Revitalizing the On-Premise Experience

While we can reminisce about the Before Times (they were something, weren’t they?) or accept all the absurdities of the New Normal (is this even real life?), neither solves the one thing you do control: how you run your business.

The dynamics of on-premise have changed. Consumer behavior has evolved—it’s gotten smarter, more health- and community-conscious, and far more discerning. Cost-conscious customers can smell BS faster than a Master Cicerone can sniff out dirty draft lines. Brewers no longer have the luxury to assume that just because you brew it, they will come.

As Greg Engert writes in the Summer 2024 issue of the Brewing Industry Guide, “over-the-bar sales opportunities remain vital” to the survival of brewery taprooms. What are you doing to elevate your draft program, to retain your existing loyal clientele, attract new customers, and keep butts in seats longer?

Spoiler: It has to be more than just making decent beer.

With easy-to-implement action items, let’s review some key operational logistics and benefits of draft beer, its often overlooked (and sometimes corner-cut) best practices, and how to leverage it all to drive consumer fandom.

Follow The Money

Ounce for ounce, profit margin on draft beer gets you the most bang for your buck. Capitalize on that revenue by making it the focal point of your establishment. Fill that basket with your golden eggs—or, rather, liquids. That doesn’t discount the value of offering guests the option to take home their favorite pours in cans, bottles, or bartop-seamed crowlers—that’s the icing, though.

Purchasing your kegs outright saves you more money over the long term, the smart play for reaping the benefits that come with owning your own kegs As with any sizable purchase, kegs should not be a last-minute decision, especially since most banks will consider them a capital investment. So, if you heed the encouragement to plan and forecast as far out as possible, include their spend in your business plan as well as subsequent annual budgets when growth opportunities start to present themselves.

Whether it’s before you launch or once you’re a couple vetted seasons in, you will inevitably be teased with renting kegs or making a deal with the devil convincing you to trade equity for the allure of pay-per-fill. Sure, if you’re new, tiny, stressed, or strapped for cash, space, and extra hands, a pay-per-fill model sounds appealing. Going that route does alleviate some of the perceived lift involved with caring for and maintaining your own fleet—but be cautious of signing what many disappointed clients have called “predatory contracts.” In short: Check the fine print. Have your attorney review anything before you sign it, with antennas up for financial penalties and the ability to modify or exit the agreement if what plays out wasn’t to your expectations. Proactive scrutiny can save you thousands.

If you are short on money for your next keg purchase but want to invest in owning your equipment, manageable financing options do exist. Keg lease-to-own programs offer strategic, cost-effective alternatives to the traditional model of requiring all cash up front. Plus, honorable leasing companies should be able to break up the total cost of expanding your fleet into easy, manageable monthly payments without surprising you with end-of-term balloon buyouts.

Point Them in the Right Direction

If everyone in this industry had a dime for every time they heard someone boast about its camaraderie, we’d all be in the black and never have to worry about our bottom lines again. Craft beer might’ve been born in a brewhouse, but it’s grown up and matured in the taproom. That’s literally the only place your consumers have a chance to fully know and appreciate who you are and enjoy your product as fresh as possible—straight from the source. So, what are you doing to invite them in and keep them there—or, worse, scare them away?

Yeah, we get it—times have changed, but what attracts or turns off customers shouldn’t be a surprise. They want quality, variety, fair prices, and the chance to feel a sense of belonging. What they don’t want is flat beer dispensed through infected lines into unclean glassware, tired flagships that should’ve been retired long ago, $25 four-packs with no date-code accountability, or any friction whatsoever. When harnessed for good, the advantages of serving draft beer are overflowing. Give guests a reason to stay because it feels better than leaving—and that starts before you pour a single ounce.

You could have the most sought-after destination brewery or be the biggest fish in your city’s humble pond, but how you position yourself to those who are excited to visit for the first time will determine whether they return. They’re going to check your website for the basics—location, hours, direct phone or email, and current draft list. They’re also going to want to know if you have food or they can bring their own. They might want to play trivia, be into live music, support a local cause, or find out if you’re kid- or pet-friendly. Also, with remote workforces finding themselves back in the office since you-know-what, local businesses need gathering places for lunch meetings, event rentals, and—let’s be honest—seeking out a quality happy hour never sounded so good.

However, can they navigate your site with ease and find the answers to their questions without having to DM you on Facebook because they don’t have any way to contact you through your website? Is what’s posted on your website and various online business listings consistent with what’s posted in your social bios, and vice versa? And do they reflect the nature of your business and current offerings when they walk through your door? Syncing all these details can contribute to cultivating a richer experience. And, for the business owner, the natural, positive by-product is that it equates to more dollars spent with you.

When they arrive, have you made wayfinding, accessibility, ordering protocol, and where they can sit dummy-proof? Do they feel at home, or do they feel lost and out of place because they don’t know where to go or what to do? The simplest way to self-audit your on-premise experience is to put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s never been to your city or state, much less your taproom. Wander every square foot of your brewery that’s accessible to the public, and be hyper-curious about everything you’ve put in motion to serve them better.

Be fair and honest about whether you’re connecting the dots for that person to make an informed decision about spending their money with you. Once you’ve nailed that, don’t sleep on what you can do to entice them to return sooner rather than later.

We Must Protect This House

How we take care of our house sends a message to our guests about how we care about them when we have them over for drinks. Regardless of your particular role, this applies to both back and front of house.

BOH

Brewers know that the cliché about being “glorified janitors” is no joke. Just as a surgeon demands a zero-tolerance policy on sanitation protocols in the operating room, brewers should demand the same in their production facilities. That includes taking care of your kegs.

Smaller operations with predictable production volume and sales cycles might think they can get away with cleaning manually, but it’s extremely dangerous, affects the integrity of the gear, and is not recommended. On the other hand, keg washers such as ABS Commercial’s Keg Viking are the gift that keeps on giving. Getting wet and messy while cleaning your kegs after each one empties is no different than showing the same TLC you would to your tanks and brewing equipment after each batch. It simply must be done. Budget for the expense, and make the job smarter, not harder.

FOH

Whether you’re trained to do it properly yourself or you job it out, draft-system cleaning and maintenance is non-negotiable. Lines should be cleaned—say it with me—at least once EVERY TWO WEEKS, full stop. Your customers demand it, your beer deserves it, and we all know better.

Because there’s no one holding our hand to make sure we do the right thing 26 times a year, you will only distinguish yourself by promoting this regular, biweekly practice. Put a sign up adjacent to your taps telling your customers when your lines were last cleaned, update it on your printed menus, post it to social. If you’re not making it public (and why wouldn’t you?), be sure your bartenders and servers know when it was and how to brag about it. While the uneducated, one-off customer might not give a damn, the rest of us do, and we want you to, too.

Service and Hospitality

Is your taproom a convivial gathering place for both familiar loyalists and strangers who eventually become regulars, or where the anonymous go to sulk about how things used to be? What your mission is—what you stand for, and how you train your people to those aspirations—sets the tone for everything that happens inside your four walls. If you’ve got a team of wild inmates running the asylum, check on your trainers, and ensure that what they’re encouraging follows your employee handbook and established SOPs. (You do have an employee handbook and SOPs, right?)

You decide who the faces of your brewery are. It’s who you hire at the door to greet guests, wait on tables, bus said tables, and keep the bar. Their attitude, approachability, and body language will tell guests everything they need to know before anything is served or consumed. Labor shortages be damned, word of mouth will do more harm to your business if it travels that Grumpy Gus and Negative Nancy are running the show at your place.

Foster an idea factory. Invite them to pitch their concepts, spend a day brewing, take over your social for a day. Create space for them to truly be a part of the brewery, and they’ll work with—not against—you. Your employees are either your biggest assets or most dangerous liability. You can teach anyone how to pour a beer, but if you have to convince a team member to turn their frown upside-down while they’re on the clock, you’re probably watching your labor costs swirl down the drain.

Speaking of a proper pour: Are you maintaining the highest standards in service and presentation? It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that the integrity with which your beer is brewed should be honored by the way it’s served. Apathetic bartenders are buzzkills who devalue your product. Watch for and remedy any of these surprisingly common warning signs: the absence of use of a wash/rinse/sanitize three-sink system or a bartop glass rinser; dispensing two draft beverages at the same time with both arms outstretched, which inevitably leads to at least one faucet being dipped in and potentially contaminating what the guest is consuming; and the infamous frozen pint glass, a usual suspect if you’re in distro at your neighborhood sports bar or any mall-adjacent chain restaurant.

Don’t Make Them Guess

We’d be remiss if we didn’t address the quintessential draw and the reason we’re all here in the first place: the beer itself.

You’ve already won over the people who frequent your establishment. For them, don’t fix it if it ain’t broken. For everyone else, there are a few low-hanging enhancements you can apply to ensure any patron knows what to expect—and they all apply to your menu. Pro tip: If it’s not currently up-to-date on your website (why not?) or not displayed at or above eye-level (why not?), and only on a soggy piece of paper next to an iPad, don’t be surprised—or take it personally, during a rush—when a guest doesn’t know what they want to order when they get to the counter.

At a bare minimum, what guests should be able to see in one glance at any menu is a beer’s name, style, ABV, and price. With the polarization of IPA’s popularity, IBUs also should (once again) standard. Sounds simple enough, right? With constantly evolving interpretations of many popular styles, we all know the feeling of thinking we’re ordering what we’ve come to know and love … only to be surprised when a glass of something else slides in front of us.

Be accurate with how you categorize your beer. Not all IPAs are created equal. If it’s experimental or ambiguous, provide a description. If it’s anything under the umbrella of “sour,” sharing its acidity level can help ease someone into their next favorite beer. Even if it’s obvious, discerning enthusiasts will appreciate the nuance of knowing specifics about a beer’s ingredients and how the brewer wants their masterpiece represented—for example, if this week’s DDH hazy release uses that one new hop that’s all the rage. Tell us what makes it special.

You can help anyone acclimate by providing a few more helpful details. While always seemingly up for debate, do you offer flights? If so, how many choices per flight? Anything excluded? You get the idea because you hear these questions on a daily basis. Instead, give them the answer before they have to ask. Are you showing each beer’s glassware, listing its volume? Not everyone wants a full 16 ounces, so do guests have the option to order half-pours? If not, will you let them sample it before they have to commit? And, if they love what they’ve just had on draft, have you told them you can sell them a crowler of it to go?

Planning and Forecasting

So, do you know how many kegs you need? That’s not rhetorical, and it’s probably less or more than you think.

Wait. What? There are several factors to consider before you over- or under-budget for the fleet required to maintain or grow your brand. Your annual production volume is critical. If you’re new or in-planning, consulting with your brewhouse equipment manufacturer and other similarly sized and formatted breweries is an easy first step. Of course, consider the space you have available, careful to also calculate cold storage capacity and a staging area for cleaning and on-deck readiness.

If this isn’t your first rodeo, we’ll cut to the chase: Forecast regularly and plan for purchasing before you’ve got beer ready to burst out of your brite tanks. But you already knew that, right? Stainless steel is a commodity, and every keg supplier is at the mercy of a sometimes much bigger and more rabid animal than we can tame—global supply and demand. Smart suppliers diversify their partnerships to ensure their warehouses are stocked with inventory. Failure to plan can’t always be resolved with expedited (read: way more expensive) shipping.

Your B2B relationships should be more than transactional. The reality is that most vendors share your passion for communal success. They exist to help not hinder you, so invite them into the conversation before you need to call them in a panicked pinch. Regardless, forecasting your keg needs six months out will save you money, time, and frustration, and it will give your supplier the best chance to give you the best deal. Six months?! Yeah, six months. This should allow enough room to anticipate seasonality, production cycles, potential delays in keg returns, and plenty of lead time for acquiring new kegs. Bigger operations, meanwhile, could benefit from an even longer runway.

One thing to note is that if you’re tracking your fleet with something like Kegshoe, you can tailor this timeline a bit closer based on your brewery’s real-time needs.

Last Call

It’s our responsibility to advocate for the vibrant essence that taprooms provide, to champion for draft beer, and to be a megaphone for those in the back who—for any number of reasons—have allowed complacency to creep in and threaten what our industry has spent so much energy to cultivate.

The longevity of craft depends largely on the success of where and how you dispense your draft beer. Remain dedicated to the essence of why you started your business in the first place, and you might find your kegs kick with reinvigorated momentum.