How to Improve Your Bar

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.

We’ll make this simple: If you serve food, you will most likely sell more beer. Adding a food menu to your brewery or bar program has many advantages. It creates a reason for people to stay and order more beers; it increases your revenue; it brings new customers into your space; it gives folks more reason to love your brand.

Sure, we understand that building a bar menu means tackling a whole new beast, paying for a food service license, planning for food cost, and investing in the labor and equipment necessary to operate a kitchen.

But the perks are worth the potential problems.

“If you do sell food as a brewery, you will also sell more beer,” says Tim McLaughlin, founder of GoTab, a revolutionary contactless ordering and payment web service that recently launched an all-in-one restaurant point-of-sale system. “We’ve worked with breweries that have done studies, and every single one finds they sell more beer when they sell food.”

If you do not sell food, now is the time to consider adding dishes to your menu. Fittingly, we have all the details you need to design the best bar menu.

And once you have your bar menu mapped out, Untappd for Business is the ultimate tool to build a menu for your establishment that you can publish to your website, digital menus, Facebook, and the Untappd app. Leveraging QR codes and well-designed custom contactless print and digital menus helps you create a safe environment for your customers and staff.

Over the last half decade, Instagram has become the social platform of the beer industry. Consumers have created their own craft beer subculture where top influencers have thrived. For breweries, posting gorgeous beer shots and announcing releases have become crucial to their marketing strategy.

With over 9,000 breweries around the country, it’s imperative to find a way to make your brewery, bar, or restaurant stand out. Cultivating a current, consistently updated Instagram profile is imperative to reach your target audience.

But where do you start?

For example, how many times a week should you post? What time should you post? What should you post? What about those “hashtags?” Should I hire a social media manager? And how about Instagram influencers? We’re breaking it all down and more to tap into what makes people double-tap.

Here is a beginner’s guide with all the basics to help you build a foundation for the best Instagram account for your business.

Designing your restaurant, bar, or brewery sets the tone for your entire establishment. How you outfit your space speaks to your larger brand and will attract potential customers. We have several top tips on how to design the overall look of your brewery or restaurant, but often it’s the smallest of details that matter, such as your lighting.

What may seem like a very tiny detail such as lighting can actually have a big impact on your business. The lighting sets the mood of your operation and illustrates your brand to your potential customer base.

For example, if you are a family-friendly space operating during the day, your lighting should be different than a twenty-one-plus space that sees most of its traffic come through at night. All these factors contribute to the type of lighting that you’ll use in your brewery or restaurant.

Seems like a lot?

You’re a business owner and you are about to open your own restaurant, bar, brewery, or brewpub. You’ve gone through all the legwork of building the best business plan, securing investment, finding the perfect location, developing your brand and logo, designing the interior and exterior, planning the menu, and dealing with millions of other little details.

You can see the finish line looming in front of you with that grand opening datecircled on the calendar. And while a grand opening does seem like the grand plan here, have you considered a soft opening?

If you’re not even sure what a soft opening is, that’s totally fine because we’re here to help.

Consider a soft opening another weapon in your arsenal. It’s a chance to sharpen your knives (literally and figuratively), hone your operations, generate early buzz, and receive consumer feedback before you even open your doors.

If you haven’t already, here are the reasons you should consider a soft opening for your establishment.

When it comes to storing and serving beer, whether for distribution or in your own taproom, there are plenty of options.

Half-barrel kegs, sixtels, quarter barrels, 50-litre kegs, and more all hold a different number of beers in different volumes—ounces, gallons, liters, pints, cans, and even growlers.

Putting it all down on paper can seem a little daunting. But it’s essential when running a brewery or bar to understand the capacity of each of these different vessels. And to also learn the different purposes and situations for each of these varying kegs.

So we did the legwork for you!

We’ll break down all the different types of kegs and when it’s best to use them. Plus, reference our handy infographic below for a quick look at how many beers go into all different sizes of kegs.

The above infographic is handy whether you’re a seasoned beverage business owner or just getting into the game. Know what else is a super helpful business tool? Our new Untappd for Business E-Book: The Ultimate Start Up Guide for Breweries in 2022. And you can download it for free. Right now!

For many business owners, cutting the ribbon and throwing open the doors to your brewery, bar, restaurant, or bottle shop will be a dream come true. Most likely, your grand opening will be the most exciting and simultaneously scariest day of your life.

We understand that building a business from the ground up can be stressful. You’ll be faced with many challenges and hurdles along the way. But your grand opening is your first shot to shout from the rooftops that your establishment is ready to rock n’ roll.

And while planning the perfect grand opening can certainly be fun, it’s actually a very important day for many reasons.

When done well, hosting a grand opening will generate buzz for your establishment and set the tone for months to come. For that reason it should definitely be a part of your overall business plan.

But like we said, it can certainly be a fun day if you implement one of these seventeen grand opening ideas for your brewery, bar, restaurant, or bottle shop.

Attracting consumers to your bar or taproom on busy days like Friday, Saturday, and even Sunday is one thing. But don’t overlook driving foot traffic into your establishment on slow days during the week.

Bringing folks in to drink Monday through Thursday puts pints in hands and boosts your bottom line when you need it most.

Luckily, it isn’t that hard to find ways to increase your foot traffic with events. Just follow these handy tips. Plus, sixteen of the best event ideas we found to help increase traffic and revenue to your bar.

In early 2020, the pandemic forced many breweries to refocus their business strategies. As taprooms closed across the country, breweries either increased their packaging options or focused on them for the first time. But even before the pandemic, large-format packaging had been trending. Crowlers (32oz) and growlers (64oz) have become popular drinking vessels at breweries because they encourage consumers to take home a high volume of liquid to go while simultaneously keeping that beer fresh and carbonated for a certain amount of time.

“One of brewers’ greatest fears is they spend all this time crafting a delicious beverage, but they have no control over what happens to it afterwards,” says Caroline Macdonell, Director of Marketing at DrinkTanks, a popular company making premium, insulated growlers.

Both a crowler and a growler help ensure that consumers can take beer directly from the brewery while keeping it fresh and carbonated with the flavor the brewer intended.

“Beer is such a passion industry where what you’re making is your heart and soul and you love it,” says Ian Crane, Account Manager: Beer, Wine, and Spirits at MiiR, a design-forward company making premium stainless steel vessels for beer.

But what exactly is a crowler and a growler? And most importantly, what are the advantages of each of these packaging options?

Cracking the code on crowlers and growlers could help beverage business owners make a pivotal decision on the right beer-to-go opportunity for their taproom.