The Advantages of a Good Beer Event Away From Home

Making a event that happens outside of your brewery’s taproom a success requires proper planning, from the featured product or products to adequate advertising to consumers.

Jaclyn Turner, the Programming Specialist and Market Manager for Atlanta’s Monday Night Brewing, said placing the right liquid in the right account at the right time while creating visually captivating signage to display in the venue at least two weeks out from a desired event date is one key.

Also in Atlanta, Orpheus Brewing‘s Grace Lahasky said success can also measured by the reaction of the host and their staff.

“If they are excited and feel good about the turnout, and it contributes positively to our relationship with an account, then it is considered a win,” the brewery’s Account Sales Manager said.

Turner added that connecting to the consumers is vital while at a beer event for whoever is representing the brewery at the event.

“We make a point to speak to every single person who walks into the building for the entire duration of our event,” she said. “It’s always fun to find a theme for an event to push another angle while engaging with people who came out for our beer. We strive to deepen human relations … and a memorable interaction can help make the event interaction itself stick in someone’s mind instead of just remembering the incredible beer they had.”

The best places for the types of events Orpheus does are craft beer-centric restaurants and bars. “I personally grow a relationship with the current beer buyer at these types of events,” Lahasky said.

The best places to host an event are the places where the venue host is excited to have a brewery in the building, noted Turner.

“Typically, a venue is already aware of their customer needs and desires, so even if it is a new location for one of our events, partnering up with an enthusiastic buyer is often a win/win,” she said. “However, we do take the time to research a new venue to ensure that a partnership will genuinely benefit all parties involved.”

Reading reviews online can only go so far, so Turner prefer to get someone into the venue and get a first-hand look at the bar, beer menu, food menu, and the overall vibe.

“While we love meeting new accounts, supporting our current buyers is a constant goal of ours and we want our partners to continuously feel the appreciation we have for them,” she noted.

Although social media is the perceived king, one of the best ways to get the word out for an event is to advertise with strategically placed signage in the venue that the event is taking place.

“We want to provide our accounts with memorable and beneficial support, which includes interacting with their clientele,” Turner said.  “The bodies that come through the door also help us get the word out once they see our signs or table tents displayed throughout the venue, as they can be conversation starters or provocations for making plans to return to the venue.

“Social media advertising can be beneficial at times, but with an endless amount of scrolling that can bury a post, we usually prefer a more engaging, grassroots style of marketing for our out-of-brewery events.”

Both pointed out that hosting an event at a location that does not normally carry craft beer does not create the ideal engagement and excitement we desire.

“We stay away from events that require large buy-ins or that donate to causes that don’t follow our mission,” Lahasky said.

There are times that a new buyer with no experience with the Monday Night brand will approach the brewery for an event, and Turner said they attempt to work some of their products into that account before the desired event date to get a feel for how well a particular liquid will perform.

“We like to have fun and can be a bit quirky at times, but knowing what liquid is right for our accounts is extremely important to us so we take these preparations very seriously,” she said. “As a rule of thumb, we stay away from any event that would require or attempt to encourage us to incorporate illegal methods of execution.

“We have a lot of respect for the craft beer community and the laws that our peers have fought so hard to improve, therefore we will never agree to an event that the Department Of Revenue would disapprove of.”

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