Every day people are asking themselves these questions while they’re trying to decide whether to grab a drink at your place, or head across town to another spot.
So here’s the big question: why should they choose you?
There is something special about your brewery, wine bar, distillery, or cider hall. You know this. But you might not be doing everything you can make it obvious to your potential customers.
Enter farm breweries.
The rise of farm breweries has changed New York’s craft beer scene. Believe us, we wrote an article on it for CraftBeer.com. The farm to pint factor sets breweries apart, but it also brings breweries together. Last weekend at the Buffalo Brewers Festival farm breweries from across New York State joined together under the Farm 2 Pint tent.
What makes farm breweries so special is their emphasis on local ingredients. They take drinking local to the next level, and create local beer made with locally sourced ingredients. In a world where people seek out “farm to table” restaurants, these breweries bring drinkers “farm to pint” beers.
You can apply this same logic to your business regardless of whether you are pursuing a farm brewery license or not.
FIGURE OUT WHAT MAKES YOU SPECIAL
If you’re a passionate business owner, this is probably the easiest step for you. Ask yourself what makes your establishment, your beverages, and your overall brand different. Maybe it’s your unique brewing style. Maybe it’s the way you garnish your cocktails. Maybe it’s your dog-friendly patio. Whatever it is, identifying this will help you get more customers in the door.
LET THE WORLD KNOW
Figuring out what makes you special is the easy part. Now it’s time for the fun part – letting the world know. While we do want you to tell people about it, we also want you to take it a step further and incorporate it into your brand. Make this special something an integral part of your business’ brand.
This makes people think about your uniqueness every time they think about your brand. In the Farm 2 Pint tent, they came right out and said that they use at least 60% of New York State ingredients in each beer, but more importantly evidence of that was everywhere you turned.
The participating breweries invited malt houses, the New York Hop Guild, and even the New York Farm Bureau to set up tables in the tent and talk about their products. They even made signs about different ingredients used to make beer like malt, hops, yeast, and fruit as well as signs about what farm breweries are. Outside the tent, they set up a tractor and had an 8 foot by 10 foot picture of New York State with dots that indicate where each farm brewery and the farms they work with are located.
The point is, you might have read on a sign that they use local ingredients, but there was evidence of that fact everywhere you looked.
Let’s bring this back to everyday in-house applications. Aka you don’t have to attend major festival to apply this logic to your business model.
Take Rusty Nickel Brewing Co. for example. They have a beautiful, dog-friendly patio, so they started a water bowl club and made custom dog bowls for their members as well as branded dog gear like leashes, chew toys, and bandannas. When they promote new beers, they frequently picture them on the patio so customers will imagine drinking them outside.
REACH OUT FOR HELP
We know these steps seem easy, but reading about them and actually executing them can be two very different things. If you want to stand out, but aren’t sure where to start, send us an email so we can set up a free consultation.