A well-trained bartender can sell more beer than your best label design. While off-premise sales depend on packaging and advertising to tell your story, brewpubs and taprooms have a direct line to the customer. Here’s how to turn that face-to-face moment into brand loyalty that keeps people coming back.

Sales and service points will be different across individual breweries and different brewery business models. This resource will focus on the singular aspect of staff education, teaching service staff to effectively communicate the unique qualities of your beers with your customers in a way that creates engaging guest experiences.

Have a Plan

Don’t leave training to chance. Have a set plan and agenda to train every new staff member. Printed training materials are always helpful not just to clarify execution of policies and procedures, but to develop consistency in messaging. To stress the importance of communicating the qualities of your beers to members, consider conducting training sessions that focus solely on describing and selling your beers.

Essential resource: Taproom Front-of-House Staff Training

Basics Matter. Brand Matters More.

Arm your staff with the basics: the difference between an ale and a lager, beer’s ingredients, and a fundamental understanding of the brewing process. But put the focus on your brands. Off-premise sales tell a brand’s story through packaging, marketing, and advertising. Don’t lose sight of the tremendous opportunity that direct interaction between your staff and the beer drinker provides. Focus your staff’s energy on your brand’s story and your beer’s flavor and freshness. 

Make Customers Your Brand Ambassadors

Train your staff to tell your brewery’s and your brand’s stories. Keep it simple but arm your staff with interesting anecdotes about your brewery and your brand. Do you support a particular charity? Does your building have a history? You can build loyal customers through these community connections. What can your staff tell your customers about your brewery and brands that they will repeat to their friends, essentially becoming your brands ambassadors?

Talk Flavor, Not Jargon

Most consumers are not interested in technical details about your beer, except perhaps alcohol content. Teach your staff to focus on flavor in terms that customers can relate to. Avoid terms like hoppy, bitter, or malty that the average beer drinker may not understand or have a preconceived notion of how they taste. Use more common terms like citrus, roasted, or crisp. Encourage staff to practice and share language and communication techniques with each other in casual, interactive sensory training sessions.

Focus on Freshness

The beer industry spent too long marketing beer as “aged to perfection” and other slogans that took beer drinkers’ minds away from the idea that beer is a food product and is best when it is served fresh. Brewpubs and taprooms have a built-in edge—their beer never has to survive distribution, a retailer’s backroom, or weeks on a shelf. Take advantage of one of the strongest selling points you have: fresh draught beer.

Read the Customer

For most servers, “reading the customer” is a skill that is learned and needs to be practiced. A critical aspect in creating an enjoyable and memorable experience for the customer is for the server to be able to recognize what and how much information the customer wants or needs. Serving staff that read and recognize what information the customer wants or needs can deliver a comfortable exchange rather than what might sound like a canned sales pitch. In many cases, less is more in shaping the customer experience.

Keep Training. Keep Staff.

An effective service staff is built through ongoing training programs that build on and sharpen existing skills. Brewpubs and taprooms naturally offer new learning opportunities for staff through the introduction of seasonal and special beers. The collaborative nature of craft brewing presets opportunities for collaborative brews and guest speakers from neighboring breweries to keep training sessions different and engaging. Seasonal beers in particular are the perfect opportunity to turn a visit to a local brewery into an experience or occasion for the beer drinker.

A well-trained service staff can drive additional sales, increase revenue and enhance customer experience. A longer-term benefit that comes from investing time in staff training is increased employee retention. Training instills confidence in the employee, creates pride in the products, and builds institutional loyalty in your brewery. The employee may even increase their tips by enhancing the guest experience.

The Brewers Association (BA) Taproom Front-of-House Staff Training program trains individuals working front-of-house service positions, including bartenders and servers. This 4-part online course supplements your taproom’s onboarding processes by providing crucial information and skills to engage and serve guests.