It’s summer which means beer festival season! Or is it? It seems that beer festival season is now year-long with multiple festivals and events scattered across every beer-friendly city.

For the consumer, this is a good problem to have but it can pose issues for breweries that have a limited quantity of beer, few resources to staff events or they simply just don’t have the time and/or inclination to attend everything they are invited to.

Choosing the right events will differ for every brewery. If you’re looking to maximize the return on your attendance, we’d suggest keeping the following in mind:

• At the beginning of the year or your brewing season, determine your budget and approximate number of events you wish to attend. Ensure you have the capacity to staff these events.
• Consider a strategy – do you want to target a certain demographic, geographic area, style-specific events – or do a little of everything. Knowing what your intended game plan is can help your year-long planning and can prevent event burn-out by July.

Bottom line is that it’s unlikely you’ll be able to participate in every event but if you have a plan of attack, you should see a return on investment.

Post by: Lynn McIlwee