Secret Hopper
Creating more memorable and profitable taproom experiences
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Posts tagged brewery
Throw Up on a Rollercoaster: How to Prepare Your Team for Less-Than-Ideal Situations
Throw Up on a Rollercoaster: How to Prepare Your Team for Less-Than-Ideal Situations

It’s important to provide your team with a roadmap. As owners and managers, there are likely certain ways you’d prefer specific situations to be handled. Consider cataloging these in your handbook. Don’t just write them down, LEAD. BY. EXAMPLE. Walk through unique scenarios with your team on a monthly basis. Roleplaying can be particularly helpful. Additionally, rapid-fire questioning, where you ask staff how they’d handle various situations, may help them prepare to think quickly. Ultimately, it’s valuable for your team to understand the order of operations for common occurrences when following a playbook, and to have the skills to act off-script, improvise, and make strong decisions.

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Andrew Coplonbrewery, taproom, staff experience, culture, company culture, leadership, employee handbook, problem solving
The Hospitality Factor of Taprooms
The Hospitality Factor of Taprooms

You’re in the hospitality business. Relationships, baby. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You’re peddling experiences.

When we first launched Secret Hopper in 2017, most of us weren’t using the word “experience,” let alone “hospitality.” However, times are changing. You’re not just hoping someone chooses you over the nearby brewery; you want them to choose your taproom over any other social activity.

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Andrew Coplonthird space, taproom experience, hospitality, industry trends, experience, brewery
What Taproom Guests Want in 2024
What Taproom Guests Want in 2024

The taproom landscape is changing. No longer can a brewery simply make quality beer. The perfect brewery experience now exists at the intersection of delicious beverages, a memorable atmosphere, and engaging staff. When you successfully understand your guests’ goals, expectations, and exceed them, you create a repeat customer that craves your taproom.

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Andrew Coplontaproom trends, taproom, brewery, brewery experience, what guests want, taproom data, innovation, hospitality
Top 5 Characteristics of High Engagement Taproom Visits
Top 5 Characteristics of High Engagement Taproom Visits

When working with breweries nationwide, we collect data that helps better the level of service and build more meaningful connections. Through this, we wanted to see what the top contributing factors to experiences where taproom staff truly wow the guest. Upon analyzing these high engagement experiences, we discovered 5 behaviors that are found in over 96% of the these visits.

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Andrew Coplontaproom experience, taproom staff, customer experience, hospitality, brewery
How to Motivate Taproom Staff
How to Motivate Taproom Staff

As taproom managers and owners, it’s important that you understand why your staff is working at your brewery. Unfortunately, in most cases, these questions aren’t being asked. By not asking these basic questions, we are preventing ourselves from understanding the “why” and ultimately unable to successfully answer the “how can we best motivate our team” question.

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, brewery, taproom, taproom staff, motivation, taproom experience
Drinking with Strangers
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?

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, taproom, COVID-19, customer experience, human interaction, engagement, brewery
10 Seasonal Brewery Swag Items You Should Be Carrying
10 Seasonal Brewery Swag Items You Should Be Carrying

It’s the holiday season, and in the true spirit of 2020, it’s necessary to think outside the box about the merchandise items you plan to offer your loyal fans. Brewery guests nationwide are already being more intentional when planning which taproom to visit and will be just as selective when considering if they will purchase additional Winter merch. You need to not only WOW them with your fantastic beers and customer experience, but also offer them a lineup of a seasonal swag they can’t say “no” to. We’re not talking your standard hats and hoodies. Think of that mind-blowing gift you opened on the holidays when you were 10. Yea, that kind of gift.

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, merch, merchandise, swag, taproom, brewery, seasonal, holidays
How to Prepare Taprooms for Colder Weather
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.

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, brewery, COVID-19, pandemic, winter, holiday
5 Tips to Create a Better Taproom Merch Display
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.

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Andrew Coplonmerch, swag, merchandise, brewery, craft beer, Promote The Brew, Market The Brew, Secret Hopper
Attract New Guests
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?

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, brewery, marketing, promotion
The "No" List: What Taproom Staff Should Not Do
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.

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, brewery, customer service, customer experience
The Secret to Selling More Beer To Go? Just Ask.
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.

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Andrew Coploncraft beer, brewery, growler, crowler, bottle, can
Brewery Staff Attire
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.

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Andrew Coplonbrewery, craft beer, uniform, dress code, attire