty good job of thanking guests for visiting. This action happens on nearly 92% of taproom visits. However, breweries have much room for improvement to make guests aware of future reasons to return. Guests are only seeing a visible events listing during 62% of visits. Four out of ten guests aren’t seeing all the other cool things you have coming up.
How can we fix this?
“When am I going to see you next?”
It’s a simple question. And it’s often the simplest questions that make a big impact. Can I get you a flight? Can I get you anything to go? Have you downloaded our brewery’s app?
These are the questions that don’t theoretically make a guests’ visit any better or worse. These are the questions that can make your staff and your business more money.
I like the “see you next question” as it does a few things:
It pairs nicely with the already common “thank you.” “Thanks for coming. When will I see you next?”
It opens the door to talk about events. If the guest doesn’t have an immediate response to the question, how about, “It looks like you really enjoyed today’s lager release. We’re dropping another next Friday.” Or maybe, “We appreciate you coming to today’s market, our next is going to be on the 24th.”
And if you’re feeling really lucky…“Why don’t you also sign up for our mailing list so we can keep you in the loop about everything else we have going on?”
They’ve already made a conscious decision to visit you once. Give them a reason to return and make them commit before they even leave.
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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.