and orders a light beer. What do you say?
This week there was a story about a couple of brewpubs in Wisconsin that have decided to boycott MillerCoors products because of that companies push to restrict small craft brewers from being able to self distribute in that state. Obviously this move by MillerCoors is despicable but I can't help but ask, if you're a brewpub why are you serving beer from MillerCoors in the first place?
A month or so ago I was in Albuquerque working on advance planning to bring our annual beer festival to that town and of course I had to visit the area breweries while I was there. Two of the breweries that I happened into were promoting wine dinners, not beer dinners featuring their beers or beers from other craft brewers but WINE dinners. Why? Why would you own a brewery if you're not interested in selling your own beer?
Before anyone out there accuses me of not understanding the pressure on a business to give them what all the other competitors are giving them I will just say that I too own a business that specializes in craft beer and we don't serve wine nor do we sell macro brews. When someone ask for either of these products we politely suggest a product that they might enjoy and offer to buy it if they don't like it. If they prefer to go somewhere where they can get a glass of merlot or a pint of Bud Light then that's just the way it is. If build my business on catering to the wine or Bud Light drinker then I'm not exactly living up to my goal of spreading the craft beer gospel and have become just another part of the problem.
I want to encourage every brewpub, craft-centric beer bar and bottle shop to try harder and stop catering to the lowest common denominator. Sure its easy to pour someone a glass of wine or a light beer when they come in and ask for it vs spending the time and energy to introduce them to craft beer but if you wanted to take the easy road then you never should have ended up in the craft beer world to begin with. Sure, there will be some that either will refuse to try whatever you're offering and others that are impossible to please but for every person that you extend the offer to you will win converts and those converts will tell their friends and bring them back for their own conversion experience. I've seen this repeated time and time again and because of it we have developed a devoted and passionate group of customers and that group grows every day.
Have a little more faith in your product, in your business model and in the power of craft beer to convert people to a world of better beer. Don't take the easy way out, do the right thing. Send back those macro kegs, cancel that wine dinner and tap a few more kegs of your own beer. Worst case bring in kegs of craft beer from your other local brewers and support one another because that fellowship will go a long way towards making your business a success and towards making craft beer the preferred beer of Americans.
Craft beer represents only 5% of the total beer purchases in the U.S. but that 5% is the future of beer. It's up to each of craft beer professionals to provide that 5% and all that come after them with the best experience possible and that begins with dumping products that actively work against the interest of our own industry.
