Beer

People Like Us

Garth Beyer

People loved the lost puppy Budweiser commercial, but what about their other commercial promoting a relationship between you and your beer?

Budweiser managed to do what product and service companies need to do: let people know who they are there for. By stating “people like us…” you’re defining your target and letting them know that they are part of a group, part of a tribe; that there are others like them out there, others who are like-minded and appreciate the same thing, like a Budweiser.

“Not brewed to be fussed over.”

“It’s brewed for drinking, not dissecting.”

And, my favorite line, “The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer… brewed the hard way.” Right there, they call a huddle and their target market listens.

You won’t catch me drinking Budweiser, but I can’t deny the successful forwardness of their marketing; their insistence of defining their market so there is no question of who it is they are targeting. A mass-produced beer is no longer trying to appeal to the mass.

As for the naysayers, it is Budweiser speaking in this commercial, not the parent company InBev. I could go on and on about all the parent companies of different products that send opposite messages of each other, Dove and Axe being one off the top of my mind.

 

Stay Positive & People Like Me Focus On The Positive

U.S Foaming Over With Number Of Craft Breweries

U.S Foaming Over With Number Of Craft Breweries

Garth Beyer

Craftbrew Craze

One million dollars. That’s the average price to start a brewery according to Chris Farmand, founder of Small Batch Standard, a CPA firm helping craft breweries across North America. Farmand suggests tacking on an additional 30 percent of the $1 million as working capital just to get you through the starting months. That makes the closing tab of starting a brewery and keeping it alive during the first few challenging months $1.3 million dollars on average.

The president of Central Waters Brewing Company, Paul Graham, argues a small brewery can be started with a mere $30,000 of capital. The ease of starting a brewery has concerned Graham about the current and future competition. “There are more breweries in the U.S. than there has ever been,” Graham said. “The number of breweries has doubled in the last two years.”

According to Steve Hindy, author of “The Craft Beer Revolution” and co-founder of the Brooklyn Brewery, a thousand new brands of beer launched in 2013, supporting Graham’s assessment that the industry is “a little crazy competitive.”

The problem for Graham is partially the competition. Graham and Central Waters were lucky to be part of the first generation of breweries before “this uptick started.” Graham’s major concern is with the beer quality these small brewers are brewing.

“The bigger you are, the better the equipment you can afford. A lot of the brewers shouldn’t be brewing beer in it [the cheap equipment], but it allows you to start a brewery for $30,000,” Graham said.

Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, spoke about the brewing industry’s beer quality at the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Colorado. Gatza spoke about one particular beer festival he attended. He reported “seven or eight of the 10 breweries needed improvement,” while also noting the people who were making the beer didn’t recognize how poor quality the beer was. [Gatza did not, however, say specifically what was wrong with the beer.]

Veteran brewer John Harris, who recently opened Ecliptic Brewing in Portland, offered a solution to the poor quality beer of new startup breweries. “If you are having problems with beer, ask others for help,” Harris said during an interview. “Don’t be too proud. We can help each other make our beer better.” Many new brewers have taken his advice to heart.

Henry Schwartz, co-founder of MobCraft Beer, a recent 2012 startup in Madison, has tackled the issue of poor quality by partnering with House of Brews a community supported brewery, to brew MobCraft beer. MobCraft receives assistance from other professional brewers in the community from being partnered with House of Brews.

Additionally, MobCraft Beer focuses on brewing a new flavored beer each month. Schwartz and his team experiment with different flavors of beer to gain continuous experience.

As a contributor to the craft beer craze, Schwartz has a positive outlook on the increasing number of new craft breweries. “Right now I see the addition of small breweries as a great thing,” said Schwartz.

However, the increased competition is prompting the larger, established breweries, like Central Waters, Potosi, New Glarus and many others to expand to stay ahead of the competition.

After remodeling its tap-room and barrel-aging warehouse, Central Waters still has a lot to do. “Our project list on installations of equipment and making things more efficient is backlogged a year right now,” said Graham.

Potosi Brewery is building a new brew house, packing line and storage facilities with hopes of restoring its former glory days as one of Wisconsin’s largest breweries.

While larger established breweries work to retain and extend their current markets, there’s still plenty of room in the U.S. for smaller breweries to open. The Chief Economist for the Brewers Association, Bart Watson, writes “long gone are the days where San Diego and Portland are hogging all the local breweries.”

America still has plenty of room for new breweries to grow, and the chances of drinking beer produced by local brewers is ever more likely. For now, the tap handle is pulled down and the number of breweries and beers is foaming over. Fortunately for all these new brewers, the adventurous beer drinkers don’t mind the foam at all.

 

Stay Positive & Craft Remarkable Beer

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Sources:
http://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/business-marketing/five-business-issues-to-consider-before-starting-a-brewery/

Phone interview with Paul Graham, president of Central Waters.

http://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/where-craft-breweries-are-located/

Contact with Henry Schwartz, co-founder of MobCraft Beer

In person conversation with Frank Fiorenza of Potosi Brewery.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/2014/04/10/americas-fast-growing-craft-beer-industry-quality-problem/13432/

 

Der Rathskeller – Leave Your Cares Outside

Garth Beyer

Der Rathskeller

You see burrowed brows, yapping mouths and jolly faces on all in Der Rathskeller when you walk through the back-bent archway entrance. For years, Der Rathskeller has been home to students of intellect, chaps of discourse, and diverse drinkers of beer (as Der Rathskeller was the first union to serve beer at a public university).

Opened in 1928, Der Rathskeller established itself as a town hall center for the men at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It wasn’t until 1937 that women could enter Der Rathskeller, but even then there were time restrictions for when women could be there. Continuously morphing since, Der Rathskeller accepts the ever changing culture of not only the Madison community, but all who come through and stop in for a brew or a Bavarian pretzel.

When you enter Der Rathskeller, often referred to simply as “the Rat,” you enter a different atmosphere, containing history of conversation, spilled beverages, and burnt out neurons from students studying and ruminating with one another.

To enter this atmosphere, there’s no door; there are only archways. It seems fair Der Rathskeller’s parameters comprise of archway after archway because you’re not merely entering a new room; you’re entering something larger and more important.

While the edges of each archway contain slim colorful designs, 50 shades of beige and a bit of blood-crusted red coat the rest of the Rat. The lighting of the red-shaded chandeliers makes the room and the artwork in it appear both friendly and private.

Artwork of simple, silly, yet careful design imprints the open wall spaces separating each archway. Each art piece represents a main extracurricular activity of students, such as government, journalism, music, drama, athletics and so on.

As diverse as the activities and art, so too are those who visit the Rat. The Rat has become a place for people dressed to the nines and others to the zeros. It is now a hub for the astute and the nonchalant. You can hear asinine conversation to the right of your table and sophisticated political discourse to the left. The Rat’s archways have extended their arms to people of all backgrounds, circumstances, and educations.

It’s not uncommon for the Rat to exceed its maximum seating capacity, which reads 525 on a sign above the condiments bar. You only need to visit on the weekend or during a night a live band takes the stage to see an infested, crowded Rat. With that many people, it’s surprising the Bavarian steins held behind a glass wall on the North side of the Rat don’t tip over from the constant stampede of people. However, some objects aren’t as fortunate.

In the Rat everything is old, cracked and weathered, especially the chairs if you find yourself fortunate enough to find one unoccupied in the evening. Despite their design containing angled legs – so to make it more difficult to tip over – you can see and feel the dents and scrapes of having been tipped over again and again. No design can save them from the wrath of the crowd that a live band attracts or of a heated conversation that exceeds boiling point.

Some conversations have apparently been so heated the steam from them melted the glue holding the tile to the ceiling. Chunks of tile are missing throughout the ceiling of the Rat, peculiarly above tables that only seat two.

The tables too, when you float your fingers across their surfaces, make you wonder of the wars they’ve survived, and the tattoos, the engravings they have and how they got them.

Could one have been so bored in the Rat to engrave only lines, not words into the table? What made those who carved warnings into the table do so? What knowledge is lost on the tables from those engraving over the scripture of another? There’s history on the tables, but there’s no way of absorbing it; you can only feel that it’s there.

While the writing on the tables may be indecipherable, the writing on the Rat’s entrance is clear to all who can read German (or who can read the English translation on a sign to the left of the entranceway). The text, written in an old German-Gothic style, reminds people they are entering a new world of jubilation. The writing above the archway entrance reads, “lassen Sie Ihre Sorgen außerhalb,” or, in English, “leave your cares outside.”

 

Stay Positive & If You’re Ever In Madison, Send Me An Email, We Can Meet At The Rat

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The Great Discourager

The Great Discourager

Garth Beyer

Better Than You

Here’s the sitch when it comes to going down the path of your passion: you’re not the only one, and nearly all the others down the same path are much, much better than you.

Want to be a beer writer? There are so many others better than you, more experienced. Steve Hindy, Maytag, Heather Vandenengel, Robin Shepard, this list could run a thousand.

Want to be a graphic designer for fortune 500 companies? The slots are already filled by someone bigger, taller, stronger, faster, and with a better stretched and exercised imagination than you.

Even something extremely specific, like a crêpe artist. There’s someone already more artistic with crepes who others will choose over you.

Unless.

Unless you tell a better story. Your story is the leverage you can have over someone more excelled than you. Your story is how you not only get a bite out of the stranger pool, but you turn the strangers into friends. Your story is your competitive advantage.

The decision you need to realize you’re making when you start following your heart and putting your passion to practice is that there will always be someone better than you, more skilled, more talented. You can’t let that be the great discourager.

The world can never have too many stories nor too many artists.

 

Stay Positive & Those Who You Feel Discouraged Be Can Be The Most Encouraging

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