The 5-minute weekly email newsletter that keeps your bar ahead of the curve

Hi all, hope you're well!

I took a break from sending Brave New Bar for a few weeks to get to know the newest addition to my family. He seems to be a pretty good guy as his 8-pound self, but we'll see how I'm feeling about that in like 12 years.

Anyway, now that I'm back from paternity leave, you'll again be getting new editions of Brave New Bar every Thursday afternoon. As always, if you have feedback, you'd like to get interviewed/featured, or anything else, please just let me know!

--Dylan 🍻

Here's an ugly truth: most of the photos neighborhood bars, restaurants, and breweries use in their social media posts are bad.

The photos Rob Austin, who runs marketing for Leader Bar in Chicago, uses in social media are actually good. (He's got a background in photography and videography, so knows a thing or two.)

Here are 9 tips Rob shared for taking good social media photos:

1. Take photos on a sunny day and use indirect natural light. Don't rely on overhead lighting.
2. If you have a good photo-taking place or two in your bar, stick with it. Don't force variety.
3. Hold a big photoshoot when conditions are good. Take tons of photos of everything you can so that you always have content on hand.
4. Depth of field part 1: Show the subject of the photo up front. The bar should be in the background, but the thing you're posting about (e.g. a special food item) should be the focus.
5. Depth of field part 2: adjust if necessary. E.g. if you’re shooting a plate of food, tilt the back of the plate up by setting it on something that's like an inch tall. That'll help your audience see it.
6. Don't take just 1 or 2 photos of the thing you need. Take a minimum of 30. You won't get the perfect shot the first time.
7. Put all your photos into a Google Drive folder. If they're in the cloud, you—and your team—can always access them.
8. You can reuse a photo, but only if its been a little while. We're talking a few months.
9. Follow the examples of other social media profiles that you think do a good job.

For more depth and context on these tips—and examples of using them—check out the interview clip:

And for more service industry marketing advice from Rob, check out this playlist of all Rob's videos on our Youtube channel.

• The Great American Beer Festival is in Denver this weekend. The annual event, widely viewed as the most notable beer fest in the country, brings together breweries from across the US and crowns the best beers and ciders in over 100 categories. We'll break down the big winners in next week's Brave New Bar.
• Jack's Abby parent company purchases Night Shift Brewing. One Massachusetts craft powerhouse buying another.
• Beer can art accidentally tossed in Netherlands. The LAM Museum, where the piece was displayed, often exhibits works in unconventional places. That was a problem here, since the piece was displayed in the museum's elevator shaft, where a technician tossed it, thinking it was trash. They've since been recovered.

❓ Why is it worth it?

Because if it’s not listed on the menu, customers won’t know to order it, and it won’t sell.

Even if your servers are ready to answer the question (which often isn't the case), many customers just don’t want to have to ask. Instead, they’ll just order something else that they know is available, or maybe nothing at all.

❓ How can I do it at my business?

For starters, anything is better than nothing here. If all you can muster is just a half sheet of paper with your rotating beers listed on it, that's still much better than "ask your server."

If you'd like to up the design a bit, you could of course do something manual—create an editable menu template in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Excel. And once you have your template designed, just edit it whenever you get a new beer in and print it out.