Post-Covid changes to busy vs. slow months

The next few weeks we'll be including interviews with Megan Rickerson, a FL native who owns Someday Bar in Brooklyn, NY. Most of that content will involve how members of the service industry can—and absolutely should—get involved in local politics.

But this week I wanted to provide Megan the opportunity to provide some personal background and also talk about what Covid and its aftermath were like at Someday Bar, since it's that experience that set her on the track to become so involved with NYC politics.

Here are some takeaways from the convo, and please tune in next week for some tactical advice on how to get involved in your neighborhood, city, county, and state:

• Someday Bar opened in July 2019. Obviously it was a brutal time to open.
• It started as a nerdy craft beer bar, and that's what Megan assumed it would stay.
• But when Covid hit they pivoted. (She hates that buzzword, but here we are.) They still had awesome beers, but they leaned way more into cocktails than she ever thought they would. She attributes that to how much more people were drinking during the pandemic.
• So they were making cocktails and sealing them in plastic bags with a hairdryer for takeout.
• While basically every other bar around them closed, they managed to squeak through, even though they were basically getting the shaft from relief programs (more on that next week).
• Things feel ok now, but whenever you solve one problem its like 3 new ones pop up.
• One compelling example: you used to know what your busy and slow months would be. E.g. July 4th and January would be slow and you could plan accordingly with regards to staff, projects, etc. But that's out the door now—sometimes Someday has awesome months when you'd expect a dud. And vice versa. It's tough.

Check out the interview clip for more from Megan, and remember to tune in next week to hear about getting involved in local politics:

Why?

Because TV Menus:

• Automatically update in seconds
• Always look professional
• Are easy for guests to read
• Help guests order faster
• Aren't as expensive or difficult to setup as you might think (more on that below)

Put simply, TV Menus can save you/your team time and make it easy for customers to order.

Of course, they aren't right for everyone—if you've got a quaint, cozy Belgian beer bar you don't want to jam a TV Menu above the bar.

But if you already have a few TVs, it might be worth trying, just to see if they resonate with your customers. In the right situation TV Menus can lead to a meaningful increase in beer sales.

How can I do it?

You could do this manually. How you'd implement it depends on what works for your team, but it could involve getting a Smart TV, creating an editable menu slideshow in Google Slides, and looking up beer info every time your menu changes.

• We've talked about beer's apparent ebbing pretty regularly here, but a new report indicates that 2023 was actually the worst year for the entire alcohol industry since 1991. Everything except RTD cocktails is down.
• There's conflict afoot in Indiana, where beer wholesalers and liquor wholesalers are fighting over who can sell RTDs. Current drafts of a new law grant the right to the beer wholesalers, though the liquor side is doing what they can to prevent it.
• For years and years, CA law necessitated that Japanese Shochu be labeled as Korean Soju. That's finally changing.
• And finally, from the folks who brought you the neon tree that smells like a dive bar, Miller Lite has released breath mints that taste like mint initially, but leave a subtle Miller Lite aftertaste. It's their response to Dry January.