lew's bottom shelf
CREATE BETTER CUSTOMERS BY LEW BRYSON
There’s a brewpub in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the Bullfrog Brewery. I happened to stop by a month before it opened, way back in 1996, and spent some time talking to the brewer. I still remember what he told me about the beers he was going to make: a blonde ale, a pale ale, a stout and an apricot ale. Maybe an IPA after a few months. I was disappointed. That was it? Nothing daring at all, no smoked porter, no weissbier and no IPA to start off? (That was all kind of daring in 1996, when the first double IPA and barrel-aged stouts had been made only two or three years before.) The brewer reminded me where I was. “It’s Williamsport,” he said. “I’m going to have to bring them along slow.” It worked. Although the locals drank a lot of blonde and apricot in the first six months, within two years, the Bullfrog was serving a more advanced selection of beers. By 2005, people were driving three or four hours to wait in line for the frankly amazing sour beer releases, and the locals were drinking rye stouts and cask-conditioned double IPAs. Are you bringing your drinkers along? Or are they still stuck on the apricots? Look, I’ve got nothing against your apple pie moonshine, or your redistilled vodka, or your blended bourbon made from your stuff and MGP’s stuff. You may even have a nifty gin, some three-year-old rye. I’m sure they’re all fine products. Only problem is, at that level, so is everyone else’s. If you’re going to thrive, you have to offer more. But first you’ve got to get your drinkers up to speed and asking for more. What does that take? Well, sometimes you can lead with new stuff. Take my local distillery, Mountain Laurel Spirits, where all they make is the distillery’s Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey, albeit in a nice variety of expressions.
28 |
MAY 202 1
If you’re going to thrive, you have to offer more. But first you’ve got to get your drinkers up to speed and asking for more. But its pandemic special was a line of retrolabeled 375-mL pocket cocktails—Manhattans, Old Fashioneds and Boulevardiers—and let me tell you: fun stuff to carry in a shirt pocket! Those little pocket cocktails are a teaching tool, too. Plenty of folks at a distillery tour have never had a Boulevardier, and there are non-whiskey drinkers who quickly learn to like them. Smarter drinker; better customer. Do you have a local grain program with farmers? The right heirloom grain can mean a new flavor for your whiskey—a point of difference, for sure—but it can also mean a great opening for a discussion with visitors to the distillery about grain, and what grain choices mean to whiskey, and what they might smell that’s different. And once they get hooked on different, well … smarter drinker; better customer. Want to show off your custom barrels, your connection with a small or famous cooperage? Take a used barrel and saw it in half, mount that sucker on the bar. Instant conversation piece, and more, smarter drinkers who will make better customers when they tell their friends what they learned … and where they learned it. A brewer I knew called this on-site intersection with drinkers a way to “share some air.” If you have a tasting room, get your bartenders and servers prepped to share information
with the drinkers. A lead bartender can be a draw to your bar for their cocktails, but they can also be as influential at hand-selling as the best retailer. Find good people for those positions, and pay them appropriately; they’re money in the bank. Maybe more importantly, spend time there yourself. There’s nothing drinkers like better than drinking with the distiller or owner, and there’s no better way to create dozens, even hundreds of brand ambassadors. Don’t forget that it’s a two-way street. Your
C R AF T S PI R I T S MAG .CO M