With times getting tougher, Michael Donaldson reflects
on new ways to draw in the punters...

The recent Auckland Beer Week got me thinking about hospitality, craft beer, and finding new customers in a declining beer market.

Auckland Beer Week, the brainchild of former Society of Beer Advocates president Maree Shaw, is an annual collection of events that every year grows both in size and ideas.

There are many of the usual offerings we come to expect from beer-focused events: beer and burger, beer and pie, quiz nights, etc. But there’s also the more unusual, and one that caught my eye was a “speed dating” event held by St Leonard’s Brewing in the central Auckland suburb of Kingsland.

The event placed you in front of a series of random strangers, accompanied by a series of St Leonard’s beers, with tasting notes to start the conversation. It’s the kind of lateral thinking that hospitality needs to bring people in – you can drink all sorts of good beer at home, but interacting with strangers over a shared love of beer is actual entertainment.

Admittedly, that’s a small-scale solution to the myriad problems that plague both hospitality and beer at the moment, but it illustrates the sort of thinking that businesses need to grow.

Craft beer, in particular, is struggling with the new hospo-conomy. In pre-Covid days and especially in the mid-2010s, craft beer lived in the equivalent of a “build it and they will come” world. Brew a good beer and you’ll sell it fast. In fact, I can remember the nights when people would line up for new releases!

But post-Covid, good beer alone is not enough. Everyone sells good beer. And people are not going out the way they used to. And the supermarket shelves are crowded with an array of high-quality products. So how do breweries cut the mustard in an economy that’s lost some heat?

Great regional breweries and suburban taprooms can find success based on strong loyalty, local networks, and good service.

One example is Altitude Brewing in Queenstown. In the recent period of doom and gloom they have expanded, putting in new tanks. I spoke to managing director Eddie Gapper about this, and his secret is a plethora of simple things tied together by great customer service, and underpinned by a keen business sense.

He notes that for years craft brewing was often a passion project, but as starker realities bite a more rigorous approach is needed. Potentially, that’s as simple as forgoing festivals (which tend to draw the already-converted) and focusing your energy on getting beer into other venues where you’ll find new customers, such as the local golf club.

And Eddie’s big on that adage: the customer is always right. Again, the days are gone of brewers trying to sell something like triple dry-hopped 9% IPA just because it’s what they like to make.

It’s one of the reasons we’re seeing the rise and rise of lager in craft beer. My friend John Austin and former Alibi brewer Bernard Neate recently opened Twofold on Auckland’s Parnell Road. A couple of months into the operation I asked them about which beers were selling the best. The short answer was: “Lager, lager, and more lager.”

It’s a fabulous bar with an amazing tap list that will satisfy any beer geek, but they understand their local market and therefore lager is a focus. A decade ago, craft breweries didn’t make much lager, let alone make it their focus.

And, speaking of giving the customer what they want, any bar without a great selection of non-alcoholic beer is not thinking of their clientele. Good George, which has a strong on-premise offering around the country, has two non-alc beers (a hazy and an IPA), a non-alc cider, and will soon have a mocktail version of one of their popular canned cocktails.

Founder Brian Watson told me recently that zeroes are now 10% of their sales. That’s potentially 10% of customers through the door. And if the non-drinker or sober driver in a group can enjoy a great non-alc while their mates have normal beer, you can guarantee they’ll be parked at the bar a lot longer.

Michael Donaldson is a Beer Writer of the Year, journalist and author

beernation.co.nz