How to Improve Your Bar

These days, serving food has become a core component of any drinking establishment. Adding a food menu to your bar or brewery creates a reason for people to stay and order more beers, increases your revenue, and brings more customers into your space.

And while the popularity of to-go meals increased during the pandemic, today, people are once again going out to eat in person at bars and breweries.

And when potential customers decide where to eat, the caliber of the meal takes precedence.

In fact, of the 2,600 diners questioned for a TouchBistro 2022 Diner Trends Report, sixty-eight percent agree that when deciding where to eat, food quality is the most important factor.

With food at the top of diners’ minds, bars and breweries, especially those just considering whether to serve food at all, should focus on developing a menu full of money-making foods to draw in those hungry customers.

There is nothing better than a full bar. As a bar owner, witnessing patrons sipping cocktails and engaging in conversation is a sign of repeat business and a profitable day.

According to a National Restaurant Association study, the typical bartender can make thirty-six drinks in an hour. To get the most out of your liquor bottles and maximize your margins on a busy night, it’s critical that your bartenders are well-versed in standard liquor pours.

We’re here to make sure your staff understands the standard liquor pouring techniques so they can consistently make the best-tasting cocktails for your customers.

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.

As restaurant owners, we want to make sure that our customers have an enjoyable experience—this starts the moment they walk in the door to make a reservation. It’s our goal to get them seated and enjoying their meal as soon as possible.

Long Range Systems, one of the industry’s top providers of technology that improves the guest experience, was so curious about the amount of time hungry patrons spend waiting in line that they conducted a survey with 267 restaurant owners and managers.

The results indicated that nearly ninety-three percent of restaurants have at least some wait-time periods.

On average, the study found that people waited almost a half hour for a table, with restaurants recording waitlists of an average of 6.6 hours per week.

With those numbers in mind, and as businesses continue to lean into the digital age, a smart investment for restaurants could be leveraging a waitlist or wait-in-line app. These platforms can help you manage bookings, text patrons when their table becomes available, and, overall, make the experience of waiting for a table more convenient for your customers.

Here are our best recommendations for wait-in-line apps for restaurants that help you smoothly run your business while also creating an enjoyable experience for your customers.

Here is a staggering fact: Over 726,936 bartenders currently work in the United States, according to demographic information from Zippia.

And that number is only going to get higher. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the employment of bartenders is projected to grow eighteen percent from 2021 to 2031, with about 105,300 openings for bartenders projected each year, on average, over the next decade.

Many of those positions are anticipated based on the need to replace workers who change careers or retire.

If your business is looking to hire a bartender who has the proper bartending licenses and skills, keep reading as we break down salaries and tipping expectations for bartenders.

On average, diners only look at a menu for 109 seconds, according to a Gallup poll cited in a Canva article on menu design hacks. Let that sink in. That’s about as long as it takes to pump a full tank of gas.

Since time is of the essence, it’s important that you thoughtfully consider the layout, standard menu size, dish titles, etc. After all, your menu is your biggest and most important sales pitch.

It’s a persuasive and useful tool that, if designed and built appropriately, will increase sales and keep your restaurant fully booked each day.

Let’s examine the foundations of restaurant menu design and how you can leverage a seemingly simple list of dishes and beers to boost your bottom line.

With Untappd’s analytics, you have a vast wealth of data on craft beer drinkers on the world’s largest social networking platform literally at your fingertips.

We can show you what beers Untappd drinkers are consuming the most in your area along with what styles are trending and which are taking a turn downwards.

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

Analyzing these behaviors and purchasing habits will help you make crucial business decisions including, but not limited to, what beers to brew next, what styles to stock on your shelves, or what beers to put on tap.

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 in Asheville, NC, over the last ninety days.

Service industry employees like bartenders, wait staff, food runners, and bussers are the backbone of the service industry and your business. Your servers work hard every day to bring customers’ food and drinks to the right table (not to mention ensuring special birthday dinners go off without a hitch). And your bartenders work tirelessly to keep the drinks flowing for your patrons.

When it comes to taking care of your bartenders and servers, there are specific laws under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Internal Revenue Code that employers in the hospitality industry must follow. Accordingly, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides a Fact Sheet to help business owners understand the differences between tips and service charges, especially for tax reporting purposes.

In this article, we’ll use that Fact Sheet to help navigate the tricky territory between tips and service charges while showing you how to stay in compliance with reporting each to the IRS.

Whether you’re a high-end cocktail emporium, one of the best watering holes around the country, or a neighborhood bar, chances are your bartenders and servers are part of the beating heart of your team. Accordingly, you need to make sure that they have all the proper licenses or certificates required to legally serve alcoholic beverages. Does a bartender or server need a license to serve or sell alcohol?

The question might be a little bit more complicated than you think because the answer varies from state to state and sometimes even county to county or city to city.

So we dug into the details to help you understand what your bartenders and servers legally need in order to serve or sell alcohol across the country.