October is typically one of the busiest months for fundraising for Adirondack Brewery. The Lake George, New York facility recently announced that it donated more than $17,000 to local nonprofits.
The area is very tourist-heavy during the summer months, so in the ’off-season,’ Greg Chanese, the brewery’s Marketing Manager said when traffic goes down, that’s when the brewery looks to connect with its community more.
”It’s a way to attract people not only to the brewery but also to the entire region,” he said. ”Our Oktoberfest celebrations are definitely our biggest with over 10,000 coming to our family-friendly, free-to-attend Lake George Village Oktoberfest which happens over Columbus Day Weekend every year, and then over 1,000 people coming to our pub the following weekend.
The Oktoberfest held at the facility is 21-and-over includes more than 20 breweries, wineries, and cideries from across the state, and is where the brewery presents a check to the charity it has have been raising funds for. On October 19, the brewery handed over a check for $17,144.80 to staff and board members of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Southern Adirondacks, but a lot of planning each year leads to these events.
“Our team here sits down and goes over charities that our customers either work with, work for, or have a connection to and see if their mission aligns with our own,” Chanese explained in the process of picking a charity to work with. “One of the biggest stipulations that we have for choosing a charity, is that all the money that is raised has to stay in our community and be used to benefit it directly.
“As for the charity, all we ask from them is to supply us with as many volunteers as possible to help us serve food, drinks, and assist with our Lake George Village Oktoberfest. We then collect all the volunteer hours they worked and apply that to the final check donation that they get. So basically, the more they work, the more money they can get.”
The Adirondack Brewery team starts the planning and logistics part of the Oktoberfests in August. This is where the initial invite to breweries and vendors goes out and they start to ramp up our marketing activities for it. Chanese said each year both events have grown in popularity, and they always try to add something new to the event so it doesn’t just feel like the same thing every year.
”We’ve got the events down pretty well at this point and our team runs like a well-oiled machine to make sure it’s as smooth as possible,” he said. ”During the events themselves, it’s all hands on deck to make run the events, replenish the beer and food, and make sure that no issues are happening in the crowds.”
Combined with the brewery’s Hope Ale, which raised funds for breast cancer research, it was an eventful month.
The marketing for these events are a multi-pronged attack. Chanese said they do traditional marketing such as ads in local papers and spots on the radio, but the vast majority of the marketing budget is put into digital marketing.
”Facebook/Instagram sponsored ads and working with our local tourism entities to do the same, has driven traffic not only to the events but to everything we do,” he said. ”We also ask the vendors and other craft beverage producers that join us to do the same, and we actually supply them to images and verbiage that they can easily use on their own channels to help hype it up.”
Through all of its Oktoberfests, the brewery has donated over $100,000 to local charities such as the Lion’s Club, Ben Osborne Foundation, and Caritas.
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