How to assess brewery and taproom trends

What to take away

Brewery and taproom trends are most useful when tested against the numbers and constraints in your own room. This guide covers seven operational shifts and local checks that can help you decide whether each one merits attention.

Seven operational shifts to assess

Trend writing in this trade usually rests on a survey of a self-selecting group or one channel's sales data presented as the market. Neither describes your block.

What follows is a list of seven shifts and the operational checks you can run against your own numbers to see whether each one applies to you.

Non-alcoholic tap handles. Athletic Brewing built a national brand on NA beer alone, and Guinness 0.0 offers another familiar example to consider when evaluating whether guests would order an NA option.

The operational question is whether your draft system, your glassware and your bartender script support a fourth or fifth handle that carries no alcohol tax and no age gate. Check your NA depletion as a share of total pours before you add a line.

Lager and pilsner. Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Russian River are examples to examine when considering clean lager alongside an IPA-led menu. Whether that shift matters to your taproom is a question for your own depletion and menu mix.

Lager takes longer in tank, so the trend is a capacity decision as much as a recipe one. Compare your lager days-in-tank against your IPA days-in-tank before you promise a permanent handle.

Packaged and to-go. BrewDog and Allagash both run taprooms where packaged sales rival draft, and to-go is where the margin sits when draft labor is tight.

This is a licensing question first: what you may sell in what container, and whether your state allows growler, crowler or can sales from the taproom, is set by your state alcohol beverage control board. Confirm with them before you print a menu.

Private events. A taproom that closes to the public for a Thursday booking can trade a night of uncertain covers for a known minimum.

Event revenue may be contracted rather than weather-dependent, but that does not establish demand in your room. Check your calendar for how many Fridays you would need to give up to make the numbers work.

Direct delivery. In states that permit self-distribution, a brewery may consider running its own vans to accounts rather than paying a distributor's margin.

The trade-off is a driver, a vehicle, insurance and a delivery schedule on top of production. Confirm what your state permits before you price it.

Earlier hours. A taproom that opens at noon on weekends and closes by nine may serve a family and early-dinner crowd that a 4pm-to-midnight schedule misses. Check your own sales by hour before changing the schedule.

This shift can change your labor cost because opening earlier changes which hours you staff. Pull sales by hour and compare the same hour four weeks earlier before adjusting the schedule.

No-tip pricing. A service-included model can mean higher menu prices and a higher base wage. Assess your labor costs and guest response before treating the model as a fit for your taproom.

Whether you can do this depends on your state wage order and tip-credit rules, which vary. Name the authority and get a CPA or employment attorney to confirm before you change a pay band.

How to tell a trend from noise in your own room

Use a consistent set of checks before spending anything. The aim is to distinguish a repeatable local pattern from a one-off observation.

A useful check is whether a pattern has an identifiable cause. 'Guests are ordering more lager' is a pattern. 'Guests are ordering more lager because the office two blocks away now finishes at four' gives you a reason to test whether the change is durable and something you can staff against.

What gets ordered. Depletion by product, week by week, is a direct signal of choices people made with money.

What gets asked for. Questions at the bar lead orders by weeks or months. Have each bartender note the three questions they answered most and the things guests asked for that you do not carry.

Changes in when people come can reflect something structural: a new employer nearby, a change in transit, a competitor opening or closing. Sales by hour, compared with the same hour four weeks earlier, can help reveal a change in your room.

The second signal can be easy to miss, and collecting it is free. Consistent notes are useful alongside your sales data. Watching these in your own room is a version of the observation habit described in what to look for when you visit any taproom, turned inward.

Responding without betting the business

When a pattern appears consistently in your own data, respond in the cheapest reversible way available.

Anything at step four belongs in the framework for the routes to more volume rather than being treated as a response to a trend, because it is a structural decision with its own approvals and its own payroll consequences.

Supply is the constraint people forget when responding quickly, and a style shift you want to chase may need ingredients with long lead times. Long lead times on ingredients are one of the yield clocks covered in the brewery and taproom inventory guide.

What can change independently of demand

Two forces move your business without any change in what guests want, and they are worth watching separately.

The first is regulatory. What you may sell, in what containers, to whom, and during which hours is set by your state alcohol beverage control board, and those rules do change.

So does the federal side of production and packaging, which begins at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau: Starting a TTB-Regulated Business: Brewery page.

Ask each body directly whether anything relevant has changed, at least annually, and keep the answers with the rest of what your license actually requires of you. Nobody will write to you about everything.

The second is labor: availability of people willing to work nights and weekends shapes what you can open, independent of guest demand.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Food Service Managers profile fairly describes this schedule. You feel the constraint through hiring, not sales, which is why hiring and training the crew belongs in a demand discussion.

For the general business context around any of this, the U.S. Small Business Administration: SBA Business Guide covers planning, financing, insurance and growth for a small business, without attempting anything alcohol specific.

Building the habit

Set a recurring hour, quarterly, and do the same four things.

After four quarters you have a year of dated observations specific to your room. That file gives you a record for your decisions that is more relevant to your business than a broad published forecast.

Common questions

Should I follow what other breweries are doing?

Watch, and be careful about copying. What is permitted differs by state, and what works at another scale may not work at yours. Copy the reasoning, not the tactic.

How long before I can trust a pattern?

Three consecutive periods at minimum, and a full year before you act on anything seasonal. One year gives you a hypothesis; the second year is the test.

What if my data disagrees with everything I read?

Trust your data and check your definitions. Published figures describe a broad average across regions and segments, and you operate in one place.

What is the earliest sign that demand is softening?

Usually a shortening of visits rather than fewer visits. Check average spend per guest and party size before you conclude that footfall has fallen.