As consumers, we love federal holidays because it means an extra day for relaxing, hanging with friends, and drinking. For brewery, bar, and restaurant owners, however, the prospect of a federal holiday poses an interesting question: Should you stay open?

More often than not, for those who work in the hospitality industry, restaurants, bars, and brewery owners often decide to swing the doors open on traditional federal holidays to maximize a potential increase in traffic and sales.

But 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 a holiday? Alternatively, should you even stay open on these days. 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 offer a few tips and tricks on how to navigate those three- or four-day weekends.

Ambiance is one of the most important factors in creating a restaurant’s atmosphere. Whether you’re looking to open a fine dining restaurant or a casual cafe, it’s important you choose decor that matches your location, clientele, and menu offerings.

But choosing the right restaurant design and decor ideas can be overwhelming because there are so many options out there.

Accordingly, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite restaurant decorating ideas along with tips to help you create your ideal restaurant interior.

The average brewer gets into brewing because they love beer. And the act of brewing, of testing and failing, and testing again; of experimenting and creating.

What they don’t necessarily get excited over is paperwork. And yet, for the average brewer, the act of brewing is just one piece of running a very complicated business. One that often requires a lot of paperwork.

Enter software, technology that’s supposed to make brewery operations easier. But often the software available feels clunky, bloated, and difficult to use, because it’s either built for much larger breweries or designed for a different industry.

Next Glass’s suite of brewery solutions including Ollie and Oznr, lets you manage every aspect of your business activities from grain to glass. Unlike other technologies in the space, this trio of products was purpose-built for the brewing industry. Breweries can manage production, wholesale, and retail orders, as well as direct-to-consumer ecommerce all from one platform.

Ready to streamline your operations from brewing to logistics? Let’s get started.

“Excuse me. What’s your WiFi password?” How many times have you or your staff been asked this question by customers? The integration of the internet into the modern business model has shown no signs of losing connection.

Every business from coffee shops to breweries to public transportation and beyond are all optimizing free WiFi access to accommodate people’s desires for strong reception. While you have their attention, you might as well get a business opportunity out of it, right?

Nowadays, companies need to be able to provide easy access for their customers, and that’s where WiFi marketing comes into play.

Let’s dial in to the benefits WiFi marketing can bring your business in 2022.

Opening a brewery can be one of the hardest yet most fulfilling challenges. Starting a business requires moving many pieces and making many decisions. A small sample might include: writing a business plan, designing the perfect brewery logo, finding great beer names, pricing your beer properly, learning how to run a successful Instagram, and so much more.

Honestly, the list goes on and on.

But once you’ve established your business, one of the core components will be building a great team around you. Hiring competent staff that understands your mission, policies, and procedures will directly contribute to the success of your company culture and your company as a whole.

Your employees reflect you and your business, so you want to make sure that you hire the right person for the job.

But how?

It all starts with asking the right questions.

Photography courtesy of Fullsteam Brewery

The 11 Best Brewery Interview Questions to Ask

Like with any hospitality job—be it in food service or in the taproom—turnover can be common. To ensure you have the best opportunity for operations to run smoothly, investing in the right people will be crucial. You want to find folks who are the right fit for your establishment. Ones who are excited to be at work, who understand your culture, and who look forward to coming to work every day (or at least most days).

While the interviewing process can be exhaustive, asking the right questions can help you find the right person for your team. This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list. Everyone has their opinion on the best questions to ask, but these top eleven will at least give you a foundation. From here, build out your list to suit your own brewery’s goals and vision.

Pick the ones relevant to you from the list below to help guide you through a more genuine and conscientious interview.

For a brewery owner, crafting the right interview questionnaire and strategy will give you the best chance at finding the right candidate to join your team.

By now, we’ve all heard about food trucks—and more specifically, we’ve probably stood in line for one. Not only do food trucks provide a unique, mobile, culinary experience, but they are an effective way to reel in customers as part of your weekly or daily food options, especially if you don’t have your own on-site kitchen.

But where to start?

Approach booking a food truck just as you would planning a party. You will need to consider variables like cuisine, where to have catering set up, and number of guests.

Read on to learn everything about booking the right food truck.

Today, it seems like everywhere we turn we see dogs in new places.  We see them accompanying their owners into stores, work, coffee shops, airplanes, and everywhere in between. In an age where you can bring Fido just about anywhere, what does that mean for businesses, like breweries, looking to make their taproom more dog friendly?

Many breweries have taken simple steps to make their taprooms more dog friendly. There are a few obvious ideas. For example, setting out treats and water bowls. But if you’re a brewery owner, how can you take it to the next level, creating a comfortable place for both people and their dogs that meets regulations and standards?

Looking for more ways to cater to your customers and their pets?

We’ve got the 411 for your furry friends.

For centuries, bars and taverns have been a gathering place where folks from all walks of life can gather and bond over a pint any time of the day. And today, you can add taprooms to that list of gathering spaces. There are many times you can count on your bar or taproom being a little busier, like on payday or during happy hour. But what about the days when business tends to be a little slow? How can you continue to drive traffic to your establishment during those off-peak hours of the week?

To cultivate customers, you must give them a reason to stop by any day, whether it’s a Tuesday afternoon or a Friday night.

If you’re a bar owner struggling to find creative ways to drive customers in the door, keep reading.

Promoting your bar doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep it simple by following these fresh takes on increasing foot traffic to your bar.