Drinking with Strangers

As brewery owners and managers, you were forced to find new ways to engage with your guests to maintain their relationships (and ultimately their dollar). You never stopped being experts at talking to strangers. Nothing against you, but your interactions with guests are only a small portion of the interactions taking place at your taproom. The more spontaneous and organic encounters are those happening between your guests. You were interacting out of necessity.

It was unnecessary interactions that weren’t happening.

How is your brewery re-facilitating connections between guests?

Andrew CoplonJune 24, 2021craft beer, taproom, COVID-19, customer experience, human interaction, engagement, brewery

Brewery To Go Beer Sales are Up!

You’re selling more beer to go. Bottles, cans, crowlers, and maybe even a few growlers.

I am excited to report that taproom staff are getting better at encouraging beer to go.

From a prior, pre-pandemic study, we saw that only 19.5% of brewery staff were encouraging guests to purchase beer to go.

While a much smaller sample set, from March 2020 to March 2021, we analyzed 555 unique brewery visits, and see that brewery staff are now encouraging beer to go 10% more than before the pandemic.

Andrew CoplonMarch 24, 2021craft beer, COVID-19, customer experience, customer service, power of suggestion

February 2021 Consumer Habits Study

It has been two months since I last conducted a study on consumer habits. Since then, temperatures have dropped in most of the country while access to vaccines has increased. While it is unknown how long the impact of the pandemic will be felt, it at least appears the end is in sight. Now let’s look at some numbers.

Andrew CoplonFebruary 18, 2021craft beer, COVID-19, consumer habits, vaccines, brewery

Why You Need to Maximize Taproom Engagement During a Pandemic

Social distancing. Masks. Contact-free. These are all buzzwords defining the current taproom experience.

Most states still have restrictions on capacity. Others have limited individual party sizes. Effectively, all these regulations have reduced the number of guests that can visit and therefore have reduced your taproom revenue.

While keeping our distance has become the norm in 2020, everyone who chooses to visit your taproom for on-premise consumption is accepting that some sort of interaction will occur. Even during the shortest, COVID-era encounter, you have the ability to build connections with your guests (see the 30 Second Conversation). In this article, we will show the financial value of engaging at a high level and why it is vital even more so during a pandemic.

A few extra bucks from each visit could be the difference between closure and survival.

Andrew CoplonJanuary 9, 2021craft beer, COVID-19, Secret Hopper, taproom, spen

December 2020 Consumer Habits Study

In a Craft Beer landscape that has looked a lot like a rollercoaster throughout 2020, it is ever so important to put your focus on running a successful business. I could fill this sentence with all the buzzwords of the year, but instead, let’s take a dive into some data.

I conducted a study to get a better gauge of current consumer attitudes and spending habits. This research includes 1342 unique submissions. 53.3% of respondents identified as male, 45.7% as female, 0.6% as non-binary, and 0.4% preferred not to say. The average age of respondent is 42.0 years old. All data was collected December 1 to 6, 2020.

Andrew CoplonDecember 10, 2020craft beer, COVID-19, consumer habits

October 2020 Consumer Habits Study

Two-thirds of 2020 has been spent trying to survive a pandemic. We are still trying to figure out what works best, and each day we are continuing a path of unknown. Unknown how long the pandemic will continue, unknown how long we will operate with restrictions, unknown how our customers will behave. But as brewery owners and entrepreneurs, we do not give up.

As the weather begins to get colder, it’s even more important that you are maximizing every customers' on-premise visit. Many of you have been fortunate enough to have your communities come behind you in overwhelming numbers to support you thus far. We cannot take their purchases for granted and need to continue running our best businesses possible to beat the cold.

Andrew CoplonOctober 21, 2020craft beer, COVID-19, consumer habits, breweries, taproom, winter

Unusual Observations - COVID-19 Edition

The world has changed quite a bit since we’ve put out one of these (#1, #2). In prior editions, our lists featured primarily engagement and environment based unique observations our Secret Hoppers made while visiting breweries coast to coast. We have since updated our feedback to include comments on COVID-19 related procedures – everything from questions on sanitation/cleanliness to food safety to social distancing. Upon review, I believe the word “safe” is the most noted term when describing a positive experience. Here are 10 observations made since the pandemic began.

Andrew CoplonSeptember 9, 2020craft beer, breweries, taproom, customer experience, COVID-19, unusual observations

How to Prepare Taprooms for Colder Weather

With summer being the prime months for most breweries, it can be easy to savor the moment and not think about the cooler months ahead. However, if you're not already planning for less ideal patio weather, then you're already behind. Creating a strategy to survive the rest of 2020, and beyond, is a necessity. While some brewers may be able to (unfortunately?) throw the kitchen sink in their next boil and see what happens, your business may not.

Reduced capacity in most cases has already reduced guests, reduced revenue, and reduced the ability to connect with your audience. Fall and Winter merely bring a new challenge and opportunity to once again pivot. Here are 10 potential strategies you can implement to be ready.

Andrew CoplonAugust 6, 2020craft beer, brewery, COVID-19, pandemic, winter, holiday

Replacing the Smile

Spiderman, Marvin the Martian, Ghostface from Scream. What do they all have in common? You can’t fully see their faces, yet somehow, they manage to pump a little joy (or fear!) into our lives. They are able to create emotion without using their mouths. COVID-19 has changed the way we experience beer. No longer can we easily and safely interact with strangers, customers, friends, and family - a huge part of the community created in a taproom. No longer can a bartender flash a quick smile as a welcoming gesture or a subtle way to thank a guest.

The smile is near impossible to replace; however, we will discuss methods you can use to recreate the power of a friendly face. So how can we make up for the feelings that the smile creates? We can do this by utilizing your ability to heighten your guests’ five senses.

Secret Blogger