Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast
Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast
From Good Beer to Great Experiences: What Today’s Taproom Guests Really Want
What if your taproom’s biggest growth lever isn’t price or new styles—but the first 15 seconds after someone walks in?
Today on the podcast we welcome back consumer insights expert Michael Varda of Craft Beer Advisory Services to unpack the data behind modern taproom behavior and why food, events, and hospitality now sit shoulder to shoulder with great beer.
The headline: beer gets guests in the door; the experience keeps them in their seats and brings them back.
We trace the post-pandemic shift from liquid-first to social-first to hospitality-first, showing how entertainment sparked the rebound and how food has become the decisive extender of “time in seat,” especially for women and families.
Michael explains why discounting erodes perceived value and how rewards-based loyalty (think “earn,” not “mark down”) protects brand equity while encouraging repeat visits.
He also breaks down the crucial differences between retail and taproom motivations—why a standout six-pack doesn’t automatically translate to a packed taproom—and how to design for the whole evening, not just the pour.
Expect practical tactics you can deploy immediately: optimize the first 15 seconds with warm greetings and clear wayfinding, train staff to scan, acknowledge, and mirror guest energy, and adopt one measurable focus at a time—like to-go prompts—to build momentum.
We highlight “time in seat” as the single most telling metric of taproom health, a simple read on satisfaction, engagement, and spend. And beyond dashboards, we make the case for pulling up a chair with a mix of regulars and new faces, asking better questions, and giving customers a voice in small decisions that build authentic loyalty.
If you’re ready to evolve from great beer to a great experience—without racing to the bottom on price—this conversation maps the path.
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Today on the podcast, we welcome back Michael Varda from Craft Beer Advisory Services. We're going to focus on consumer insights, tap room experiences, and data trends. So what Craft Beer Advisory Services does in a nutshell is figure out why customers come to your Taproom and how to get them to come back more often. So we're going to talk through the biggest shifts that Michael's seen in the data about what beer drinkers are looking for today compared to just a few years ago. Uh surprising trends in the data that Michael gathers, how tap room visitors really differ from retail customers in terms of expectations and loyalty. And Michael will share his top three things that breweries can do right now to improve their taproom experience and increase return visits. So for now, please enjoy this conversation with Michael Varda from Kraft Beer Advisory Services. Welcome to the Kraft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers to provide you with tips, tactics, and strategies so that you can improve financial results in your brewery. I'm your host, Carrie Shemoy, a CPA, CFO for a brewery, and a former CFO for a beer distributor. I've spent the last 20 years using finance to improve financial results in our beer business. Now I'm helping other craft breweries to do the same. Are you ready to take your brewery financial results to the next level? Okay, let's get started. Just a quick note, and we'll be right back to the podcast. I want to let you know about a new network for beer industry professionals. It's called the Beer Business Finance Association. It's an organization of financial pros, just like you, looking to improve financial results, increase profitability, connect with your peers, and share best practices. So I'd love to tell you a little bit more about this. If you are interested in learning more, please email me, Carrie at beer businessfinance.com. That's K-A-R-Y at beer businessfinance.com, or you can visit BBFassociation.org. That's BBFassociation.org to learn more. Hey, Michael Varda, welcome back to the podcast, my man. Thank you for having me.
Michael Varda:Round three. Thank you so much.
Kary Shumway:Absolutely. It's always a pleasure to have you and chat and catch up. And it's funny because I know we've we've talked all around this, but um you're the pod the first podcast that you and I have done is still like one of the most popular, most downloaded. So I'll reshare that so we can maybe we'll get get back to the number one position.
Michael Varda:Hey, I appreciate that. It's uh it's a privilege to be speaking to you and and your audience, and hopefully we can offer up a couple insights today to help some people out.
Kary Shumway:I know we can. So for those who might not be familiar with you or what you do, why don't you give them some background?
Michael Varda:Absolutely. So I am Michael Varna, I'm the founder of Kraft Beer Advisory Services, and we are a market research and analytics firm specifically dedicated to the craft beverage industry. We've developed a social listening product, which is uh fancy terminology for figuring out what your customers like about your place and what they like about your competitors, and getting all of our information from all over the internet, being able to tag and sort different pieces of information and then deliver that in a dashboard platform. But what that lends itself to is really fun conversations like we're about to have uh today, where we just have a wealth of consumer insights information, and we're gonna talk about uh trends and you know what's happening and different segments. Uh, but that is that is the bread and butter, consumer insights for craft beer.
Kary Shumway:It's so important too, because I mean that's the fundamental problem that you know tap rooms and breweries are facing now. It's like, I how do I get more people to come in and spend more and stay longer? And you know, we're guessing a lot of the times, you know, do more social media posts or do this ad or run those specials or try this, that, or the other. And but if you don't understand your customer, it's gonna be really hard to know what's gonna draw them in. And that's fundamentally what you do, and that's why I think this topic resonates with so many people because it's sort of like, oh my gosh, that's so helpful. And um, you know, we were obviously at yeah, at Virginia uh Brewers Conference recently, and I think the measure of a good presentation that resonates with the with the audience is one that you look around, you see how many phones come out to take pictures of your slides, and they were literally every slide. Oh my god. And you're like, guys, you'll get the deck, and they're like, I don't care, I'm taking this picture. So it's pretty cool.
Michael Varda:Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. It's um always fun to be at those types of events, and you're you're exactly right. It feels good to see see the iPhones pop up.
Kary Shumway:So let's kind of dig in on that understanding who your customer is, the craft beer consumer. So you've obviously got tons of consumer data uh through craft beer advisory services. So, what are the biggest shifts you've seen in what beer drinkers want today, what customers want today, maybe compared to just you know a few years ago?
Michael Varda:Yeah, absolutely. So for this conversation, just to set expectations, most of what we're going to talk about is that tap room experience here, too. So that starts with this question when we think about uh just a few years ago. We'll take a brief trip back in time, Carrie, to 2021, where COVID is still top of mind. It's still a word that's being spoken every day. We're trying to think about is it okay to go out? Should we stay home? And during that time, there was a big focus on beer because that was the ultimate commodity. Kraft breweries are in the business to make good beer, and that is the number one, number one piece. So when that was taken away, the the focus became the beer. It became uh the different styles of beer that you could get, a variety, of course. Um, but then the world keeps moving, the earth keeps spinning, and we're able to go out again, we're able to have you know these social interactions. So we have the luxury of good beer. So up next was good times. And you'll see that you know, across 2022, even into 2024, uh, spikes and mentions of entertainment and events. People couldn't wait for a trivia night, people couldn't wait for you know comedy show or whatever you name it. It was going to be a very big draw. And so now we have good drink and we have good times. And what is this last element that's been uh a little bit more? You know, we've talked about it for years, but even been a little bit more prevalent in 2025. It's food. People are are back to wanting really good food, and I say uh back to uh pretty intentionally because when we think about this sort of craft beer boom, even a post or excuse me, pre-COVID to post-COVID. Pre-COVID, it was at least for breweries, about beer, and then uh food was going to be elsewhere, and then now the expectation is that you are a one-stop shop. Uh so the one thing we're gonna talk about a lot today is is time in seat. And now that you have good drink and good times, people want to extend those good times, and the powerful extender is is food. And to talk at least briefly about a little bit of data. Um, if you've ever seen one of those um uh like call it a college football rankings chart where Ohio State starts as pre-season, actually actually I'm gonna change my example where Notre Dame starts as preseason rank two, and somebody else starts preseason rank 25, and then you know, as the weeks go on, Notre Dame's overhyped and they lose a couple games, and you see them dropping, and then you see this top 20 team coming up. Uh, beverage is Notre Dame in that example, and then food is the top 20 team in that example, where ultimately these two are coming to a convergence point in equal importance. And if you filter in our data for uh women or families, beverage and food have already converged in importance. Food is equal of a driver for families and women to tap rooms than uh than their male counterparts who still uh value drink over food. But that is uh I think the story of 2025. Uh, congratulations, you own a brewery, and I hope that you are getting ready to join the restaurant business as well.
Kary Shumway:People are coming kicking and screaming into it. But and then it's funny because at the Virginia, that was kind of the thrust of my talk was look, it's here, you know, whether you're doing a full kitchen or you have small snacks, you got to have food. And so you might as well like embrace it and lean in and try to make it profitable. But that's a great point because it's like it's going, people are going to come to your place or not based on if you have these things. So, again, the whole thrust of your data and collection is like what do customers want and what can you give them so that they'll come to your place more regularly. Is there anything like surprising about the data or the information, anything that maybe goes against conventional brewery wisdom or maybe what we think customers might want?
Michael Varda:Yeah, yeah, one thing that really pops up as kind of a surprise to me because we hear a lot about the economy. We hear a lot about uh inflation and inflation's hot, inflation's cooled off. Price as a factor has been mentioned relatively consistently, with the only variance being in about six to eight percent of all of our data from January 2023 to present day. So when we think about you know what that means, a lot of times people are thinking about how can we offer the coolest happy hour? What can we do to get people in the door? And people who are are paying for craft product, they expect craft prices. And you know, they they're happy to support local. It's the idea of you know you get what you pay for. And for all of the owners or managers out there trying to think about how we can draw people in, it's unlikely to be with a dollar or two off a pint or 10% off uh you know an appetizer or whatever that might be. And the other piece that I want to drive home here as well is my my favorite corporate example of this is Starbucks. And when I go to Starbucks and I scan my app, I'm earning stars to get a reward. And when I'm earning stars to get a reward, what is Starbucks doing? They're valuing their product further. They're not giving you a discount when you get that reward and you I get free vanilla and my iced coffee. Um, it's it's actually a reward. It's something that you've earned. Um, I know we're going to talk about a little bit about loyalty as well, but you know, when you give somebody a discount for a pint of beer, that pint of beer, say normal price is eight dollars, but you give it to somebody for six, that pint of beer is now worth six dollars to that person. And when you're thinking about trying to get them to come back, you know, and then they come back a second time, perhaps, and then they get it, and there's eight dollars, you know, in their heads like, oh well, well, this was six dollars last time, and um, it was really good for six dollars, but I don't know if it's good for eight dollars. And that's a it's just a dangerous game of of discounting uh product. And if you're doing anything, you should be valuing your product, you know, in the simplest of ways, you know, a punch card, you know, the buy ten beers, get it, get a beer free, so you get your reward beer as opposed to a free beer or a discounted beer.
Kary Shumway:That's interesting. So that's a little bit of like consumer psychology, buying psychology, like how we kind of evaluate how we're spending money and whatnot. So pri so I guess in a nutshell, what's surprising is that uh pricing itself may not necessarily bring people in um as sort of a draw, but if you do discount it, it's gonna maybe have a boomerang effect, which is not one that's particularly good for your brand or your location. It's like, oh, playing around with the price like that.
Michael Varda:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You just don't ever want to to devalue uh your your product really whatsoever because that's going to be the the sticking point uh for for those customers.
Kary Shumway:Nice. So if you look at you know tap room visitors uh compared to say like just regular retail customers going to other establishments in terms of expectations or motivations in terms of loyalty, now how does that differ, or is it are you able to see that in the data?
Michael Varda:Yeah, yeah, that's uh a really good question. And um thinking about the retail aspect, distribution aspect versus taproom, tap room visitors are are going to have very, very high expectations. You know, they're wanting a total product, uh, the total experience. Uh that being said, loyalty is also very high. Um, you know, if I'm going through the grocery store and I'm trying to find a uh a beer for my night, if that beer is great, cool. However, I might not go visit your tap room because of it. And when you think about what actually motivates a tap room visit, uh, of course, beer is a you know critical piece of that. However, um, it's going to be these other things that are going to drive that loyalty. It's going to be the people that you meet, it's going to be the experience that you have, whether that was an event, whether that was food. Uh and the the beautiful part of this too is if you're able to offer a holistic tap room experience, you just open yourself up to so many things that people could latch on to uh from that time there. And uh, you know, whether it's an environment or you know, it could be literally anything. And you know, one of the things that I um anytime given a talk, try to think about is if you knew nothing about your tap room, what are in that first experience that you have there, pretend you're walking in for the first time, what are the three things that might make you come back? Um if it's products, that's great. But if it's something about your space or something about uh a characteristic or an attribute of your space, whether that's your people or or whatever that might be, you know, that that's going to be a sticking point because you can get great beer a lot of places now, including the grocery store. So when you are thinking about a tap room visit, you have to assume that your customer wants an experience.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about improving that experience, like based on the research and the data, like what would you say are like the top two or maybe three things that they can do to kind of improve that to increase visits?
Michael Varda:Yeah, it's a good question. You know, the the three things that I would say are um number one, optimize the first 15 seconds of somebody coming into your tap room. And you know, that should be uh positive first impressions, greetings, hellos, clear signage, making sure they know exactly where they should go and that they are um very much uh met where they are at, uh, feel welcomed into the space. And then uh number two, train your staff to start remembering things about people if they're not already, because you know, even if it's hey, good to see you again, that acknowledges that I was seen. I was in that space and you know they remembered me. Um and the the third thing too, uh I'm gonna say this touching on this first 15 seconds piece, but uh clear ordering instructions because you know that right there alone, you take away the stress of like, what should I do? Where should I go? You know, if it's a QR code, that's great, it's fine. Um, but just make sure that you people are are on it and know exactly where to go and how to interact.
Kary Shumway:Yeah. It's sweet you it's sort of classic, like don't confuse the customer, right? Exactly. Don't confuse them, make it easy because if you make it easy, uh then they're gonna certainly buy more from you.
Michael Varda:Yeah. We pause for two minutes, my boss is trying to call me.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, go ahead.
Michael Varda:Thank you. I'm gonna see if I can respond to his um just message real quick.
Kary Shumway:Okay. Awesome. So t let's talk a little bit about um, you know, again on the theme of improving the taproom experience, like what role does staff interactions and hospitality play in sort of shaping your customers' perception of a taproom.
Michael Varda:Yeah, so this is touching on that last piece that we just talked about, too, with those first 15 seconds, is one, in my opinion, perhaps the most mic drop stat that I uh have been sharing from 2023 to present day. One in three negative experiences overall are linked to poor first impressions. And so you know, if you figured you know that you have a room of a hundred people that that just hate you, and uh all those negative googlers that you know leave those one-star reviews, you can get rid of 30 of those people uh just by offering them a strong first impression. And that's almost entirely on your staff. It's on your space, sure. Like, you know, if it if it's not well kept or anything, but uh every brewery is pretty darn well kept. And you know, you walk in and you have a cool uh like first moment of like, oh, like this is a cool place, whatever. You can have a cool place looking a lot of different ways, but the people are are just so important and really make or break uh the experience there. And the the piece that I'll I'll call out perhaps like the the best skill that you a bartender could possibly have is to you know be a be a bit of a social chameleon, be able to have that social intelligence to get a read on your your customer, uh figure out what type of visit are they going here for? Are they and are they happy? Are they sad? Are they drinking to remember, drinking to forget? Are they with their family? Are they with you know uh a date, whatever that might be, really trying to match the customer's energy because that's going to be something that leaves that positive first impression, because first impressions are going to gonna be ideal, like a definition of a good first impression is gonna be different for you than it is for me. There's probably some universal truths, like if they're smiling and there's good body language, like yes, that's good interaction. But um the for any anybody thinking, should I hire uh staff for uh social skills or beer knowledge, you can teach beer knowledge. Social skills are a bit tougher to do. Uh, but touching on some of these other pieces of uh what goes into a first impression, literally body language and you know the smiling and just waving and acknowledgement. Uh one of uh my clients in this industry said that they they teach their their bartenders scanning. So you know, if you're just kind of like looking across the the bar and if somebody hasn't been seen yet, just scan, make eye contact, acknowledge them, make them feel seen. Uh so some themes across the last couple of questions, make them feel seen, make them feel welcome, positive body language, and as as much as you can, match match their energy, match the customer's energy.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, it's good advice, really straightforward, often overlooked and not done. And then I love how you tie it to the data because it's like um, you know, one in three negative experiences are gonna get, you know, one in three bad first impressions are gonna give you that negative rating, and you can eliminate or improve it just by training on a few basic things. So that I I'm sure that's helpful for people to know because we're always trying to think like what's gonna be most important when we think about training staff. And it can be these simple, I mean, I hate to say simple because they're really not. They're just like, but I'd say practical and important, and let's just say effective, you know, interpersonal skills. Yeah, you you've outlined them well. So yeah, training on that's obviously super important. The data supports it.
Michael Varda:There's often no silver bullet, you know. Anytime that you know, I have data or present data, I think it's it's natural human curiosity to be like, well, what's the one thing that's gonna change everything? What's that magic pill? And uh, you know, there there is no magic pill. And um, you know, the the best thing if I could equate data to um this sort of pill analogy, data is vitamins. Data is something that you should be ingesting, looking at daily to make sure your fundamentals are strong. Like there's very, very rarely going to be that pill that just changes everything. Um, you take vitamins, don't take medicine as the the idea.
Kary Shumway:Right, right. You gotta you gotta do the work and and the data does maybe help you identify where to focus your efforts. Um so that's that's a great one there. So if we dig in a little bit, you know, a lot of times we have all this data, um, but we don't really take action on it, which is odd because it's like I'll tell you what to do, and then we don't. So do you have any advice for turning like the insights and that data into like real measurable actions, improvements?
Michael Varda:Yeah, the the top thing is pick one thing. You know, when when you're in data, you can be overwhelmed. Um, because you can feel like, well, we need to do A, B, C, and X, Y, Z. Just pick X, just pick A, whatever that is, and you create some some joint accountability with uh whether that's with your staff or trying to find a way to measure it, and you know, uh to lean on one of our uh dear friend Andrew Copeland's examples, you know, beer to go, just ask them and uh you know have that metric be measurable and be able to look at the end of uh a week, two weeks, a month, a quarter, and say, how many four packs did we sell? And you know, what was that an increase or a decrease? Were there any superstar performers? You pick one thing, you do your best to make it measurable, things like first impressions. It's tough to quantify that. You know, you're not gonna go up to everybody and say, Oh, what was your first impression of this place? Um but wherever you can, pick one thing, be laser focused, attach numbers to it if you can to quantify your impact. And uh you know, that's that's the piece because um you it's it's really easy to be overwhelmed, it's really easy to feel like paralyzed, like analysis paralysis is uh it's a term for a reason. And if you're just looking at, well, we need to fix this, this, and this, it's probably not gonna work out. But uh the one thing that I will say is when you start tracking one goal, uh it's very likely to uh stack in in other places. You know, if you're going to be focusing on uh asking for patrons if they would like beer to go, uh that's going to be increasing your your staff interactions and the relationship that you're building. It's also likely in some ways to increase time and seat, uh, because those those pieces are they're all interrelated and you know good things are like a wave. And when you start doing one, the wave is going to pick up, you start doing another, uh, before you know it, you have uh a rather rather large wave of of good things happening in your tap room.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, it's skill skill building for sure. And I like that idea of just starting with one. And you know, we've talked a little bit about like focus weeks or focus months, focus quarters, whatever you think is and because we very often will overestimate what we can do in a day or a week, and we completely underestimate what we can do in a month or a year. So to to go back to your analogy, if you've got A, B, and C and you're like, oh, let's do them all, it's like, well, but let's let's just do A and then let's make that the focus for this particular month, and then let's track and measure, oh, that actually worked, and then you build a little momentum, and then you move on to B, and now you've stacked A and B. Um because before you know it, yeah, it'll s it'll sneak up on you, like, well, cool, yeah, now we're now we're doing these things. And there's always another way to can continuously improve, but you gotta start with maybe just that one thing. Yeah, absolutely. So metrics, we love these metrics. What are um what are some like metrics or feedback loops that you think everybody, every cap room should be tracking to really understand? Because we because again, there's a gazillion things we can track, but what do you think are maybe the most important so you can understand your customer and guest behavior?
Michael Varda:Yeah, in the spirit of of focusing on on one, um, the one metric that I'm gonna talk about for the for this is time and seat. You know, that like tab open to when you close out. And you'll most people have that on their POS and be able to track that because let's let's talk about what time and seat actually is. You know, time and seat, one longer time, likely higher tab, longer time, likely more customer engagement, longer time, uh, likely uh more items ordered, better experience had. You know, it's a it's a measure of a lot of things because Gary, I don't know the last time you had a horrible experience, but you probably got out of there pretty quickly. Um, so you're not gonna be hanging around somewhere where you're having just this fantastic time. And uh you when you're when you're thinking about this metric and and measuring it, you know, don't don't compare Tuesday to Friday. Don't compare Wednesday to Saturday. Be looking at each day individually, maybe if you want a group weekends and weekdays, or like a Thursday through Sunday, but you'll really be looking at that uh as is your true measure of customer satisfaction, uh staff engagement, and ultimately it's going to be more dollars. And it's all of that is uh more or less packed into one metric.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, love it. So last question before we wrap up is you know, we've got that maybe we have some survey data, we have customer feedback data. Um, you know, how do how can they use that to build stronger brand loyalty, customer and community engagement?
Michael Varda:Yeah, the the biggest piece that um I think goes overlooked is just literally talking to the people that are in there that are in your in your tap room because there's there's a lot of scary headlines floating around the industry right now. Gen Z doesn't drink, uh and you know, obviously it's a challenging time with um just a lot of closures and uh tumultuous you know times, just maturing of the industry. There's a lot of noise. And how can you block out the noise to make sure that you're actually meeting what your customer wants? Your customer is not this mythical individual who lives online and lives in surveys and lives even in our data. And I love data, I make a living off of data. But your customer is not a spreadsheet, it's not a dashboard. Your customer is actually visiting you uh right now, uh, you know, depending on when you're listening. But your customer is there, and that is your most valuable asset. And places that I've seen do it really well. Get uh a mixture of regulars, a mixture of, you know, call it maybe first through fifth timers, and be you know, the owner, go have a beer with them, go organize a table. You know, what is it that you like here? We you want to be involved in the community and get some ideas. Give your customers some ownership in the business, some equity in the business to sort of guide these these decisions. And um they again, you just we can talk about macro level stats all day. Uh they are very good directionally, they give us an idea of what's going on, but at the end of the day, uh it is it is the people that are within your the four walls of your brick and mortar who um are going to help you uh with the community engagement, brand loyalty, and ultimately just making improvements that matter.
Kary Shumway:Yeah, it's great. You know, it strikes me that, you know, right, sure, all that feedback is right in front of you. But do you ask, you know, I I try to think of a circum a time when, you know, I'm sitting in a tap room or even a restaurant, and someone would, you know, maybe it's the owner or the manager. Usually what happens is it's sort of like this throwaway question how is everything today? You know, can we but if you come up with maybe more authentication? Authenticity, like what can we, you know, oh sure, how was your experience? But how can how can we do better? You know, is there one thing we can do better on people? Are you know not everybody some people can be oh no no, everything was great, right? But other people will actually tell you, but you got to ask the question, and I think that one-to-one interaction is a great opportunity to really learn more about the people that are there because you're right, we've got a lot of macro stats, we've got a lot of trends, uh, but you've got the the case studies there right in your tap room.
Michael Varda:Yeah, no doubt. Most valuable asset.
Kary Shumway:Cool. Michael, always a pleasure chatting with you and love the information that you're sharing and the work you're doing. I think it's extremely valuable for those in the beer community. So thank you for that. If um people want to get in touch with you, maybe learn more about your business, what you do, and how they can profit from it, what's the best way for them to do that?
Michael Varda:Yeah, so you can check us out at Craft Beer Advisory Services.com. We are active on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. Uh, my personal email is just Michael at Craft Beer Advisory Services.com and send us a message on any of those channels and we'll get in touch. Michael, thank you so much for the time and information. Love it, man. All right, great to see you, Carrie. Thanks for having me.
Kary Shumway:Thank you for listening to the Kraft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers so that you can improve financial results in your brewery. For more resources, tools, guides, and online courses, visit Craft Brewery Financial Training dot com. And don't forget to sign up for the world famous Kraft Brewery Financial Training newsletter. Until next time, get out there and improve financial results in your brewery today.