Got to the East coast of Florida this past weekend and I got to try a few beers from breweries around there. One of them served an Oktoberfest and something wasn't right.
It was an ale. It was clearly an ale. I don't like to speak up or call another brewery out especially in front of other customers.
Was the beer good? It was good, just not what I was expecting. Also they had some quality issues. We drank enough of it to change kegs and one of them either had contamination or it was the bottom of the bright tank fill because it went from clear and bright and malty to fruity opaque yeasty mess. The bartenders didn't even notice. On top of that one of the bartenders mentioned that they didn't brew a lager because they didn't have time to do it. That sends a red flag up. I just brewed a perfectly good, flawless, oktoberfest that was tapped in 19 days. There's no excuse not to do it right.
Second pet peeve... growlers. We stopped in at a brewery that we'd been to the previous night to grab a couple growlers and a pizza so we could watch the gator game at the house. They were having an Oktoberfest "party" and wouldn't fill growlers of the O'fest. That would be fine if the "party" was really busy and they were sure to sell out the beer with pints. There were 5 people in the whole place and one of them was the bartender from the previous night. How about you use a little common sense and sell the damn beer rather than turn away customers. We couldn't buy the growlers so we said fuck that and didn't buy their pizza as well. Would have been $100 in revenue and they just pissed it away. I'm going to write to the manager and let them know how their employees aren't using their brains. If it's a top down problem then maybe there's nothing that can be done. You can only lead a horse to water...
Am I wrong to expect more out of the places I go to in the business I'm trying to break into?
OK a third pet peeve...
Many of the breweries I've been to and talked to the owners have mentioned that they want nothing to do with food. They talk about serving food like they'd need plan a mission to Mars. Only two others have had the foresight to have some sort of food program where they are serving simple foods that help increase revenue substantially (sandwiches and pretzels - easy simple bar food that doesn't require a full kitchen or substantial infrastructure investment). One of the breweries is $1.2M into their build out and a month from opening, but they were scared to serve any sort of food. They are already in the food service industry business, the jump isn't that hard and your revenue will increase, especially when you're gonna need it to pay for that build out!
Sorry for the long post. I'm frustrated because I see people with less business sense and less ability for quality being successful despite themselves when I'm having trouble getting it started.