I see what you are saying. But the idea is to sell a volume. Depending on the type of place dont expect the food sales to float the bill. Very little mark up there. If you have a liquor license, you want to sell beverages, lots of them. That is where your mark up will be.
Also the general population wants these beers, they want cheap beers. Selling them in volume is how you make money.
Maybe your place wont need that kind of thing. but most larger operations will need the income from selling these beers. If the brew pub that has BMC on tap has a good house brew why would I not take them seriously?
I would definitely serve BMC in my brewpub. It’s not about being uppity, it’s about the bottom line and I would want to appeal to as many people as I could. This is an easy way to do that.
Blues: First noff, I’m not opening a pub. Its a distributing brewery. Second, if they can’t brew an American Wheat or a Kolsch to bring in the BMC crown then they probably aren’t the best brewers anyway. ;) This is from a man who has lived for the last 17 years in beer hell and who is suddenly starting to see a beer renaissance start to blossom - you don’t promote craft beer by selling BMC. And if you are a struggling craft brewery the worse thing you can do is promote BMC.
The more you promote Craft Beer, the more people will accept it. Promoting BMC is literally shooting yourself in the foot.
One thing to keep in mind is that the craft brewing sales share in 2009 was 4.3% by volume and 6.9% by dollars. In other words keeping BMC on tap won’t hurt the bottom line. ;)
I can certainly respect your view. I certainly have no intention of promoting BMC. I am not a fan. I haven’t surveyed the brewpub market, so I can’t say one way or the other how the market handles this issue but it seems like the market may benefit by the sales of BMC.
Its not about only promoting your “type” of beer - its about promoting craft beer. Craft brewers team up with other craft brewers. My worse fear is not that someone opens a craft brewery in my town - it’s that they open a craft brewery and it sucks.
There’s a place for BMC and I certainly don’t want to see them go away. All I want to do is see craft beer succeed. And, like Tom said, most people who only drink BMC will not want to risk trying anything else. But if you have a good wait staff that sells them a well made kolsch - well, you just opened the gate a little and let a new craft beer drinker in. Next thing you know he’s drinking Arrogant Bastard. ;)
Now, like I said, a good beer bar like the Flying Saucer or someplace with 25 or 50 or more taps. Sure, I totally support them having BMC on tap there. But they are promoting beer - not just craft beer.
It sure as hell will when you’re only making 50 cents a pint on the BMC but are making $2 per pint on the house brews. Unless you’ll sell 4x as many BMC, which is certainly possible in some places. Those would be the kinds of places where you might want to rethink opening a brewpub and just open a bar instead.
There are plenty of stories about small towns breweries who introduced craft beer to the BMC drinking masses and turned them onto good beer. If they had opened and sold BMC along with their beers they would have hardly sold a drop of their own beer. The trick is to lure them into drinking something that is not what they are used to. That’s what I mean by promoting craft beer. Really - IMO - it has everything to do with the bottom line.
If the house beers were all crap, I would politely tell the bartender that I was not enjoying my beer. If I was really thirsty I would then ask to have it replaced by an ice cold mug of Miller (a real insult) and then I would leave never to return. I wouldn’t take the place seriously but because their beer was bad not because of the other beers on tap.
Agree on a certain level. Its not like I would not patronage a place just because they serve Bud. I’m just saying I don;t think it serves their best interest. but, if the house beer is crap … well. Sure, makes sense to serve Bud.
2005 Great American Beer Festival Winner
Large Brewpub and Large Brewpub Brewer
IRON HILL RESTAURANT & BREWERY #3, Wilmington, DE
MARK EDELSON
I called them to find out if they served BMC beer…and boy did I feel embarrassed asking that question… :-[
and there answer was…“NO we don’t serve anything other than the beer we brew on site”.
There’s a strategy behind this logic besides the obvious. They want to win you over and convert you into being an advocate of their beer. This is a strategy employed by many different producers in an effort to brand their products. Iron Hill Brewery appears to be the most successful as they have multiple locations (eight to be exact) and have built a strong membership of mug club members and repeat guests. Not to mention they brew really good beer.
Absolutely right.
In my travels I’ve been in a number of brewpubs and restaurant breweries that did this, and seeing a Bud or Coors tap at a brewpub is to me a ‘red flag’ …if they feel the need to do that to stay in business, then their own beer is probably pretty bad (and that was indeed usually the case).
Any brewer worth his salt should be able to produce a clean, crisp, and lighter style lager or ale as part of their offerings.
That is, after all, what most beer drinkers want…and there’s nothing wrong with that. They should simply offer a house made beer that would aim to satisfy the crowd that feels the usual “craft” style brew has “too much flavor” (I once heard someone in a bar describe “craft” beer in exactly that manner :o).
If a brewpub wih BMC taps is selling more Bud and Coors than their house-made beer, they would probably do better just to sell off the brewing equipment anyway.
When the NHC was in Denver a few years ago, I got a laugh at the Falling Rock Taphouse. The Rockies were playing the Yankees, so there were more than a few fans from NYC. The bartenders would point out the large list of craft beer for $5 a pint. The fans would ask for a Bud. The bartender would pull a bottle out of a cooler and say “$8 please”. They would pay without hesitation.