Is your social media feed beer driven or activity driven? It is a question that I want to pose to as many brewery media folk as possible. I know that my lens is introverted and geeky and that a new beer with a new hop or a heritage barley will get me into a taproom more than cornhole but I feel like the pendulum has swung a little too far away from the actual liquid.
This is of course also coming from someone who recently posted about thinking outside the box when it comes to activities and who also posted about a book extolling community at taprooms.
Themed nights are an effort to get butts in seats and buying beer from a crowd who is not buying currently. Economics are at play here. A new beer release is probably not going to bring out a line of beer buyers willing to pay a premium as much as a casual drinker who knows not of Dynaboost and Fonio.
But, the casual / weekend drinker is more fickle than a beer geek and losing sight of that in a rush to a cater to a crowd who are not tied to your beer but by karaoke is harder work in my opinion.
I have been in venues which after that evening’s ‘event’ ends (I did not know it was having an event.), the venue clears out faster than an emergency airplane evacuation.
The people attending had maybe two beers during the span. It has to cost some money to host these events [usually trivia]. I wonder if the venue actually profits from this. Or it doesn’t, but the venue has decided it would raise more questions and speculation if it ceased doing the weekly event.
And the latest is speed puzzling. I have to think that buying beer is part of the overall deal but as opposed to sports on big tv’s, I agree that it is harder selling to trivia buffs than beer fans.