PLACING YOUR BEER IN THE RIGHT SPOT

So you start your company on a shoe string budget and you make your first and second batches of beer.  You go out and talk to a ton of stores, bars and restaurants and they agree to bring the product in based on how good your beer is.  They throw it on tap or on the shelves and your beer is proudly displayed for all to see.  But... how to get the consumer to say, “WOW! a new craft ale to try! I should grab one and see how it is.” and then to have them come back again to buy that same beer over and over.

There are beer enthusiasts and connoisseurs out there that seek out the special craft ale made by local breweries.  But then there are those that want only what they have always had and wont change.  That’s fine, this is not for them.  For you see that those who become comfortable with a particular product will always go for that product for fear of not liking the new guy on the block and therefore feel like they wasted their money.

I for one am one of those people only with food, not beer.  With food, I will go to a Chinese restaurant and always buy the same chicken fried rice as I always have or fettuccine alfredo from an Italian joint.  I know what I like to eat and when I go to a particular restaurant I already know what I want.  Easier to order that way too.  However I find these days that with such a great selection of craft beers on the menu I am often sitting there for 15 minutes trying to decide what to drink.  My food has already been served and I am still debating over 10 crafts that will go nicely with my meal.  But that’s just me.

Others that are the opposite of me and know the beer they will drink can walk into a store, go to the coolers, open the door and zero in on the brand they drink regularly.  Case in point, I was looking at the placement of the craft bombers in a store the other day and witnessed two guys walk in and open the door and went right for their beer of choice located on the bottom where I didn’t even see any beer, probably because I was fixated on the good beer in front of me.  They knew what they wanted before even entering the store. You could have put those beers in the back, under a tarp and they would have searched it out.

With the growing craft beer industry in Los Angeles I feel that store owners should take a look at this and consider that all craft beers need to be placed at eye level in front of the consumer to show them what is available to them.  Why would you hide something that you wish to sell?  Of course people will continue buying the major brands but that’s because you don’t offer them anything else.  If you came in and your choice of food was snails, frog legs or haggis would you just succumb to it and order one of those?  Or would you seek out something better to eat?  Would you look down below in the dark part of the cooler and find that cheeseburger?  What if that cheeseburger was poised next to the snails? Would you stop for a moment and say, “I’ve always eaten the snails because that’s all I was offered but today I want to try the cheeseburger”?

The thing of it is that if you want product to sell that doesn’t yet have the same name recognition that others may have, you have to put it where people can see it.  After all the investment made by the store should never be a loss but rather an opportunity to introduce something new and great to the public.  Even if all of us craft beer breweries are lumped together on one or more shelves at least the consumer has a chance to see what is available and not to just go for their “tried and true” selection.  Think of the cooler as a menu of sorts.  I may not always need a menu at my Chinese restaurant that I frequent but at times I will look and say, “wow that peking duck sound great!” but without the menu I would never have known it was there.

Support your local brewery, especially here in LA where we need to educate and propagate the culture here.  Sure if you are mowing the lawn and need something that isn’t going to taste great but still get your head spinning then go for the 40 oz yellow beer but take a look at the coolers next time you are near one and study the craft sections.  We are brewing for you, making beer we know you’ll like.  We don’t use massive computers to brew the beer with the touch of one button.  We add the grain by hand, stir with a long paddle, sample the wort, shovel the spent grain and we love and nurture our beer all the way through fermentation.  We love what we do!  It’s not just a business, it’s our life!  Demand more from your storekeepers and insist on better beer.  Why dumb yourself down to having only what they think you want, what “sells”.  Show them you deserve better, because you do!

Cheers!