What Will Be the Best New Sales Model at Your Brewery?

An early job in life for many is fast food, and now, with consumers’ drinking habits changing because of the pandemic, working as a fast-food restaurant is on the mind of Indeed Brewing‘s Ryan Bandy.

“My first job was McDonald’s,” the Sales Manager for the Minneapolis brewery explained. “It’s a great operation for selling stuff quickly.”

The brewery did open in June to consumers at the taproom, but many are still comfortable with just bringing the beer home. That means either buying from retail outlets or coming and going … quickly … from the brewery. Indeed converted a window behind one of its bars into a walk-up window for quick sales. But Bandy continues to think of how to make it faster and easier for consumers as well.

“So what do we do? What does the window look like? Like, can we do drive-thru? I don’t know, these are the things that you’re thinking about when you can give them the same type of product quickly and you can give it to them fresh … why not do it in different models that like, kind of make people feel safe.”

Even planning what to sell has changed.

“You’re no longer even looking at an 8-13 week window,” Bandy said. “Your windows are way shorter. I think you kind of have to throw everything you thought you knew out the window a little bit.

“There’s some data you can find quickly, like, what types of beers are going, what types of packages are going.”

For Indeed, larger packages of older brands have seen an uptick.

“People like to go back to what they know,” he said. “I heard Fat Tire is up for the first time in a bunch of years and because you don’t want to shop with your eyes as much anymore. You don’t want to stand there. So you’re just picking up something you know is gonna be good.

“So I think there’s a little bit of a shift and whether or not that carries, it’ll be really interesting.”

And with the ability to sell online or at least present your products online so consumers can research before they walk up or drive up to purchase beer has made a brewery’s online presence even become that much more important.

“Making sure that stuff looks good and it’s easy for everyone to find,” Bandy said. The same goes for packaging now. The importance of letting a consumer know what is in the can or bottle quickly without having to figure out the style, ABV, and such is paramount for sales now of newer brands.

“Do they have to read through a bunch of stuff to know what it is like,” he asked. “Rethinking and making sure you’re executing for the quick purchase. So we’ve had to refresh some of our packaging to be more simple, bolder.

“For us, we have pretty complex packaging and pretty complex art. So it’s a little bit of a balance for us, how do we keep it that way, but also make sure people know what they’re getting right away.”

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