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WEBINAR RECORDING

Tips To Increase Beverage Sales in Your Establishment

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QUestions & Answers from the live event

During the webinar, we received several questions from the audience. While we didn’t have the time to get to ask every question during the virtual event, we followed up with our guest speakers, Jason, Gardy, and Tim, to get your questions answered!

Guest Speaker Questions

Can you run Happy Hour specials?

Jason Cherry: Yes. We run Happy Hour from 4-7 M-F, 2-8 Saturday, and 4-7 Sunday. We drop our domestics from .50c to .35c/oz, and our cocktails from $10/5oz pour to $7/5oz pour.
Gardy Desrouleaux: We do not. Happy Hour is illegal in Massachusetts.
Tim Enarson: Our Happy Hour is 4-7 M-F for beers and cocktails.

How many cocktails does a cocktail-lover typically pour?

Jason Cherry: Cocktail lovers will pour anywhere from 3 & up. Typically, I observe them going for 3-5 drinks and maybe pairing with a shooter or two.

Do you experience technical issues when pouring specific craft beer styles (sours, etc.)?

Jason Cherry: We sometimes face issues with super heavy sours, typically ones that use lactose in the beer. We see this a lot with Dewey Beer Company and Burley Oak – usually, you will need to store the keg upside down. It will clog the lines or the fob. We push water behind it to get the pulp out first, try again, and if we have no luck, we return to the distributor. Hit or miss on this one.

Can you provide some advice on how to best select a location?

Tim Enarson: It is the most important thing. Location is everything. We looked at over a hundred locations. And few of them would have worked. We didn’t want to do it unless we could find one that showcased the self-pour tech. We triangulated population, demographic, mass transit, and restaurant bar saturation to make a solid choice.

Is there a way you promote the fact that you have self-pour in your business, like for passers-by?

Tim Enarson: Only the large glass windows show it clearly. That is all.

Do you have any cocktail ingredients that cause problems with your calibration?

Tim Enarson: Pulpy mixes or Bloody Mary with chunks of pepper, vegetables, or fruit.

Do you limit the volume of drink available per pour card/bracelet?

Tim Enarson: Yes, based on the PourMyBeer technology. But we give them a longer leash so that guests aren’t constantly looking for a friendly staff member to reauthorize their card. 😉

How much monetary profit are businesses looking at considering the technology cost, material (beverage purchased) cost, and then the installation of all those different individual taps cost?

Gardy Desrouleaux: The technological cost is different for every location due to how many taps your establishment requires or wants. The beverages purchased are comparable to a traditional bar. You can maximize all 1,984 ounces in a keg by not seeing any waste. Installation is the same – there is only the added cost of PourMyBeer, which is mitigated by the keg waste management, reduction in labor, and efficiency. Guests will drink more on the wall than they will with a bartender.

Are your locations family-friendly? If you are family-friendly, how do you control people under the age of 21?

Gardy Desrouleaux: Our locations are very family-friendly. We check IDs before handing out every pour card. Our beverage wall is out in the open and supervised by our beverage wall ambassador.
Tim Enarson: Yes, it is family-friendly. We let families bring babies up to 12. Teens aren’t welcome. If one or two teens are part of a large wedding party, we make the parents put a bright pink wristband on the teen, and we will kick out the teen if they drink. Usually, 21 and under are banned for walk-in traffic.
Jason Cherry: Yes – family-friendly. We scan IDs through the PourMyBeer kiosk and assign cards that way. If guests are underage, we keep an eye out to make sure no one pours for them, but ultimately this burden would fall on those we assign the card to. Late night is 21 and over, and security regulates this at the door.

Do any of you brew your beer? Does this change the economics of sales/profits?

Gardy Desrouleaux: We are looking to brew. It substantially changes your economics because once you make the product instead of purchasing kegs, the average cost of pouring a beer that you make is .07 cents, and pouring a beer that someone else made is $2.
Tim Enarson: We have brewed proprietary private-label beers with local breweries under the Navigator Taproom brand and logo. This is fun and tasty, and customers love it! However, we have to commit to a minimum of 6 half barrels, and their price is an average of $150-180, so there are no sales profit savings. But it brands well, and customers drink it more because it’s our Navigator beer. I don’t think it would be legal for us to go and brew our own beer, either on-premise or at our house, and keg it because we don’t have a brewers license and all that. City of Chicago stuff. Are there ways around that? Yes, of course. 😉
Jason Cherry: We do not brew our own beer as we do not have the space, nor do we want to be a brewery. Not our business model. If we wanted to offer a “Tap99 house beer,” there are many breweries that have a very generic pale ale they allow to be branded as a house beer. We have not done this yet, however. The generic beer they offer branding is typically gross!

What has been the feedback on the self-pour system in a traditional bar setup?

Gardy Desrouleaux: Just go straight with a beer wall. No need for a bartender.
Tim Enarson: I recommend going straight with a tap wall. A traditional bar pulls guests away from the tap wall or it gets overlooked, but there is less waste with a tap wall than with a traditional bar.

How do you manage to control inventory for each tap?

Jason Cherry: PourMyBeer does all the work for me. I could sit at home and look at keg levels if I wanted to.

Does your staff get hourly wages only or do they receive tips?

Gardy Desrouleaux: No, they do receive tips. They have a standard wage plus tips.
Tim Enarson: We pay hourly and there is a tip pool and they are very happy.

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