Having an eCommerce platform has been a great way to generate financial movement for your brand, but making sure your brewery is promoting that the platform is there for use is important as well.
Creating marketing campaigns and having a selling strategy around promoting where and how consumers can find your brands through the eCommerce portal may become a normal part of the business going forward.
“We definitely promote convenience with our online shopping,” explained Rohrbach Brewing‘s Brittany Statt. Customers of the Rochester, New York brewery have the option of standard shipping or free pickup at the beer hall.
“[It] has been a great marketing tool in itself,” she said. “We hope that it’s getting people in our doors where they might pick up some dinner to go or stock up on extra beer.”
An example for Rohrbach was it released a holiday gift guide in December that linked to the brewery’s shop page.
The Bruery and Offshoot Beer added contactless delivery quickly last year and the brewery’s Head of Marketing, Daniel Munoz, told Brewer that safety took priority when the pandemic first struck and was key in messaging.
“As the pandemic wore on we saw advantages come through for ease of use as we offered free same-day local delivery in Orange Los Angeles County, along with next-day delivery in all of California and Nevada.”
For Topa Topa, shifting to online sales was a unique challenge that came together literally overnight, said co-founder Jack Dyer.
”Our brand message stayed rooted in our core values but we also took a pretty hard stance on social and environmental issues,” he said. “This helped give consumers that believed what we believe a reason to choose our brand.
”We quickly found our footing in eCommerce and have done fairly well shipping beers directly to folks in California.”
Special events were all but dead but special release beers put online have been great for Topa Topa, Dyer said.
“We have found that in certain sectors, whether it be a distributor territory or online, having a specialty release tends to boost the sales of our cores,” Dyer said.
Dyer shared that Scout Distribution in San Diego and Orange County has seen explosive growth for the brand year-over-year employing this as a strategy.
“Lead with a special release and the cores will follow,” Dyer said.
Statt said instead of having large gatherings in Rohrbach’s beer hall to celebrate beer releases, they have been able to put new releases on the website for pre-order and easy pickup.
”This, among many other things, has definitely shifted what sells,” she said, adding that the brewery has seen a lot more sales of 4-packs.
“Of course that comes with a lack of pint and in-house food sales that we’d get with a regular release event,” she pointed out.
Photo courtesy Rohrbach Brewing
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