Taproom Subcommittee Purpose

At the end of 2018, the Brewers Association (BA) Board of Directors announced that it would be creating a new Taproom Brewery voting member class to better represent the diversity of U.S. breweries today. According to the BA bylaws, “Taproom Brewers shall be classified as those professional brewing members that sell more than 25 percent of their beer onsite, do not operate significant food services, and are producing six million barrels or less annually.”

This class is represented by a new subcommittee of the BA Governance Committee. The subcommittee is made up of a diverse group of brewery members from all over the U.S., recommended by state guild executives. Below is the subcommittee’s initial purpose statement:

The Taproom Subcommittee’s main objective is to foster the sharing of resources and ideas between taproom class breweries. As taproom brewery revenue is generated mainly from onsite sales, the subcommittee’s job is to create resources that help breweries find ways to get customers to come to the taproom, stay a while, and keep coming back.

Areas of Focus

The Taproom Subcommittee will focus on several areas that are unique to taproom brewery members. These include, but are not limited to:

• Event management
• Working with food trucks and outside vendors
• Establishing service standards
• Bottle clubs and their impact on onsite sales
• Creating family-friendly spaces
• Taproom layout and design
• Marketing, branding, and creative design
• Staffing, training, and regularly educating the taproom team
• Product quality control, inclusive of adopting standards for draft maintenance, beer-clean glassware, and establishing a tasting panel
• The role ancillary products can play in the tasting room experience, from merchandise to non-beer offerings

Taproom Forum Board

The Taproom Subcommittee’s main objective is to foster the sharing of resources and ideas between members of the taproom brewery class. To begin this sharing of ideas, the subcommittee has created a new Taproom forum board on the BA Forum. The subcommittee would like to invite all BA members to begin participating in this board today. 

Meet the Subcommittee Members

The Taproom Subcommittee also includes Brewers Association staff members Paul Gatza, MacKenzie Staples, and Bart Watson.