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How You Can Make Your Taproom Ready for Spring: 4 Simple Updates
![How You Can Make Your Taproom Ready for Spring: 4 Simple Updates](https://info.brewlogix.com/hubfs/DSC03337.jpg)
The changing of seasons is the perfect time to revamp your taproom, and that goes double for moving into spring. As the weather warms up and people stumble out of their winter hibernation, many are more than ready to spend time outside with friends, food, and beer—which is where you come in! But to make the most of spring as a taproom, you need to be prepared. We outlined four simple steps for how you can improve your taproom and be spring-ready.
When preparing for spring, it is important to update your taproom's…
- Space
- Offerings
- Inventory
- Staff
Let's talk about each of these and highlight resources you can lean on for support!
#1: Update Your Space
Part of what makes a taproom successful is the physical space: creating an environment that welcomes people in and keeps them around. Here are some ideas for making your space more inviting:
- Do a deep clean. They don’t call it “spring cleaning” for nothing! While this may seem like a no-brainer, cleaning up is about more than health and safety. By simply freshening up your interior with the changing season, your taproom will feel like new—especially for regulars who know your space well. Whether it is window washing, fresh coats of paint, polishing furniture, or some combination of techniques, cleaning is an easy, low-budget way to spruce things up! (Not easy per se, but you get it.)
- Add (or expand) outdoor seating. Most people have spent the last few months indoors are eager to get outside. If you have the space for it, make sure to give visitors ways to soak up the sunlight and spring breeze—but don’t forget patio umbrellas, to protect them from sunburn!
- Renew your online presence. Quarterly reviews are a good cadence for updating your website, contact information, hours, and product information. If you brew draft products of your own, consider reviewing your product details to ensure they are up to date (perhaps, on a platform like MarketMyBrewery?) Adding some updated photos for each season is also another way to make things feel new again. If people who find your brewery online see photos that fit the current season, they’ll be excited to visit—whether they are regulars or first-time visitors.
- Use lighting to your advantage. Ambient lighting is key to an inviting taproom, but you don’t need to be an interior designer to use lighting well. Even a few lanterns or string lights during the evening make a dramatic difference for your atmosphere. While people are eager for spring weather, patrons will still appreciate the coziness of warm, soft lighting. Also, remember that lighting is just as important for your outdoor spaces as it is for indoor spaces.
- Plants are your friend. One of the things people look forward to in spring is seeing greenery sprout from the ground. If you have any live plants, make sure to spruce them up with some pruning or arrangement. And if you have outdoor seating, be sure to bring some plant life to those spaces as well.
#2: Update Your Offerings
Hospitality professionals across the industry know the value of keeping your offerings fresh for customers—but what does that mean for taprooms specifically as they move into springtime? Most of it boils down to two primary things: your menu and your events.
Prepare Your Menu
As you spruce up your space, it’s smart to also spruce up your drink offerings (for example, with spruce?). Josh Lindsay, Advanced Cicerone® and advocate for MarketMyBrewery had some ideas to share for updating a taproom’s spring menu.
“It's hard to beat a seat outside with a beautiful Hefeweizen: flavors of banana, clove, and fresh baked bread and sporting a generous frothy collar of foam,” said Josh. “Also, it’s not as easy to find, but a perfect spring pairing beer is Maibock (meaning "pale bock"), which offers a lightly toasted and bready malt note with complimentary floral characteristics from the hops.”
The transition between seasons is also a perfect time to try out new menu ideas—both food and draft products. Regardless of what new things you add to the menu, make sure you are considering flavor pairings. Josh, for example, offered plenty of food pairing ideas for hefeweizen and maibocks. “Add in a spread of spring greens, pad Thai, chicken & orzo, or some smoked salmon and you have the makings of the perfect spring adventure!”
Need more tips on pairing food and beer? Check out this helpful video by BrewLogix that covers the basics of pairing flavors and creating menu options that help your food and drinks shine.
Prepare Your Events
“The spring season brings in prime beer drinking weather,” said Josh, “as consumers begin to soak in the sun and venture to patios and beer gardens.” Part of how you could make your brewery successful might be recurring seasonal events; this gives customers something to look forward to, especially if it only happens once a year. With this, keep in mind that spring events are not just a way to celebrate the changing weather: they can also help with inventory management. And speaking of inventory...
#3: Update Your Inventory
How we manage our taproom inventory is always critical, but switching to spring is a good time to clean house. Phasing out winter apparel, updating product information, and revisiting your ordering process should all be top of mind. Similarly, bringing in new swag, branding materials, and (as we mentioned earlier) new menu offerings are all part of making the change to spring. Lastly, don’t forget about your back-of-house; consider if it is time to update equipment, workflows, or any policies and procedures for your business.
As we hinted at earlier, offering unique events gives exciting ways to transition your menu offerings and even deplete at-risk inventory. Looking for ways to sell those lingering porters and stouts from the winter? Consider having a “send-off” celebration for winter with sales on your cold-season products. Want to move out some apparel to make room for the latest items? Sponsor an intramural sports league that uses your branded clothing as team uniforms.
Just how people love pairing beer with food, they also love pairing a brewery with activities—especially after being cooped up all winter. And the more creative your events are, the more fun people will have!
#4: Update Your Staff
Employees are the lynchpin of taproom success, especially those who work with customers. While it's good to tune up your space, offerings, and inventory for the spring, your floor staff have to share some of these updates with customers to truly see their impact—and that requires empowering your staff with knowledge.
Staff communication is a common workplace challenge, but certain tools make this easier; for example, cloud-marketing platforms help streamline the flow of product information. Tools like MarketMyBrewery allow breweries to directly input their product details for free, all straight from the source. Employees have easy access to this information, but more importantly, they'll know the most impactful details for talking with customers—from flavor notes to food pairings.
Keeping your staff informed helps make work easier, simpler, and less stressful. And the more your staff know about your offerings, the better equipped they are to do what they do best: connect with your customers.
We hope this article sparked some inspiration for you as you move into spring. Please share your success stories with us—we love to hear about the greatness happening in the craft industry! And if you want more ideas to improve your taproom, check out our resources page.
About BrewLogix
The BrewLogix craft beverage community drives on-premise profitability through its unified technology platforms. BrewLogix connects creators, sellers and consumers of on-premise products and experiences through a user-friendly digital ecosystem that drives consumer demand and enables business efficiencies. The BrewLogix community includes: MarketMyBrewery™, PerformancePlatform™, BreweryDB® and BrewMenu™.
The BrewLogix craft beverage community houses the largest curated source of craft beverage creators, their taprooms and their products that invite personalized and shareable craft experiences. The community also includes creator, seller and consumer data and trend information to guide profitable product, distribution and customer experience decisions.
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