Articles

Kyle Sherrer is the owner of Backpack Brands of Newburgh, NY, which puts out three craft brands:

• Graft Cider, a craft cider that innovates on flavors. Think cutting edge craft beer, but for cider.
• Hudson North Cider, a hazy dry cider brand that's lower in sugar than their competitors (like Austin Eastciders, for example).
• Ritual Hard Kombucha, a west-coast style hard kombucha made in NY.

Kyle's been in the cider game for a long time, so it was super interesting talking to him about how bars and restaurants can sell more cider. In Kyle's mind, cider's seat at the beverage table comes from its inextricable link to comfort and nostalgia. That link means bars and restaurants are in a great spot to sell more of it.

Darian Everding manages London Underground, a craft beer and whisk(e)y bar in Ames, IA.

Post-pandemic the London Underground has invested in staff systems to make sure everything runs smoothly—stuff like staff messaging apps, learning/training policies, and checklists.

That last one has been huge. Darian has created a robust checklist system that allows London Underground's staff to be more accountable to one another and the business as a whole, and it's also allowed them to be less frantic around shift changes, which has made a very big difference.

Read on to learn how Darian thinks about checklists and to download opening and closing checklist templates!

Darian Everding manages London Underground, a craft beer and whisk(e)y bar in Ames, IA.

Like so many places in the industry, London Underground has seen an uptick in staff turnover in the last couple years. For a craft bar, that kind of turnover matters: you often have to do a lot of training with new folks to get them up to the necessary knowledge level.

During this period Darian has found a formula for staff training and education that's brought London Underground success with all their staff—from the most novice all the way up to the beer and whiskey nerds.

Check out the interview video and read on to learn 8 ways Darian educates staff and gets them invested in London Underground's bar success.

Ben Wiley is an owner of some of the best bars in Brooklyn, NY, like Bar Great Harry and Glorietta Baldy.

Their beer, wine, cocktail, and spirits lists are always top-tier. And the spaces themselves are homey and comforting. But the thing that really makes Ben's bars special is his staffing: it's obvious his friendly, helpful staff is happy to be there.

In this week's interview, he offered up some tactics for how to interview and make sure you find the right people to put behind your bar. Because nothing’s worse than hiring the wrong person.

Ben Wiley is an owner of some of the best bars in Brooklyn, NY, like Bar Great Harry and Glorietta Baldy among others.

But it's not like he just had multiple bars when he started his career (in fact, he was trained in the culinary world). He started with one bar and grew his empire from there.

In the multiple openings he's done since then, he's developed a tactical playbook for when and how to open a new place—from deciding where to look to what to do with the space once it's yours. Here are the takeaways:

Ben Wiley is an owner of some of the best bars in Brooklyn, NY, like Bar Great Harry and Glorietta Baldy among others.

He's had six different landlords in six different NYC neighborhoods, ranging from mom and pop operations to corporate LLCs.

But despite the different neighborhoods and the different landlords, Ben and his partners hold one thing constant: treat your landlord relationship like gold, and that means treat it professionally.

Ben counts this as a first principle of his business philosophy. Here's more on how he does it, why he does it, and how it's beneficial to him and his partners:

Ben Wiley is an owner of some of the best beer bars in Brooklyn. (In my opinion, they're the best.) Bar Great Harry and Glorietta Baldy are institutions, places you can always drop into for the best draft beers in NYC and an awesome, adventurous wine and cocktail list.

When I first started going to Bar Great Harry and Mission Dolores (another bar of Ben's that recently shuttered), I thought the top-tier drink selections were the reason those places flourished.

But after dozens and dozens of visits, I've come around to a different understanding. The drinks are key of course. So are the bars' consciously designed spaces. But what really makes Ben's bars so special is the staff. They're friendly. Knowledgeable. Helpful. But maybe most importantly, they seem happy to be there.

This isn't an accident. It's by design. Ben goes out of his way to treat his staff extremely well, because he knows it's one of the most important things you can do to make your business thrive and to make your life easier.

He was kind enough to share some tactics for how to treat your staff well—check out the video clips below to learn what they are!

We recently talked with Josh Hurst of Pies & Pints about how he knows what beer trends are coming before they arrive.

Here's how he figures it out:

Josh Hurst, industry veteran and Director of Operations and Hospitality for Pies & Pints, Josh Hurts has dealt with a ton of distributors in his time—with 13 locations in six different states he's put in the time to hone in on a few key strategies for effectively managing distributor relationships.

Read on and check out the interview clips to learn Josh's strategies.

This week's topic is a bit of a quick hitter (the interview clip is only like 3 mins long), but it's a bigger concept: being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

The broader idea has come up in a lot of the interviews we've done. Sometimes folks say it's key to have a "pivot" mentality. Others said "you just do what you need to do."

But no matter how it's framed, it seems every person we talk to stresses how important it is—especially post-pandemic—to be able to functionally deal with stuff just not going the way you expect or the way you'd prefer.

Especially in our industry.