A year ago, Rusty Nickel Brewing really didn’t distribute much of its products and relied mostly on across-the-bar sales. But, like every brewery in the country, the pandemic altered how the facility in the suburbs of Buffalo would have to operate.
“We’re hyper-local. And that was terrifying,” explained co-owner Jason Havens.
One of the things that Havens said they did immediately was sit down and put together a plan as a staff. He said they worked on a lot of “If/then statements.”
“We spent a lot of time doing the theoreticals,” Havens said. “If something happens to go in this direction, we were going to do Option A, and if it went in a different direction, we’re going to go Option B.”
So Rusty Nickel implemented a tremendous transition in marketing that focused heavily on the opportunity for sales, both delivery and for beer to-go. What came from it was two non-beer items that drove more sales for beer.
”We actually started to see questions coming from customers — which we asked for — and we had breakfast sandwiches requested,” Havens said. “It was an escape from reality [for them]. So we started making breakfast sandwiches.”
The brewery has a liquor license as well and works with local providers to make Bloody Marys as well.
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“Sundays became a new opportunity area for us,” Havens said. “We focused heavily on that, which allowed us to drive sales. We utilize Bloody Marys to actually sell beer. It’s kind of a crazy thing for a brewery to do. But because we’ve been very popular with our Bloody Marys, we utilize that to create a Sunday Fun Day and give people an opportunity to just buy beer, buy Bloodys and buy breakfast sandwiches.
“That was never something that we had in a forecast that was going to be a No. 1 selling day.”
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