Opening a satellite location for your brewery is of course a logistic endeavor, but it’s also the first time you have to try to create a similar experience to a consumer that either already has a certain level of expectations, or create consistency among two different spots.
When hiring, Topa Topa tends to look for people with optimistic warmth, not necessarily with beertending experience, explained co-founder Jack Dyer.
“If they have both great, but we have found that we are able to teach folks about beer,” he said. “Finding someone who is just generally excited about life and their job is harder to find.”
The brewery, now with five locations in a 40-mile range around its home of Ventura, California, hasn’t adjusted hiring practices much since expanding. However, Dyer said more recently they have made an effort to increase its diversity company-wide.
READ MORE: Multiple Taproom Logistics
“To do that, we rely less on word-of-mouth referrals to a more diversified spectrum of job posting sites,” he said. “That has been a fun change to see take shape.”
When Topa Topa hires someone to work in the taprooms, they are assigned a home base. They then have the ability to pick up shifts and cover for folks in other taprooms as well, but their primary schedule is built at one taproom.
”The primary operations at each taproom are the same so in theory, our team members should be able to seamlessly move from taproom to taproom with no problem,” Dyer said, noting that over the past two years since starting expanding, the company has focused on making SOPs at each location as similar as possible to help with those overlaps.
”More recently we promoted a few of our more senior beertenders to positions that have them floating around to each taproom on a rotating schedule,” Dyer said. “This was done to help ensure that all of our core values and customer service experiences are being upheld at each location. So far it has been a nice addition to our system.”
READ MORE: Hiring for a Second Taproom Location
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