UPDATED: 1/19/23

Two words: Increased revenue. That will continue to be the name of the game in 2023 as breweries, taprooms, bars, and restaurants have all returned to a “new normal” style of business and continue to deal with supply chain and economic challenges.

In the past, we’ve written about several strategies to help hospitality establishments generate increased revenue, including starting a mug club, the best bars games to attract patrons to your brewery, and the best ways to display QR codes. But another top tactic is to establish a happy hour, or to find more creative happy hour ideas.

Happy hours can be a simple strategy to attract new consumers, create loyal fans, and bring in more revenue during non-peak business times. They’re a win-win-win.

With that in mind, we put together a list of some of the top happy hour ideas to generate increased revenue, whether you’re considering the idea for the first time or you’re looking to bring some fresh post-COVID perspective to a tried and true tactic.

What would it be like to have unlimited access to data from the 10 million registered users on the world’s largest social networking app for craft beer drinkers?

Well, it means you could learn the top styles folks are drinking in your state.

As a brewer, that could help you decide that the next best beer to brew will be a hazy IPA or an imperial stout.

You could discover the most popular beers in your area.

As a craft beer bar, that could help you choose the next beer to bring on tap.

Untappd’s data & analytics open up a world of possibilities for your beverage business. And as an Untappd for Business partner you have access to all of this information that shows you the trends and insights of drinkers in your city, state, region, and beyond.

Learn what craft beer consumers are drinking in your area. Give Untappd for Business a try without talking to anyone—no credit card required.

To show you the power of Untappd’s analytics, we’re breaking down the most checked-in beers over the last ninety days in London, England, the most checked-in country outside of the U.S.

A few years ago, a beer without alcohol in the United States seemed crazy. But today, non-alcoholic beer has become a growing trend in the U.S. So much so that many American craft breweries have taken a stab at making their own versions of non-alcoholic beer.

Beverage e-commerce site Drizly reported that NA category shares rose twenty-four percent on the platform year over year compared to the same period in 2021. More than one hundred non-alcoholic brands including beer, wine, cider, and spirits now live on Drizly, a seventy percent increase from last year. In the United States specifically, Statista reported that non-alcoholic brands contributed to over $414 million in sales.

While on a global scale, leading global alcohol industry market research firm IWSR reported in its IWSR Drinks Market Analysis that volume of no- or low-alcohol beverages grew by thirty-one percent year over year in 2022.

Basically, all signs point to non-alcoholic beer trending, if not growing into something more.

As a result, over the past few years, many craft breweries have added innovative, flavorful non-alcoholic beers to their portfolios. And entirely non-alcoholic beer brands are emerging in the market.

For instance, major established brands like Brooklyn Brewery, Boston Beer Co., and Dogfish Head have all crafted their own NA beers.

And solely non-alcoholic beer producers such as Athletic Brewing Co. are changing the status quo.

We predict this beer trend will continue to grow and that soon Americans will be drinking non-alcoholic beer all year round. So now the big question becomes: Is it worth your brewery investigating and investing in starting a non-alcoholic beer line?

Earlier this year, we wondered if hard seltzer had lost some of its fizz. Turns out the bubble hasn’t popped yet. But the extreme growth of the category for the past three years has finally slowed down.

According to Drizly, for the first time in recent years, hard seltzer showed a seventeen percent year-over-year decrease during the 2022 Labor Day weekend. And during the summer, one of the busiest times of the year for pushing hard seltzer, Drizly reported sales dropping below last year’s Fourth of July numbers.

But despite the holiday slowdowns, the national eCommerce beverage platform did show that hard seltzer sales still have a 3.8 percent share in 2022, up from a 3.3 percent share of all sales in 2021.

While folks are still thirsty for hard seltzer, it has quickly become apparent that brands need to stand out on the shelf.

But how?

We spoke to several breweries, who have started their own craft hard seltzer brands over the past few years, to hear what has worked well for them, tips they have to share, and why you might not want to start a hard seltzer brand in today’s market.

For the past few years, online ordering and delivery have become our new norm. Well, to be fair, consumers ordered food to their doorstep even before nationwide lockdowns started in early 2020, but the global pandemic greatly accelerated the trend. According to an article by McKinsey & Company, the global food delivery market is worth more than $150 billion, more than doubling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the four major markets where food delivery reigns supreme—Canada, Australia, the U.S, and the U.K.—the market has grown four to seven times larger than in 2018.

Since pandemic-related lockdowns started in March 2020, the growing food-delivery business has spiked to new heights in the most mature markets.

Graph courtesy of McKinsey & Company

At first, this was a contemporary shift for more traditional restaurants and eateries used to giving customer service in person. But by now, no-contact delivery has become the standard way to get food from your establishment to your customers’ homes.

Especially for those customers who are still cautious about venturing out to eat indoors or even those who just don’t want to get off the couch on a Saturday afternoon, they expect their food delivery to now come with the utmost care and safety in mind.

With that mind, it’s always good to review the ways you can maximize your contactless system, if you offer one. Or take a look at the best ways to set up no-contact delivery if it’s new to you.

Whether you’ve already implemented no-contact or contactless delivery or are finally considering it for the first time, here’s a guide on everything you need to know.

As consumers, Thanksgiving usually means two extra days off of work to spend time with family and friends celebrating an American holiday. For brewery, bar, and restaurant owners, however, the prospect of a federal holiday like Thanksgiving poses an interesting question: Should you stay open?

Traditionally, Thanksgiving and the subsequent day dubbed Black Friday have been the days when Americans spend…and spend big.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s largest retail trade association, during the 2021 holiday season, Black Friday brought in a whopping 66.5 million people shopping at stores with the average adult spending $430 dollars (Deloitte).

And while these have traditionally meant big and small retailers, Goose Island is probably the brewery most well known for getting beer businesses in on the Black Friday action. Since 2010, the brewery has released its incredibly popular barrel-aged Bourbon County Brand Stout and its yearly variants the morning of Black Friday. It’s a special event that has become a bit of tradition with folks lining up around the block to get their hands on a limited number of that year’s bottles.

And other breweries have since followed suit with everyone from Weldworks to Lakefront Brewery to 3 Sons getting in on the action.

But increasingly on a wider scale, more retailers have actually closed their doors on Turkey Day and subsequent Black Friday. In 2020, major chains such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Dick’s Sporting Goods closed on Thanksgiving for the first time and continued that trend in 2021. Similarly, last year, Target took things a step further, announcing that it will close all of its stores on Thanksgiving every year for the foreseeable future.

It’s a bit of a quandary: stay open and potentially tap into one of the largest sales days in America, or close and give yourself and your staff time off to spend with their families?

Keeping a restaurant or similar establishment open during a federal holiday means understanding a few considerations. For example, recognizing that overtime requirements can mean you might need to pay your employees more than the average weekday. Consequently, staying open might only be profitable if you can ensure that you’ll experience increased traffic that day.

Overall, what are the advantages of keeping your bar, brewery, or restaurant open on Thanksgiving and/or Black Friday? Alternatively, what are the potential benefits of choosing to give your staff the day off? And if you do decide to light up that open sign, how can you prepare?

We weighed both sides of the equation and offered a few tips and tricks on how to navigate that question during this holiday season.

Wondering what elements make up a great business logo? We put together a whole guide here.

With that in mind, we won’t get into too much of the nitty gritty, but suffice it to say that your restaurant or brewery logo is like a firm handshake. It’s often the first and sometimes only thing people see and helps set the tone for what your customers and potential patrons can expect.

A visual representation of your brand, your logo shows who you are as a business. All within a tiny little illustration or graphic.

So while it may seem like a small detail, it’s really a big one.

“Branding now has the final say,” says Ben Butler, co-founder of Necromancer Brewing and Top Hat, an award-winning design and marketing agency in Pittsburgh, in our guide to designing and developing a brewery logo.

Nail your branding and you’re already on your way to success. And it all starts with your logo.

With over 9 million registered users, Untappd can easily tap into the trends and insights of drinkers in your city, state, region, and beyond.

Untappd’s Analytics discovers beers Untappd drinkers are consuming the most in your area along with what styles are trending and which are taking a turn downwards. And so much more.

Tap into all the data of the world’s largest craft beer social networking platform to help you make business decisions about what beers to make, which to put on tap, or even which to stock on the shelf.

Get a sneak peek into what Untappd’s Analytics can show you as we take a look at the checked-in beers in San Diego, CA, over the last ninety days.

And if San Diego isn’t your city, we also have guides available for the following cities:

• London, England
• Chicago, IL
• Asheville, NC
• Portland, OR

Last week, we put together a comprehensive guide to American grain varieties. But with barley and other grains being harvested all across the world, this week we’re focusing on European malts.

In fact, according to Statista, the European Union produced the most amount of barley in the world in 2021/2022 at almost 53 million metric tons. And the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicts that by the end of next year world barley production will hit 147.72 million metric tons, meaning that continental Europe will be set to produce a little over a third of the world’s barley.

Barley is a huge component of any beer recipe. But its characteristics can vary based on where it’s grown, the climate, genetics, and even breeding practices.

For that reason, it’s important for any brewer to understand the differences between North American and European grains.

And with so many varieties on the market, we’re putting together a comprehensive guide to showcase the different types of European malts available to you and a few examples of each from reputable European maltsters such as Weyermann, Simpsons, BestMalz, and Castle Malting. Make sure that as a brewer or brewery owner you’re armed with the best possible knowledge to make a decision around the type of grain to use for your beers.

Editor’s Note: This will be part two of a two-part series covering grains across the world. For this piece, we’ll cover grains native to Europe. You can find our piece on North American grain varieties here.

Although hops are probably the hottest ingredient in craft brewing right now, grains are just as important. The base of your beer, malted barley (and other grains) contributes to your beer’s sugar content, color, flavor, and aroma. All crucial building blocks to the entire foundation of your recipe.

Last year, Brewer Association Chief Economist Bart Watson reported that, based on data from a 2021 Brewery Raw Material Use Survey, breweries used about 70lbs/bbl of fermentables, and of those, ninety percent were malted barley.

Barley is a huge component of any beer recipe. Basically, when it boils down to it, without barley we can’t have beer. With that in mind, it’s vital to learn about the different types of barley and grain available to you along with each of their important characteristics.

With so many varieties on the market (and new ones seemingly popping up every year), we’re putting together a comprehensive guide to North American, European, and even South American varieties to make sure that as a brewer or brewery owner you’re armed with the best possible knowledge to make a decision around the type of grain to use for your beers.

Editor’s Note: For this piece, we’ll cover grains native to North America, but check out our guide on Eurepoean grains to learn more about other varieties around the world.