Repetition is Boring: Excite Your Taproom Guests with Innovation

I know a baseball team that saw firework nights were winners.

So, they started having them every single weekend. Every. Single. Weekend.

They lost the mystique and crowds decreased. They attempted to take their best promotion, turn it up to 11, and expected the success from the 4-time-a-year firework nights to still have the allure 12+ times a season. It didn’t work. It diluted.

Success doesn’t come easy, and in most cases, it’s not as simple as putting a record on repeat.

As brewery owners and managers, you need to continue to excite your audience about your unique experiences, just like you do with your tap list. You can’t just take a well-received event and overdo the frequency. You must do it in moderation.

Of course, moderation is different for everyone, and you know your audience best. In your area, monthly markets (art, farmers, etc.) may work. In other regions, quarterly may be the solution. You must first discover the potential and then learn the correct frequency to generate maximum success, without diluting the concept.

Kary Shumway of Craft Brewery Financial Training.com shares his insight:

One of the keys to successful event planning is to set a financial budget, or a goal for what you want to achieve. Key metrics in your financial budget include estimated sales, expenses, and profit (or loss). 

To build a budget, list of all the things you’ll need to buy for the event. This might include supplies, decorations, and outside vendors. Estimate of how much time you’ll spend on the event. List out the people who will be involved in setting up and working the event. Think about how many hours each person will put in and calculate a rough estimate of labor costs.

Project out the sales you expect from the event. How many people will attend? How much will they spend? Will there be pre-sold tickets? Will you have special merchandise that supports the event?

Look back on past events and figure out if you missed anything. Were there expenses that you forgot about, like that tent rental, or the cost of the special permit from the town? How about sales estimates? Were you too conservative in making your projections?

Do some work up front, build your financial plan, and set key metrics goals around sales, expenses, and profit. This exercise will make sure your event is not only a lot of fun, but profitable as well.

Follow Kary’s advice and fully understand the finances behind the event. Just because you find success in an initiative, does not mean it should be overdone. And just because it is successful once, does not guarantee future returns.

From your brewery’s branding and experience perspective, you must also consider whether your ideas are adding value vs simply adding atmosphere.

For example, let’s look at live music. You have an average Thursday, begin to schedule a local musician to perform weekly, and what do you see? (It goes without saying that the proper effort must be put in to promote and execute these events.)

If you see the same audience, same spend, and just the perk of live music, then this may not be the best use of live music. It is not adding excitement or a financial gain, it’s just a nice benefit to those already showing up.

On the other hand, are you able to take the concept of live music, remove the repetitive feel, and create standout concerts? I’ve seen several breweries that aren’t just bringing in a local musician for background noise. They’re creating an occasion. They’re bringing in renowned local and touring artists. They’re getting their community excited not just about the concept of live music, but the individual performers and event themselves.

They are giving regulars a new event to get pumped for, attracting new guests, and creating a series of repeatable, but different, occasions at their breweries.

Now let’s look at trivia. You all probably do some sort of trivia night. If your general trivia night works, are you simply hosting it every Wednesday? Are you attendees coming each week, or do you find most come once a month? How is the frequency impacting the success? Have you considered taking the general trivia approach and offering themed versions to attract different audiences? While the overarching “trivia” concept remains the same, you are removing some of the repetitive feel.

Don’t get me wrong, consistency is key. However, you must continue to innovate and find new strategies to give guests, both new and old, a reason to visit your brewery.  Repetition is boring. Keep the allure fresh on your quest to greater taproom success.

And as Kevin Hart puts it in his audiobook Monsters and How to Tame Them, when discussing why he can’t just recreate a stand-up special, “Nobody wants a replay. It’s all old news.”