WEB Can Help Grow Your Business
Jul 30, 2010 Events, Something To Think About, education
Everyone wants to be reminded of good stuff. And part of that is learning about the good stuff.
Good stuff begets growth – when people learn, they are the right kind of consumer and provide for growth, whatever your definition of growth is (not necessarily larger).
We’ve got lots of that – good stuff – that can help your brewery and beer business grow.
Want some ideas? Let’s start with just a few.
1. Focus groups, even thus far, from hundreds of women have yielded dozens of categories of information per marketing beer to women. Valuable and useful information.
WEB can help you grow your beer business
2. On premise expertise. Want to figure out how your taproom, pub, brewery, and restaurant crews can better and still responsibly sell more beer and brush up on their customer experience skills? WEB has that kind of knowledge for you.
3. Educational workshops and discussions. WEB has numerous ways to help open the conversation with your consumers, within your crew, as well as from consumers to staff and staff to consumers. They’re all related and all different. Know which one to do when.
4. Events execution. WEB works with you to customize events to best fit your goals, market share, vision, and budgets. Most importantly – WEB helps you get more women holding your beer in their hands, more often.
Need more reasons? Call me to talk about it. 515.450.7757.
This operator is standing by and the women are waiting.
Value For Female Beer Consumers
Jul 28, 2010 Focus Group Information, Something To Think About, education
All value, all the time.
Wouldn’t that be a dream channel for real life?
All value, all the time
Well, if you’re in the beer business, you can make this a reality and attract millions more consumers. Millions seems to lofty? Consider even dozens or hundreds more consumers would make a difference.
How? By properly courting the female consumer.
Let me tell you about value for the female consumer.
Value for women includes:
- Time value otherwise known as the experience. If they are going to take the time to do something, they want it to be worth while.
- Enjoyment value. They want the involvement to be enjoyable.
- Educational value. Women like to and want to learn. A better educated consumer is a great thing for the beer community too.
- Dollar value. Be it $8 for a six pack of canned beer they want or $22 for a dinner table bottle of special beer they want to share (like yummy Bruery Beers). Whatever the price tag, it’s not the low or high of the actual dollar – it’s how much it’s worth to them.
Value.
One of the top three things women consider in their relationship to beer. Drink that up.
Tools
Jul 27, 2010 Focus Group Information, Something To Think About, education
What tools are in your tool box?
Adage from Sullivision: Tools left in the toolbox never built anything.
And, adding to that, unless you pick up the tools to build something new or repair something in need of attention, you’re never going to get anywhere.
For those of you in the beer business community – breweries, restaurants, vendors, suppliers, retailers, distributors – you’ll never go one step farther earning female market share unless you pick up the right tool to genuinely garner the female beer consumers’ attention. You don’t deserve it if you don’t use the right tools and you’ll certainly pay for it if you use the wrong tools.
How do you know which tools to use?
Ask women what they want, gather data from them, apply it properly. As a specialist, I can tell you that there are so many ill fated attempts to market to women because the lens is all wrong.
The lens has to be from the woman’s perspective; not from yours, no matter how smart you think you are (or actually are). And regardless of if you’re a women in the industry – being of the industry is different than being the consumer.
You’re not the woman, she is. Ask her, act on that information and you’ll both come out ahead.
Like Marti Barletta says, the first rule of marketing is to understand your market. The second? Understand your consumer.
Here, here!
Tags: earning female market share, Marti Barletta, proper marketing, Sullivision
Tongue and Cheek
Jul 14, 2010 craft beer, education
Consider the taste buds.
One reason to thoroughly coat your mouth when you taste your beer it because we have tastebuds all over our mouth – tongue, cheeks, back of the throat, and the roof of the mouth.
Larry and Don at Napa Smith
We recently had the pleasure of a tour and visit with Don Barkley, at Napa Smith, and I asked him about this. I asked him about how beer makers completely taste and swallow and wine makers taste and spit it out. (Napa Smith makes both quality beers and wines hence the question). More specifically I inquired about if and why beer should be swallowed when tasted vs. the traditional wine spitting out after a thorough mouth coat.
He shared that he believes that it’s important to swallow because the different flavors you get from beer will best include the swallowing of the beer for those flavor purposes. Said another way, you get different flavor experiences when you completely swallow your beer.
Never mind that attractive (to some) beer burp to re-experience it.
So be sure to really taste your beer. Let it coat your entire mouth and then enjoy the swallow. The whole experience involves from the tip of your lips to the drop down the gullet.
Tags: Don Barkley, Napa Smith, taste buds, tasting your beer
Jul 7, 2010 Beer & Other Edibles, Events, education
Come join us at 4 Daughters
The next Women Enjoying Beer meet up is coming up next week – July 15th, Thursday. This month we’ll meet at 4 Daughters Irish Pub in Medford.
In honor of Oregon Craft Beer Month, we’re featuring the realllllly tasty and diverse beers from Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) – Portland. Mmmmm!
Details:
- Thursday July 15th, 7 – 830 pm.
- Flight of 4 HUB beers and 4 matching foods (as usual feel free to supplement the evening with additional beer and food as you wish on your own, come early & stay late!).
- Only $15 per person for all the beer, food and fun.
- RSVP’s please by July 13th to me directly – this email or phone 515.450.7757.
Also – there is still room on the Oregon Craft Beer Rafting Trip put on by White Water Warehouse. What a fabulous opportunity to treat yourself and a friend to a great trip, fresh air, quality beer (Ninkasi) and meet new people – all in the splendor of the state of beautiful Oregon on the Rogue River. Details here.
fermenting wort
Speak up if you have requests of beers, locations, field trip destinations, and foods to try. Your input is valued and always encouraged.
We’re also very glad to be available to you for private events (beer, food, dinner parties, and the like). What a great way to celebrate friendships, business relationships, and employee appreciation by hosting a totally singular event for people who are important to you. Call me when it’s convenient for you to talk about the possibilities.
Get in touch today to save your seat – and one or three for friends joining you this month. Many thanks.
Cheers!
Ginger
Tags: 4 Daughters Irish Pub, HUB, meet ups, Ninkasi, Raft & Craft trip, White Water Warehouse
Terroir
Jul 7, 2010 Myth Busting, Something To Think About, education
All About Beer has a really informative, good to read article this month entitled How Does Your Beer Taste? And How Do You Taste Your Beer?
Terroir in our beer
Part of what we taste involves terroir.
Terroir has been a term long used in the wine world. It’s starting to be applied in the beer world too – as it should be.
Terroir is defined by dictionary.com as, well, it’s not there. Heck, the spell check in Wordpress doesn’t even offer it. Hmmm…so let’s go to Wikipedia (there’s a message right there).
Wikipedia states, according to its aggregate style information:
“Terroir (French pronunciation: [tɛʁwaʁ]) comes from the word terre “land”. It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon particular varieties. Agricultural sites in the same region share similar soil, weather conditions, and farming techniques, which all contribute to the unique qualities of the crop. It can be very loosely translated as “a sense of place,” which is embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the manufacture of the product.”
It goes on:
“The definition of terroir can be expanded to include elements that are controlled or influenced by human decisions.”
Finally I’ll clip this snippet “Terroir in other drinks”. Yet – alas!! No even a hint of a mention of beer.
Curious since terroir is all about the influence of where the ingredients were grown or raised. Beer has 4 primary ingredients. The water, grain, hops and yeast will all contribute so many flavor characters, and arguably all 4 could plainly exhibit their own terroir. Is that terroir to the 4th power?
Julia Herz has talked about Terroir per beer. We should all be listening to these ideas.
Tasting goes well beyond the obvious. That’s why you should savor your beer.
Even if it’s hot and you have a great session beer in front of you. It has its own terroir so take at least a few sips and give it the opportunity to expand your thinking and please your taste buds before it simply quenches your thirst.
Tags: All About Beer, Julia Herz, reapply, redefine, terroir in beer
Accessory Benefits
Jun 24, 2010 Something To Think About, education
Beer has “many accessory benefits.” – John Hickenlooper, 2009
Mr Hickenlooper has some beer roots – he helped found Wynkoop Brewing, wherein this effort started the rejuvenation and refurbishment of Lower Down Town Denver, Colorado. He tells us beer is in [Denver's] DNA.
I’ll buy that. And the beer too.
So what are some of these accessory benefits?
1. Employment - the small brewers of the country (2m barrels produced per year or less) employ 100,000 people. Never mind the ancillary employment (liquor stores, retailers, suppliers, etc.)
The wages are the tip of the iceberg – what of supplies, crops, building materials, transportation; employment benefits like insurance, medical, and training all trickle too.
2. They help anchor the communities they are in. They give back – generously – and are genuinely invested and interested in their ocmmunities.
3. They’re passionate about their beer. However it manifests, I’d bet big money that the person who helped found the company (brewer, operator, investor) is passionate about beer. Passion moves things forward.
4. They’re fun loving, smart, engaged folks. They come from all kinds of background – technical (brewing or otherwise), law, education, public service, white collar, blue collar – you name it. Great diversity = great information melting pot for the good of the whole.
This is a shorter list that could be greatly lengthened. Hopefully you get the idea.
Supporting your local brewer goes way farther than your own back yard.
Avoid myopia. See and share the vision.
3 C’s
Jun 23, 2010 Good People, Something To Think About, education
3 C’s of Craft Beer, ala – one of my favorites (sharp, in the know, professional, etc.) – Julia. I’ll 
extrapolate the 3 C’s with some of my own meanings.
Complement – what goes well together?
Contrast – what really strikes a chord being different?
Cut – what can help make a pathway through (perhaps a hoppy beer through greasy foods)?
Sure – we could wheel of more starts-with-a-C words. How about clarity, color, content, context, carbonation, commodity, craft cleanliness, community, commitment.
Any others you care to share?
Tags: Brewers Association, complement, contrast, cut
Giant Oak Market Share
Jun 18, 2010 Myth Busting, Something To Think About, education
- Who’s your target market?
- Who’s your primary buyer?
- Are they one in the same?
- Do you seek new market share?
WEB started small...now we're up to 24+ at each monthly meeting
If you’re a brewery, brewer or brewpub and are searching for ways to get more beer in more glasses of educated consumers, look at the mighty oak idea.
Joel Salatin puts it this way in his book Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.
“Giant oak trees do not propagate themselves by dropping 20 ft. babies out of their tops. They propagate tiny acorns, because that is the smallest viable structure of the parent….Its size is its strength.”
To paraphrase for WEB purposes and beer, you have to start entering a market with tiny efforts. The efforts take water, light, food and attention to grow.
- If you think marketing to women is a novelty or ’small’ market share, think again. Think big.
- If you think by starting small, where economy of efforts isn’t where you think you want it to be (read – it may be more of an investment than you think you want to afford), know that it will payoff. Period.
Women make up the majority of the entire human population. Hmmm. Isn’t that worth courting?
When you court a market share authentically and accurately, you WILL grow some mighty oaks. Mighty can be pockets of fans, groups far or near of enthusiasts that continue to sneeze and every kind and size of group in between.
Start small. Every idea starts that way no matter how lofty the goal may be.
Tags: accuracy, authenticity, female market share, reap rewards, start small
Three Cheers – In The Right Glass
Jun 7, 2010 Beer & Other Edibles, Myth Busting, craft beer, education
Here’s an article that’s headed in the right direction.
Makes me cringe when I see ice cold glasses used for ANY beer, whether it’s supposed to be served chilly or not. Beer is not supposed to be served frozen.
When giving any kind of event or education piece, this is a critical light bulb turn on. Here’s my analogy.
Say you have a garden ripened tomato. Do you store it in the fridge? If you do, what happens to the taste and flavors? What happens to the tomato? What then is your experience going to be like?
Beer, like garden tomatoes, needs to be served (preferably when possible – and it’s not being snobby) at its best temperature. We’re not talking about getting candy thermometer out. We’re talking about good uncommon sense. What temperature should it be served at, approximately? Lager? Crisp out of the fridge. Stout – let it warm up just a bit to really be able to enjoy all the flavors.
Do you see pourers of Guinness grabbing a frozen glass? Cold glass, fine. Frozen – the beer doesn’t really appreciate it , me thinks.
Plus who wants a bunch of frozen crystallized froth in their beer glass?
So pick your glassware, pick the right temp of the glassware. Double whammy for double the pleasure and authentic experience.
This isn’t being a snob. It’s knowing what you like and asking for it.
Tags: beer justice, glassware, temperature