During its inaugural Toasted Tour Backyard Bash, Long Island's Blue Point Brewing Toured its... [+]
Why would the billionaire CEO of a U.S. craft brewery travel, Merry Prankster-style, 4,800 miles cross-country by bus to personally introduce himself to more than 700 small brewers and 22,000 fans? Then, after 16 days, one side-of-the-road breakdown and enough beer drunk to “just about kill us,” would this 61-year-old entrepreneur decide to do it again, one year later?
The answer, in three words, is “exposure,” “differentiation,” and “celebration.”
Last fall, around when the nation marked the highest number of operational breweries in its history, Sierra Nevada Brewing’s co-founder, Ken Grossman, announced plans for a second Beer Camp Across America tour, a summer jaunt that brings Sierra-sponsored beer festivals to approximately half a dozen cities. In what Grossman calls a “rock super-group concept,” the tour showcases beer brewed at his Chico, CA, facility, certainly, but also invites every licensed brewery in the country to pour its products alongside.
“The beer festivals allow another touch with the consumers,” says Grossman, who founded the country’s third-largest production craft brewery in 1979. “We (brought) out a range of our new beers to showcase. And Beer Camp allows people to experience beer from regional breweries that they’ve never seen in their market.”
In a 4,000-and-counting craft brewery world where questions over crowded shelf space reverberate loudly through the halls of almost every industry convention, even the nation’s biggest breweries have to get more creative to remain comfortably competitive. For breweries that can afford it, the growing response appears to be, “Have beer, will travel.”
In 2015, Beer Camp joined at least five other craft breweries in crisscrossing the county with its minstrel act. According to an unscientific count, that’s two more than the year before. Despite what Grossman calls “an enormous amount of logistics,” each of the breweries has confirmed 2016 schedules. These aren’t money makers for the breweries – actually, they’re anything but – but they provide that in-your-face visibility that most companies in a fractured marketplace need.
Blue Point Brewing, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI), launched its Blue Point Toasted Tour Boatyard Bash last summer, bringing oyster-shucking classes and oyster stout pairings to beaches within its 22-state reach.
Brand Manager Curt Potter writes in an email, “It’s important to share our beer, culture and vibe in outer markets – to build brand awareness but also to support the wholesalers in positioning new beers in their portfolios. Markets and cities are chosen according to where we need exposure and/or wholesalers need extra support.”
Not surprisingly, breweries often choose themes that reinforce their corporate identity. Blue Point’s tour name and programming play off its flagship brew, Toasted Lager, and the brewery’s proximity to the oyster-filled waterways of Long Island. Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing’s recurring Tour de Fat brings bicycle rides and prize giveaways to markets nationwide as a way to reflect its history as company inspired by a bike journey. And the Lagunitas Couch Trippin’ Tour engages Internet users in a contest to bring a traveling musical circus to their town. Why music and why couches? The furniture references the sofas where visitors to the California and Chicago production facilities can lounge.
As for the music, brewery communications director Karen Hamilton explains, “Wherever you find Lagunitas, you almost always find music. It's one of our passions-- besides beer, of course! Can you imagine a better experience than drinking a tasty beer, tapping your toe and listening to music that touches your soul? We can't either.”
Some breweries, like Chicago’s Goose Island Brewing, also owned by ABI, use their time to bring education to the forefront. During last year’s annual Migration Week, brewers could be found leading an instructional pairing dinner for a women’s beer appreciation group in Minneapolis and passing around the specialty malts that make up the Belgian-style Matilda to participants at a free ticketed seminar at a Philadelphia bar.
Though some tours focus more on buzz than branding, they’re getting enough attention that people start to get excited months in advance. Each summer, Deschutes Brewing sends employees out(side) of Bend, OR, to pour beer from behind a 400-foot-long “Street Pub” bar built and rebuilt for the enjoyment of different urban populations.
According to a company spokesperson, last year’s Street Pub served 892 kegs to 60,000 drinkers in seven cities and generated advance local press. The beer media followed up with more stories when an industry website named it the 2015 “Cause of the Year” for donating all of its proceeds -- $400,000 – to charity. Sierra Nevada tracked 48.8 million Twitter impressions during the weeks of Beer Camp, and a December Internet search for “Sierra Nevada Beer Camp” turned up 391,000 results (some of which may pertain to the companion Beer Camp 12-pack Sierra released in conjunction with 12 other brewers).
Despite the literal aches and pains, the programs are brilliant ones. Sierra, for example, got to generate word-of-mouth, social media and press buzz before, during and after Beer Camp as the chattering classes marveled over the tour, the 12-pack and the opening of Sierra’s first East Coast brewing facility in North Carolina, which, uncoincidentally, closed out the tour.
Along the way, Sierra’s campaign gave fans the opportunity to: try new and familiar Sierra brands; meet the legendary Grossman; expose beer drinkers to breweries they can’t get or haven’t heard of; celebrate the old and the new in craft brewing; and engender good will among these brewers and participants. And that’s before one considers the impact of the $150,000 Sierra donated to state brewery guilds and hops and barley research.
Though Grossman will do this year’s tour, he and his son have promised each other they’ll stay off the bus.
As for whether they plan to get the band back together for 2017, the baby boomer says, “Let’s see how this second festival goes.”
