How to find and keep more regulars

Gerard Leary has built a loyal group of regulars at two very different concepts in two very different parts of NYC.

On one hand there's One Mile House, an awesome (but now closed) bar/restaurant with a ton of top-level taps in bustling downtown Manhattan. On the other hand is his current venture, a small neighborhood spot in Sunnyside, Queens called Sweet Avenue.

The location and clientele of the two couldn't be more different, but he built a loyal following at each. What's his secret for finding and keeping these folks coming in?

For Gerard it's mostly about you and your space: you need to foster a community, meaning you need an ecosystem where customers feel welcome and comfortable.

Here are some of the strategies he uses to keep his finely-tuned ecosystem balanced and thriving at Sweet Avenue:

• Your staff plays a huge role. The bare minimum of just "not being an asshole" doesn't cut it. Staff needs to be engaging, learn customers' names, offer tasters, do a buyback or two, etc.
• Get customers talking to other guests or with staff: Gerard and his people go out of their way to help folks make connections. E.g. are two people drinking the same beer? Introduce them, set them up to talk about it. Does someone seem new to craft beer or craft liquors? Create a connection with them by being an educator.
• Your selection can go a long way to help with comfort. Have a balanced list so everybody can be happy there. 50% of your taps being IPAs is not going to work here.
• Encourage customers to bring stuff in to share with other customers and with staff. Sure, if they bring in beers they're not drinking your beer. But it's adding another brick to that feeling of community. And they'll be drinking your beers at some point during the visit.
• At this point there are meetups happening at Gerard's bar that he doesn't even organize, and he joins as a participant. Recently a regular proposed a "cherry night," and a group of regulars each brought in a cherry-related beer. They tasted one another's beers, talked about them, and hung out for hours. These people didn't know one another before meeting at Gerard's bar. Now they're hanging out together. And you know they'll be coming back. All the time.
• All that's great for creating a regulars out of someone who's already there. But how do you get new folks through the door? Gerard loves appointment events for this. E.g. people come for Tuesday night music trivia, they feel welcome and comfortable, then they return later.

Check out the interview for more from Gerard about cultivating regulars:

This week the Brewers Association released its annual report on independent beer production in the US.

Here' are the data points that caught our eye:

• 9,552: The number of operating craft breweries in the US, an all time high.
• 549 & 319: The number of craft brewery openings and closings in 2022.
• 189,314: the number of jobs provided by craft brewers, a 9% increase over 2021.
• 3%: The amount the overall beer market shrank by in 2022.
• 13.1%—>13.2%: Craft beer's overall beer market share in 2021 and 2022. So though beer lost ground to other alcoholic beverages as a whole, the % of beer sales made up by craft beer increased a bit.

The overall takehome: craft beer remains robust, but the market is definitely maturing and changing. This is illustrated by the near parity between openings and closings and the increase in jobs provided, which was driven by a move toward on-premises models.

Oh, and here's the report's list of the top 50 US craft brewing companies (by volume).

_{Image source.}

• As explored above, the Brewer's Association released it's annual report on the US craft brewing industry's 2022 production numbers.
• Bizarrely, Kansas City currently requires anyone working in a bar or restaurant to get a "liquor card." That involves a $42 fee and the better part of a day hopping through procedural hoops. Mayor Quinton Lucas is looking to change that, which makes complete sense. Sounds ridicluous.
• Oregon is considering doubling its per-bottle tax on liquor. Local distillers are worried about the impacts.
• Baseball hall of famer Wade Boggs is the face of a cheeky new ad campaign from Pabst, in which he claims he's the inspiration behind Pabst's mascot, Blue. Boggs's relationship with beer drinking will be well-known to fans of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.