Discovery

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Coach House Consulting was engaged as a business advisor to a regional brewery to review and recommend their current website, social media and the tasting room experience, as well as grocery distribution in stocks. 

The company did not have a vision statement, so we suggested one. The current mission statement was two-pronged and difficult to retain, so we took the liberty of combining them. Based on the current mission and the company’s expansion, we developed a Strategic Objective.  

We spoke with former colleagues in marketing and e-Commerce outside of Ohio for their feedback on the current website, social media, and the tasting room experience. This included a VP of Sales, two Directors of Marketing, a Marketing Manager, and a Web Content Developer.  

Overall feedback on the branding, packaging, and the brewery storefront was good. Recommended featuring packaged cans, branded glasses with beer in them, branded vans/trucks used for distribution on the homepage of the website and throughout the rest of the site to enhance brand awareness and reinforce their brand identity. 

The brewery is a mission-driven company, but it did not come across on the site except in the home brewers’ section. The home brewers’ section was sequenced in a way that did not clearly convey the program. Recommended developing more content on how to become a guest brewer and when you know you are ready for the program. This would draw more organic traffic to the site. 

There was no email sign up at all on the website and recommended that it be added. 

Merchandise was not being sold on the website. We recommended a merchandise page be developed to at least show what is available for purchase.  

Due to the aged content, we recommended that the social media feeds of Facebook and Twitter be removed from the bottom and that an Instagram feed be added.

Navigation of the website was not easy since many links were broken and a lot of links lead to other event sites, etc. Plus, the navigation offered different information than the rotating hero images or vice versa.  Recommended simplifying the key messages, unifying the navigation bar to include all the categories which would eliminate wasted space, reduce redundancy, and eliminate confusion.

Recommended the development of a content planning calendar, based on the production schedule This would allow the ability to improve the management and re-purposing of the content on the web, social, and at the brewery. 

Recommended there be more branding throughout the brewers’ tasting room by leveraging the brewers’ logo. Education on the beer, the guest beer and the production process was another great marketing opportunity in the tasting room. The Mug Club loyalty program or any other loyalty program should be communicated to the guests in the tasting room, as well as on the web and social media channels. 

To gain an overall perspective of the brewery operations, we met with individuals from two competing breweries, two beer distributors, and three retailers to get their feedback.

There were many out of stocks at different grocery locations. The facings inventory models needed to be reviewed and communication be made with the groceries to receive daily sales by SKU / Location. Planogram consistency would make the identification of issues easier as well. Once a week self-distributing would then move to initial stocking and targeted replenishment visits.  At the time, once a facing was depleted, it was filled by a competitor. 

The brewer leveraged the Vision, Mission, and Strategic Objective that we recommended.

All website, social media, and tasting room recommendations were implemented over a course of a nine-month period.

The brewer moved from self-distributing once a week to a timelier third-party distribution.