The True Craft Podcast Recap: November

November. ✅

This month on the The True Craft Podcast we saw a variety of topics. We touched on the idea of brand expansion beyond the walls of a brewery, (re)finding the purpose of being in business, and the potential that breweries have when it comes to the experience economy and creating memorable moments for their customers.

As we enter our final month of the year and look to 2024, I hope the final few episodes of 2023 provide some inspiration.

Let’s get into it!

November's Episodes
November's Takeaways
TAKEAWAY #1

Get into the experience business

It should come as no surprise that people enjoy making memories, having impactful experiences, and sharing them with others. But what might be more of a surprise is how the craft beer industry is positioned to incorporate these meaningful and fun experiences into their local communities.

When we sat down with Fernson Brewing Company early this month, Blake Thompson and Derek Fernholz, Co-Founders & Co-CEOs, spoke on how they’ve begun making business decisions that expand their brand into experiences that are happening throughout their community in Sioux Falls, SD.

“We are trying to be more involved—more personable with the brand. More in people’s lives. Experiential things are still huge for everybody even at the end of the week when they’re grocery shopping and they don’t have much left because everything is so expensive. We [as a society] are all still willing and wanting to go have experiences and make memories.”

Fernson Brewing Co. recently sponsored the Sioux Falls Golf Tour and the inaugural Skip Day Summer Smash pickleball tournament, which saw 250 players from around the midwest fly to Sioux Falls to compete. The brewery has even started their own pickleball-inspired Hard Seltzer brand called Skip Day.

This idea of investing in experiences was heavily echoed in our conversation with Mark Bjornstad, President & Co-Founder of Drekker Brewing out of Fargo, North Dakota.

Seeing themselves more as an ‘experience’ company than a ‘beer’ company, Drekker Brewing not only serves their local community, but have essentially created their own neighborhood filled with experiences for patrons to enjoy.

The brewery started in a 15,000-square-foot locomotive repair building built in the 1880s. They would eventually build on that existing massive footprint to create a one-of-a-kind experience:

“We wanted to create our vision of a food and entertainment wonderland—something that created our own neighborhood under a bubble. That ended up becoming a 100,000-square-foot food market, event center, and hotel that is built on to the brewery.”

The experience economy is alive and well and it can extend beyond weekly trivia nights. We are hearing more often that consumers need a reason besides great beer to leave their homes and shell out cash, and what better way than providing an experience that won’t be easily forgotten.

TAKEAWAY #2

Use the basics to your advantage

As a brewery transitions from a home-brewing passion project to the business realm, an essence of market awareness needs to be present in order to survive. However, trending fads can often lead to an exhausted brewery team scrambling to concoct the next best brew.

Instead of riding the waves of the next trend, Joel McClosky with Four Saints Brewing Company brought up the idea of using customer expectations to your advantage while directing their focus on what you do best (e.g. quality tasting beers that you can quickly turn out):

“Very rarely does a bar lineup look for a super heavy pastry stout to put onto a line. But [the consumers] are going to be looking for an IPA. They are going be looking for an amber. They are going to be looking for something sweet, something fruity. If you've got those three to five beers that you can just knock out. That’s where you have to direct people's focus. You're telling [the customer], ‘We're easy. We're going to give you a beer that you find accessible.’ And people are going to enjoy it."
TAKEAWAY #3

Don’t stop learning

When we sat down with Ben Hugus, CEO & Co-Founder of Ursa Minor Brewing out of Duluth, Minnesota, brewery health and their brewing experimentation with THC was just the tip of the iceberg in our conversation.

As the discussion continued on to the topic of craft’s future, there were a plethora of questions that seemingly had no answers:

"Where's craft gonna be in ten years from now? What do taprooms look like? What do young drinkers want to drink? What do old drinkers want to drink? How do we meet our customer base? Do they just want hard seltzer? You know, I guess how do we be true to why we [started our brewery] and that we're not just brewing whatever people want?"

And although these questions might be be overwhelming, Ben offered a solution in the same breath that he and his team are utilizing:

“Focus. We ask, ‘What are we good at? What are we not good at?’ And we stop doing the things we are not good at. Or we fix them. And then we capitalize off of the things that we are good at. Some of the decisions are tough. There's this incredible balance of actively learning and being willing to be super wrong.”

The idea of actively learning isn’t new, but it’s worth remembering. Whether it’s self-led via books and podcasts, like Ben has been doing for years, or participating in group brainstorming and discussions, actively learning is one way to potentially future-proof the craft industry. You’ll have a pulse on the industry, but perhaps more importantly, you can make well-informed business decisions.

That concludes November’s edition of The True Craft Podcast Recap!

December brings us five Fridays, which means five episodes to round out the year. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here to listen to episodes as they’re released every Friday morning.

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