The past 18 months may have altered how a brewery sees itself in a sales market much different than the start of 2020.
For a brewery like AleSmith, president Brandon Richards said although the San Diego company made some changes, the biggest was seeing the increased need to focus on the off-premise.
The same held true for MadTree.
“We put together a more focused approach to managing our off-premise business while also finding unique ways to stay connected with our on-premise partners,” added Sales Director Steve McGlone.
Early on, he said, the Cincinnati brewery staff was handwriting personal letters and sending them to the company’s best on-premise retail partners.
“Our main goal was to stay connected with the people we used to see every day and make sure that they felt a connection to us,” he said. “We’re back to actively selling in the on-premise environment but understand that the game has changed and the support needs for accounts are different today than they were in 2019.
“We understand that our sales strategy should always be shifting, this industry changes too quickly to remain stagnant.”
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Short’s Brewing shifted to a more targeted approach, explained Sales Director Pauline Knighton-Prueter.
”We have many brands in our portfolio, but we are doing a better job at understanding what is moving the needle the most and then pushing that hard,” she said. ”We are also focusing a lot on off-premise. Having a strong off-premise was very important during the shutdown and it was eye-opening for the sales team to feel the importance of strong off-premise activity.
”I don’t see either of these approaches changing anytime soon.”
The sales strategy for Urban Artifact has always been to focus on areas where the Cincinnati brand can be successful.
”As an all-tart brewery that was most often in package and off-premise initially,” said co-founder Scotty Hunter.
As the brand has grown and the interest in the market for tart and sour beers has grown as well, Hunter added that Urban Artifact has been able to dive deeper into the on-premise channel.
”Our focus will continue to be concentration and liquid to lips so more folks can enjoy all of the real fruit we use,” he said.
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