Kieth think braggot and the 4x premium.
very good info bbump22
Of course beer enthusiasts care about the beer. But their wives, and the 80% of the rest of the population, care about the food. It’s a well known fact in the industry that the beer is really a novelty in a brewpub. Not in all instanced, but in a vast majority. If your food sucks you are not going to be in existence long in most cases. Not many people are going to be lining up at 11:30 am on a Tuesday to drink your beer for lunch, so how are you going to stay open? In any restaurant you need to keep people coming in the doors all week long, not just Friday and saturday nights or for a few hours a week during happy hour.
Again, there are exceptions, but not many.
It seems to me the biggest factor in success of a brewpub is location, both having a high-traffic location in the town, and being in a town that cares about good food.
Good beer and good food are only appreciated in certain geographical pockets. Growing up in Colorado, I took good food and good beer for granted. Even the smallish/hickish town I grew up in (Fruita CO, FWIW) had a couple of Thai restaurants within driving distance. Being raised in a culture with an above-average appreciation for food and drink really skewed my perception of how much “average” people care about the quality of what they consume.
Living in Missouri, the situation is completely different. The closest town to me has a population of 14k, and probably 20 fast food restaurants. There are a few locally-owned restaurants I’ve found to be passable, one that’s good but never has any customers, and all the rest are aggressively bad, yet very busy. The beer situation is similar. With a few exceptions, mostly in St. Louis and KC, you can’t get good beer in restaurants here. There are a few small outfits trying to change things, but they’ve only started in the last couple of years, and who knows if they’ll be successful or not.
Even if you make the best beer and best food, if your customers don’t want that, you won’t stay in business long.
Can you share with me where these great brewpubs are with great food you speak of? Id like to try them out.
I really think that you’re in the minority.
Grizzly Peak in Ann Arbor. Hop Cat in Grand Rapids (they brew 3 barrels at a time, but have about 40 guest taps so they are also a beer baar). Those come to mind quickly. Oh, yeah, Redwood Lodge in Flint.
Pelican Pub in Oregon.
Revolution in Chicago.
There are a few production breweries that have really good food, but you wanted brewpubs.
Most likely I am…Im not arguing Denny, it was just my 2 cents and by no means am I an expert.
Brewpubs are great and I love going to them, personally I have a tough time finding ones on the East Coast that I go to for the food. When I lived in Seattle, my favorite place to go was Maritime Brewing Co and I went for the food! But on the flip side, I would go to Pike Brewing Co for the beer/location and eat before I went. Im in Portsmouth now and Portsmouth Brewing is a great brewpub but I go for the incredible beers…The food is average. Again, just my 2 cents. Regardless, Im still going to go to brewpubs, gotta support the local brewers.
Working/owning a brewpub would be a dream job though, all the freedom you would have to be creative is pretty tempting to want to start one. Much higher risk and investment compared to opening a production brewery though. Best of luck to everyone interested in starting one…Hope to visit one day.
Always wanted to go to Pelican Pub. I have family in Chi-town so I will definitely check out Revolution, Thanks!
We made one of our beers at Grizzly Peak. It is the biggest brewpub by volume in Michigan. They have the head brewer Duncan, and his 2 assistants. We hade to grab something from the kitchen, and as we were back there before the lunch rush, I noticed the line of chefs/cooks doing various tasks. There is also the front grill and pizza oven that are staffed. This says nothing of the dishwashers, busers, and servers. Lots of staff, many multiples of the brewers and bartenders (they have 2 bars in the place).
Here is another fun fact. When we were at beer camp and asked how many people worked at Sierra Nevada, the number was big, but that included the Taproom/Kitchan staff which outnumbered the brewery staff at the second largest craft brewery.
Here in OR great food at brewpubs is the norm.
Another very fine brewpub with great food is Iron Hill Brewery. They are in the tri-state area DE/PA/NJ.
I’d like to hear from the brew pubs you folks are going too that have great beer but crappy food.
Oak Creek brewery should call you. It’s good when you’ve had a few beers and it’s food, but I wouldn’t call it good food. Of course they distribute to local bars and I think that’s where most of their business comes from.
I said that. If you run a brew pub you will have about 11% sales from beer.
I stands behind that.
If you have just a tap room and you do not serve a food then your sales are 100% from beer.
It depends what you want do do.
I also think your math is quite optimistic.
I still wish you a good luck.
We are going to bring in food trucks(trailers) to provide food and encourage call ins at our tap room. This may be the way the “Garage Breweries” compete with the Brewpubs.
A distributing brewery with a tatsing room is a totally different story. You are supplementing your monetary percentage with the tasting room - maybe 5, 10, 15% or more (but doubt too much more). But it is not the primary source of your profit. A brewpub is mostly reliant on people coming to the establishment to consume the product. Totally different scenario. Food is usually a huge deal. Again, not always, but as far as the “model” goes, the primary incentive. Beer needs to be good too to truly be successful.
I’m not talking about gourmet food. Hell, most people think Appleby’s is great. I’m just saying you have to have decent food and that as much as we like to think the beer is #1 it is really only a gimmick in most brew pub cases. certainly not saying that is cut and dry, just sayin’ that it is the case for a vast majority.
I work in West Chester PA, and I love Iron Hill. Those guys run a great place. Excellent food and great beer. They started as homebrewers.
I used to work at one. Of course, they only had great beer while I was there… 