There are a number of reasons why your patrons might enjoy bringing their own bottle of wine to your restaurant. Not only is it affordable, but it also enhances their experience.

As a business owner without a liquor license (or even one that has a license but still offers “bring your own bottle”), letting your customers bring their own wine or bottles encourages more traffic through the door. Plus, offering BYOB helps your restaurant’s profit margin so you can focus more on the quality of cuisine and dining experience.

But before popping the cork, make sure you understand how to determine a corkage fee and the proper corkage etiquette. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a complete corkage fee guide to help you get started.

A bartender is essential to any drinking operation. Of course you need someone behind the bar slinging cocktails, stirring glasses, and pouring beers. But a role that is just as important in a bar is a barback. Someone who might not necessarily stand front and center in the eye of the customers, but rather scurries around washing glasses, refilling garnishes, stockpiling napkins, and pretty much doing all the other little tasks that make sure a bartender can perform their best.

Similar to bussers in restaurants, barbacks fill in behind the scenes, performing necessary duties that keep your establishment running smoothly everyday.

For that reason, barbacks are one of the most important pieces of a bar team.

If you’re becoming a new bar owner or looking to improve your current bar staff, hiring a knowledgeable, hard-working barback is key.

Certain cocktails benefit from a wide range of glasses that enhance both their appearance and taste. Picking the right drinkware boosts a beverage’s aroma and temperature. All this means that using the right cocktail glass is incredibly important.

But what type of glass does your bartender need for some of the most common cocktails on your bar’s menu?

Read on to learn about the most common types of cocktail glasses and how their design brings out different aspects of each beverage.

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.

This has been a hot year for hops. Who are we kidding? Hops have been hot for decades now. This year in particular our friends at Hop Culture have already covered “The 5 Hottest Hops of 2022, According to an Expert” and “The Four Hottest Hop Trends.” So maybe it’s time to cool things down. One of the newer trends in the hop-forward IPA category is Cold IPAs.

First pioneered by Wayfinder Beer in Portland, OR, Cold IPAs have popped up in the portfolios of revered breweries all across the country. For instance, WeldWerks Brewing Co., Necromancer Brewing, Reuben’s Brews, Alvarado Street Brewery, Great Notion Brewing, and so many more.

But what exactly is a Cold IPA? Why are brewers so hot on them? And why should you even care?

According to “Untappd’s Top Ten Styles of 2021”, IPA – American, IPA – New England, and IPA – Double / Imperial nailed down the top three spots with a whopping combined 17.5 million check-ins last year. Quite simply: craft beer consumers love IPAs.

But drinkers are constantly looking for something new, innovative, and different.

A Cold IPA ticks all those boxes. Which is why you should consider learning more about them and potentially adding one to your portfolio.

For ages now it seems like hard seltzer has been hot. Every year sales for cans of alcoholic fizz bubbled over the top.

But is that very same bubble about to burst?

Normally, summer signals the season of seltzer. Last year, analysts predicted that over the warmer months hard seltzer would dominate. And in all fairness everyone had a reason to be sunny.

Up to that point, the U.S. hard seltzer market was valued at over $4 billion according to data from Nielsen IQ. And while for comparison beer is an almost $88 billion market, it’s the growth pace of hard seltzer that has caused so much optimism.

For the last half-decade or so, hard seltzer grew exponentially. According to data from Nielsen, the category accelerated 226% in 2019 and 165% in 2020.

For that reason, every big (and small) beverage business and brewery (and their mother, brother, sister, and cousin) have attempted to cash in on the carbonation.

Brands like The Boston Beer Company (who makes Truly), Mark Anthony Group (White Claw), Constellation Brands (Corona Hard Seltzer), MolsonCoors (Vizzy), Coca-Cola (Topo Chico Hard Seltzer), and more.

Plus, many neighborhood craft breweries and brands, including New Belgium, Cigar City, Roadhouse Brewing Co., Evil Twin, and Mighty Swell, started putting out their own craft spin.

But in 2021, the numbers showed a different story. Hard seltzer grew only sixteen percent last year, according to data from Nielsen.

In fact, Data from Bloomberg Intelligence showed that hard seltzer sales slowed to about thirty percent by July 2021, down from 165 percent in 2020.

Have we had our fill of fizz? Why are seltzer sales falling flat?

We dug into the “check-in” courtesy of Untappd Insights and chatted with Bart Wilson, Chief Economist at the Brewer Association to find out if hard seltzer is truly fizzing out or if the segment is poised to return with a big splash this summer.