This month on The True Craft Podcast we welcomed Gabrielle Blanco, Owner and Founder of Buckstin Brewing Company out of Nederland, Texas and Julie Rhodes, Owner of Not Your Hobby Marketing.
In this recap, we highlight some of the more major insights on starting your own kitchen and digital advertising in 2024, but there is still a ton of information that we couldn’t fit into one email. I highly suggest giving the full episodes a listen if you are interested in either topic that we covered this month.
*cracks knuckles*
Let’s get to it!
People will always want to eat
Gabi is a huge believer in breweries having full ownership of their food programming with an in-house kitchen, and shares that the payoff is well worth the investment:
Additionally, this can pay off in ways that are perhaps not always top-of-mind when thinking about making such a large investment for the brewery:
Having a kitchen makes it under one roof. Yes, the customer doesn't mind going to the food truck and spending food truck prices. They are also expected to tip at the food truck.
All of my taproom bartenders, they don't get any of that tip even though they're the ones picking up the plates afterwards and cleaning up the aftermath.
[With the kitchen remaining in-house], when a customer tips on pretty much every ticket, my bartenders are getting a huge, huge boost in their overall tips.
The benefits of adding a kitchen with a simple menu can be monetarily rewarding for even the service employees of the brewery. And as Gabi adds, “You’ve got to take care of your people and the people will take care of you.”
Keep it simple in the kitchen
But the question on everyone’s mind is truly: where do you start?
Gabi acknowledges the fear that brewery owners have when it comes to investing in a kitchen, but the key is keeping it simple:
Don't worry about the staffing. It will come.
After mapping out her own kitchen with an impinger oven (that acts as a conveyor belt) in a 128-square-foot space, Gabi and her team worked to ensure the food-making process was simple. This simplicity, paired with an easy-to-read step-by-step guide, allows her kitchen staff to operate successfully, even to the point of listening to a podcast while effectively churning out pizza orders:
With beer, people say it's an art. No, it's not. It's 100% a science. The same goes with food.
If I'm going to select a burger as my main menu focus, just make the one thing and be perfect at it. If you were going to do sandwiches, pick some kind of unique sandwich or some unique bread that sets you apart and be the best at it.
Double down on reaching the right audience
Our conversation with Julie was all about digital marketing: committing to the various forms of digital advertising, finding a new audience, and expanding your brand awareness.
To get started, she shared specific recommendations to look into:
- Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
- Pay-Per-Click (e.g. Google Adwords)
- Local influencers who can reach your customers
With that said, Julie is not a huge fan of using demographics. The concept has become somewhat outdated when marketing to a new customer audience:
We need to go further and look at what’s called psychographics that gets into the psyche of the consumer. What are my hobbies? What are my interests? Do I like to go hiking? Am I a foodie? Do I like a good discount? Do I respond to sales? Is price not an issue? Goals, desires, values. What is important to me? Looking at that we can discover new audiences.
And finding a new audience means getting creative in marketing your beer.
Julie shared an example: “Say you’ve made a new beer and look back at how well it performed. You see that it was a hit with young millennials in the Pacific Northwest that like to go hiking.” Knowing this information, how does this impact the way in which you market the beer going forward?
She recognizes that marketing can be daunting, which is why she also offered further insight on how to get started:
You are going to pay a little more because of their knowledge and their expertise, but you'll have the comfort of knowing it's not totally in your hands.
And that concludes this month’s The True Craft Podcast Recap!
If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here to listen to episodes as they’re released every other Friday. I highly recommend giving these two episodes a listen as they are truly filled with so much insight that we couldn’t fit into one email.
We’ll see you at the end of March for another recap!
– Keaton