Much has been made about craft beer’s challenges in today’s alcoholic-beverage scene. By now, we’ve all heard the story over and again.
The younger generation just doesn’t get excited by small-batch ales and lagers that you can find on every store shelf and tap list across the country. Craft beer is old hat, complexly flavored and polarizing, failing to provide the kind of immediate, and immediately accessible, flavor-forward satisfaction of a fruited seltzer, RTD, or even THC drink. Given the option, guests aren’t choosing craft the way they did even five years ago.
It’s all true, but there’s much more to this narrative. The move to canned cocktails and flavored malt beverages has occurred in concert with a wider societal shift: the continued retreat to the home and virtual life.
Streaming services, video games, social media, dating apps, and takeout/delivery have increasingly replaced social activities that movie theaters, restaurants, bars, taprooms, churches, and clubs provide. The digital revolution has made the disembodied life more enticing, with screen time proving a salient substitute for the experiential existence that long defined our movements through the world. People may be drinking RTDs more than hazy IPA, but they’re doing it plugged in from home.
How It Started, Where It’s Going
In some ways, craft-beer trends over the past decade helped to usher in this era.
Early on, many drinkers discovered and became enamored with craft beer in bars, breweries, and restaurants, sipping draft offerings while exploring the nuanced stories, flavor profiles, and brewing approaches to a wide array of styles. Over time, a transformation occurred. Soon, guests were lining up for bottles (then cans) of hyped rarities found through rating sites and Facebook groups, bringing packaged beers home to be valued for their flavors, yes, but also for their scores.
In some ways, craft was untethering itself from the social scene just as the intrigue behind those beers became lost on the consumer. Soon enough, brewers followed suit, often mimicking the most popular and highly rated styles with an unending stream of retail releases. Draft lines dried up. The beer scene became something all too homogeneous—and, often, something reserved for home.
Today, hospitality and craft beer are struggling to compete with a virtual life that offers a far more convenient, passive, and less risky but ultimately less rewarding existence. To draw drinkers away from their screens, we need to rethink our approach to lure them back into the social sphere, where a reimagined world of beer experience can be new and exciting all over again.
Back to Roots
Now is the time to get back to what energized our industry from the start.
Obviously, brewers can and should continue to brew the beers that sell—and even dip toes into the “beyond beer” category, to capture sales from nonbeer drinkers—but they should also offer the kind of variety that sets craft beer apart.
Maybe that means releasing an old-school, unfruited Berliner weisse, super sessionable and nuanced, alongside a clean saison and Scotch ale. Showcase the wider world of flavor-driven variety—from crisp pale lagers and malty bocks to strong, estery tripels and smoke-laden porters—all properly served on draft, from cask, and via bottle pours so that guests are once again inspired by the possibilities of craft beer, on-premise.
Educate your staff so that they can identify and explain the myriad ingredients, histories, and brewing techniques that inform this broad approach to beer, empowering them to build experiences around your offerings. That’s how we can differentiate ourselves in a beverage scene increasingly dominated by a competitive retail environment, where packaged products are left to their own devices, and undistinguished, on the shelves.
The good news is that guests are interested in backstories again. At our properties, we’ve returned to the basics—guided tastings, beer-and-food-pairing experiences, and seminars and other educational programming that engages the consumer beyond the glass. The results have been encouraging: We’re finding more and more interest in these kinds of events because craft beer stands out as a beverage with a story to tell.
It’s not just about information and education. Dispense methods—including side-pulls, stichfass, and hand pumps— along with service-oriented events such as beer poking, Tokyo-style tachinomi, and kölsch service all add new and novel ways for drinkers to enjoy our offerings. Plus, what’s more fun than pouring a single beer multiple ways for our guests? Show them the flavor nuances created by pulling a lager through a standard faucet, side-pull, can, and firkin. Talk about serving temperatures and glassware. There are so many stories that even beer texture can tell, independent of style.
On-premise offerings provide the most impactful opportunity to distinguish yourself in a crowded field and—as a bonus—the margins are unmatched.
Offer the Experience
Beer programming gets the ball rolling, but if you’re not diving headlong into all manner of events at this point, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Sure, there’s trivia night and happy hour, but I’m talking about live music, Formula 1–racing watch parties, and book readings. Embrace families! It’s shocking that, once upon a time, some breweries seemed almost proud to keep kids out of their taprooms. Nowadays, families make up a massive part of our clientele, and we gladly host the Easter-egg hunts and pumpkin-carving events to get them in the door. We design compelling kids’ menus, bust out the activities, spread out the seating, and welcome the family excursion that gets parents to eat and drink outside of their homes.
It’s worth keeping in mind that we’re not just battling screen time for our guests’ attention—we also have to contend with pandemic-related shifts in behavior. Working from home, increased health consciousness, the popularity of retail beer—along with takeout and delivery—have depleted guest counts, from happy hour and early-week dining to late-night drinking and Sunday brunch.
The beer programming I mention above certainly helps to offset these losses, while encouraging guests to continue to enjoy your unique offering. However, we also need private events to make ends meet in the booze business these days.
Don’t just accept the occasional weekend birthday party request—actively seek out and sell your spaces for private events of all shapes and sizes. Work with universities to generate graduation-weekend business. Cold-call local businesses to set up their next holiday party. While you’re at it, offer to host periodic happy hours for those companies—with so many workers dialing in from home, businesses are looking for ways to bring the social aspect back to their teams.
If you’re not spending a certain amount of time every week to increase private-event sales, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Investing in private-event software—such as Tripleseat, Cvent, or Perfect Venue—will also prove invaluable for increased bookings and guest satisfaction.
IPA, IRL
The comfortable pull of the virtual life at home challenges the beer industry daily, and a life led digitally, behind closed doors, robs craft beer of its most vital and alluring attributes: flavor diversity, layered narratives, and social engagement.
By reworking your offerings, retraining you staff to build experiences, and drawing guests out of an antisocial existence and into your spaces, you’ll once again have their full attention.