5 Tips to Create a Better Taproom Merch Display
Craft beer today is arguably just as much about branding as it is producing a high-quality product. Because of this, your brewery should aim to remain in your guests’ minds long after they take the last sip. This can be done via social media, mailing lists, and even encouraging your customers to proudly leave with a collection of bottles, cans, crowlers, and growlers. But don’t forget the merch.
Steve and Scott Schmidt of Promote The Brew are experts in helping breweries get the most of their merchandising. Here are 5 tips to maximize your merchandise sales.
Read More
Using Your Brewery as an Event Space
To say craft beer is just about the beer is a huge understatement in today’s competitive market. Craft beer is about engagement, education, and expanding your audience. The value of your brewery lies much deeper than just the beer you are producing. A great part of your value is in the space you occupy. Taprooms are social gathering places where every minute left empty can reduce your bottom line. You’ve got the space, utilize it. As a brewery owner or manager, create a plan to entertain and impress your guests with a unique variety of events.
Read More
10 Ways to Better Reach Breweries
Working in craft beer is cool. Plain and simple. But how can you make it profitable, scalable, and a long-term success? Craft beer today is not just about selling a service or product, but about building lasting relationships. Through my company Secret Hopper, I constantly preach the importance of a brewery educating and engaging with their guests. Representing a brand that works alongside craft beer is very similar. It should be your goal to not only provide a quality offering, but to create unique ways to educate your potential customers about the value. Here are 10 strategies to better reach breweries.
Read More
Want Another? How to Encourage Taproom Guests to Order a Second Beer
One of my favorite things to do is find how the little parts of a taproom experience impact the big picture. The value of a bartender offering their name? A tab that’s on average 20 percent higher. The extra spending that results from merely offering a physical menu? A whopping 35 percent bump versus visits without. The effect of encouraging guests to take some beer home? The average guest is 5 times more likely to make the final, added purchase. These seemingly simple touches can transform a guest’s experience from enjoyable to memorable. Equally as important, paying extra attention to the little things can make a guest’s visit more profitable for your brewery.
Read More
Everything is an Experience
Is Star Wars a threat to craft beer? How about your local minor league baseball team? Does the new axe throwing place hurt your crowd? What about that trendy little craft beer bar a few blocks away? Even grocery stores are stepping up their experience game. From the movies to restaurants to any genre of entertainment, everything is an experience in competition with one another. For this analysis, we will use craft beer and the effect of the overwhelming selection of consumer experiences on the industry. “Craft beer” can easily be replaced with any specific business name, product, or service. The challenge is real and the need to create unique, memorable experiences is a must. We are not just in an economy where experience is a differentiator, but an economy where experience is a must.
Read More
Why Untappd Ratings Don't Matter
Beer quality matters. No longer can a brewery just make decent beer and expect to survive long term. While Untappd may be a great way to log your beer history, it is not a reliable data point to compare beer quality or a valuable predictor to how profitable a brewery will be. Beer quality is merely just one piece of the pie. Stop worrying about Untappd ratings and focus on what really matters – making craft beer memories that make guests crave to return. This is how to survive.
Read More
11 Ways to Sell More Brewery Swag
People love to talk about your beer. People love to come and enjoy your newest offerings. People also (typically) love to wear clothes in public. People rock their favorites shirts more than they enjoy their favorite beers. Here are 11 tips to help sell more merchandise.
Read More
Spending by Party Size in Brewery Taprooms
We’ve conducted studies analyzing spending habits by age and gender. Remember that women spend slightly more than men? And 41 to 45-year olds spend the most. But what impact does the size of a party have on the amount a guest spends while visiting a brewery?
Read More
Attract New Guests
A well-crafted liquid is without a doubt the anchor of our industry. Take away quality beer and we’re nothing. Next, engagement serves a key role in creating relationships that will keep guests returning to your brewery. However, we often don’t spend enough time going over how to get from Point A to Point B. Sure, making great beer brings people, and once they’re in, put out a great experience, but how can you get new guests through your doors in the first place?
Read More
A Wrongful Victim of Facebook's New Alcohol Policy
On July 25, I discovered that my Secret Hopper page had been switched from “published” to "unpublished." This came without warning and I was unsure why this occurred. I immediately appealed and was denied without any further explanation. Once our appeal was denied, we were given no option to re-appeal.
We were somehow a wrongful victim of a new Facebook policy.
Read More
The "No" List: What Taproom Staff Should Not Do
At Secret Hopper, we aim to always stay positive and to look at things from the glass is half full perspective. We take this approach with every internal aspect of our business as well as our relationships with breweries. If we observe a brewery that has staff not interacting with guests, we don’t discipline that brewery and put them down for it, but rather look at this as a starting point with room to get better. With that said, there are certain that a guest should never experience while visiting your brewery. Here is an absolute list of 10 things your staff should never do.
Read More
How Engagement At Your Brewery Affects Your Guests' Spending Habits Elsewhere
It should never be taken for granted that your tasting room is the epicenter of your brand. Whether your staff is serving a first-time guest, or a frequent visitor, their visit is not only impacted by the quality of your beer, but also the quality of their experience. With so many great drinking establishments readily available, you should strive that your guests enjoy their visit at your brewery, but also crave your beer when not there.
Read More
The Secret to Selling More Beer To Go? Just Ask.
Through research collected through Secret Hopper, based on 5064 non-paid brewery visits, we discovered that brewery staff ask guests if they would like to purchase to go beer 18.6 percent of the time. When staff doesn’t ask this question, guests only purchase to go 9 percent of the time – this constitutes a purchase they decided to make on their own. When staff do ask this question, guests purchase beer to go 49.1 percent of the time.
Read More
The 30 Second Conversation
Engagement is an essential factor in maximizing your guests’ experiences. Staff have a greater opportunity to build this relationship during slower times; however, even during the busiest shifts, a bartender or server can create a memorable connection with your guests. Here is a formula to maximize engagement during these times.
Read More
Brewery Staff Attire
When Sam at Crafting A Strategy first posed the question about the role taproom staff members’ clothing plays in a guest’s experience, I simply thought that the matter was a mere decision made by the brewery owner based on the atmosphere they are looking to create. While this is ultimately still true, your staffs’ attire affects not only the minds of your guests, but also those behind your bar wearing that required, or lack thereof, uniform.
Read More
10 Tips to Motivate Your Staff
It's tough to find quality workers, and once you do, it’s even tougher to find brewery staff as passionate as you are. However, if you are able to make strong hires and build a positive company culture, you are well on your way to building an army of advocates for your brand. Here are 10 strategies you can use to motivate your brewery staff to get them on your level, create a more enjoyable workplace, and to ultimately make your business even more successful.
Read More
Unusual Observations Made at a Brewery - Round 2
In December 2018, we put out a list of unique observations made by our Secret Hoppers visiting breweries coast to coast. We’re back for round two! Secret Hopper is helping 250+ breweries monitor their tasting rooms, increase in-house revenues, create more repeat customers, and find new ways to differentiate as the craft beer industry continues to climb past 7400, and here are a few more observations our shoppers have made.
Read More
