New Beer Order

When Hulk Hogan became a bad guy in 1996, joining forces with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the wrestling world would never be the same again. This week, three neighboring breweries in Chicago announced the formation of a triumvirate of their own and while I don’t think it will have the industry-altering impact of the nWo (New World Order), I think it’s smart and the potential is fascinating. Metropolitan Brewing, Maplewood Brewery, and Ravinia Brewing Co have formed what they’re calling the Brewer’s Triangle with a goal of co-promotion through collaboration brews, integrated events, and more in hopes of creating a rising tide that lift all three boats. In today’s choppy waters, I see no reason to not be thinking outside the box and couldn’t help but think through what I’d do if I were forming my own brewery faction.

Brewery collectives are nothing new as we’ve seen countless formations built through acquisitions like Duvel (Firestone & Boulevard), CANarchy (Oskar Blues, Cigar City, etc.) and Artisanal Brewing Ventures (Victory, Southern Tier, Sixpoint). This has been happening on a much smaller scale as well, including recently with Drake’s buying the Bear Republic brand in California, and New Jersey’s largest craft brewery Cape May purchasing the state’s oldest brewery Flying Fish. We’ve also seen arrangements like the one between Atlanta’s Scofflaw & Nashville’s Bearded Iris forming “Indie Brew” aimed at shared resources to improve administrative functions, purchasing, marketing and sales.

The Brewer’s Triangle is nothing like any of these examples as it doesn’t appear to be combining financials or streamlining any resources. It’s a partnership and I’m always intrigued when these alliances can exist off the books and be fruitful to all, with minimal (if any) exchange of paperwork and dollars. In order for an alliance to have staying power, significant leadership, planning, and communication is necessary to keep things fresh, organized, and equitable.

The announcement reported by Porch Drinking included mention of the Brewery Triangle’s first co-hosted event on Saturday May 20, which will includes components at each location including a block party, a collaboration Helles Lager, and $1/beer going to charity. An eye-catching new website lays out all the basics and highlights the well-diversified attributes of each company:

Here are some considerations that came to mind if I were pursuing a similar arrangement with neighboring breweries:

1. Be A Year Out 🗓 - Before going public with a partnership like this, I wouldn’t want to just come up with the first big idea and “figure out the rest as we go” as is often tempting. I’d want to plan out what the entire first year of the arrangement entails and looks like on the calendar. This ensures that there’s enough creative muscle behind the concept and that the commitment of each member is understood upfront.

2. Appoint an Alpha 🐩 - Obviously you need heavy collaboration to continue to make this worthwhile for all parties, but I’m a huge fan of someone always being the Alpha dog. Every collaboration beer needs an individual who takes a larger responsibility in keeping everyone on point, moving things along, and facilitating the arrival at decisions. The Alpha can rotate by initiative, but failure to openly identify who is grabbing the reigns results in procrastination and lack luster results.

3. The Punch Card 🥊 - When distribution is the business model, it’s very difficult to measure the success of marketing efforts with so many forces working simultaneously for and against you. With direct-to-consumer however, there’s more robust ways to evaluate the effectiveness of a strategy beyond just checking sales on the register at the end of the night. Finding a way to identify and reward customers who visit each member, ideally in a single day, would really help gauge its success and the ROI on continued investment.

4. Three Birds with 1 Event 🐦 - Craft beer has gotten pretty far away from its original grass roots approach to brand building. Educational events centered around access to brewers started really declining in attendance and thus frequency over the last 7 years. The Brewer’s Triangle example creates a natural way to put the power of three teams to work if there were a desire to reverse this trend. Pick a topic, arrange for the lead at each member to co-participate in the event offering three perspectives and more perspective for the consumer’s time.

5. For the ‘Gram 🎥 - As social media becomes harder for businesses to please the algorithm and receive organic reach, partnership with two other breweries provides a new canvas for cross-over content not dissimilar from #4 above, that indirectly promotes all three breweries through informative and/or entertaining videos.

The problem with all of my points is that it all takes time that we just don’t have enough of these days. We’re all running lean, whether out of necessity or turnover, so we have to prioritize and choose our new initiatives wisely. The last thing I would want these days is to produce a great idea like the Brewer’s Triangle and have it disband due to a lack of foresight. These were some strategies that first came to mind in making sure my new brewery faction is, as the nWo would say…