Yesterday, I dumped on an exceedingly poor experience. Today, let’s shine some light.

If you read this and say “Ah! These are no brainers” then don’t tolerate it elsewhere either! Speak up – if you’re in the craft/beer community, say something so this does not get repeated (it was an embarrassment).

Okay – what to do:

1. Curb appeal - like it or not, it matters. Make sure your place looks inviting, the lighting is appropriate and not ugly, ugly industrial, too high, weak, fluorescent or otherwise bad. Curb appeal infers you care.

An excellent customer experience can be had at The Publican in Chicago

2. A sign to indicate you’re open or not needs to be nice and readable, not the $2 hunter orange and black variety. Geez, you put so much into your beer (theoretically) why skimp on a bad sign that turns people off?

3. Smell. What does your place smell like – and you can’t be the one to answer it. You smell it so often you’re immune to it. Ask others. Fresh, yes. Like beer is brewing – yummmm! Like industrial pine cleaner (horrific on a taste experience) or urine or garbage, bad bad bad. Clean it top to bottom with your crew 1 – 2 times per year. When everybody cleans it, everybody keeps it cleaner.

4. Clean fixtures – tables, chairs, floors, baseboards, bathrooms. Clean Clean Clean. Things should look, smell, feel, and be clean.

5. Only serve quality goods – beer and food. Simple is good – a simple fresh bowl of pretzels will always be better than a poorly executed and wasted dish of some other ilk. Don’t insult your beer by serving sub par foods.

6. Service. The very words connotes that you will indeed be served – whatever your model looks like. Drill home the servant mentality, train, teach everyday, reinforce, retrain, reteach, reinforce, rinse repeat. the passion for the customer has to come form the top too.

7. Value. Value = experience + company + environment + time spent + dollars. Get all the pieces right and it’s a fit. Get any of them wrong, then it’s time to evaluate and start over.

8. Training and education, leadership and guidance are critical pieces of the pie if you’re a one person show or if you employ hundreds. People love to patronize well run operations. Give them lots of reasons, starting here.

If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll see some hot buttons in marketing beer to women.

Focus on the beer, not sex

Today I’ll offer smart solutions for those 6 points.

1. De-sex beer. Take away any inferences or sexual overtones. What our culture could use, since it’s not a very healthy sexual representation and very lopsided towards objectified women, is non sexual advertising and marketing. A great product should stand on its own merits. Period. If you have to use sex to sell it, I’d make a stab that the product ain’t that great to begin with. Clever – great! Humor – good choice. Just make sure you remove sex.

2. High quality delicious beer is made for everyone. Beer is genderless – approach your marketing efforts this way, targeting beer enthusiasts in general, and you’ll be successful. I’d point to Schlafly, Boulevard, and Ninkasi as great examples of focusing on beer, not sex.

3. See #2. Beer enthusiasts come with female plumbing and male plumbing. Ignore the plumbing and go for taste buds.

Good example of classy, non gender specific label

4. Beer names and labels need to be thoughtfully considered. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s clever if you turn a ton of people off – unless you flat out want to turn them off (and ruin sales potential). Mistress, girls, chick, babe, and any sexualized reference of women is a bad choice, no matter who you are and how big or small your beer world is. Men aren’t labeled as such; don’t make the huge mistake of intentionally insulting 50.9% of the (entire) population with a insensitive or inappropriate name. There are millions of words – find some that work and still remain true to your brand. This includes images by the way.

5. There IS a market for craft beers for women – those beers are known as craft beers. Yes, I just repeated the obvious because it still needs to sink in with many. Craft beer should be marketed for all. Yes, you market different for different market segments – including men and women. That said, when’s the last time you heard some one say “I want a really crappy beer”?? Quality is genderless; treat your customers with enough respect that you assume they all want quality craft beers. The key here is education internally and externally.

6. All craft beer enthusiasts want layers of flavor, complexities and characteristics. That’s part of the beauty of beer. With four foundational main ingredients, those four in concert with whatever the recipe allows for already encourages incredible variety for people to enjoy.

So the message du jour for breweries wanting to attract female beer enthusiasts: market your beer on its own merits - high quality, local, value, good business practices (yes, for you), and they will patronize you.

What does “beer clean” mean? Here’s a helpful post.

Beer clean glassware is also indicative of the commitment of the brewery, brewpub, operator – whoever is in charge of the beer inclusively – to high quality beer.

Larry Chase, brew master at Standing Stone Brewing Company is Ashland Oregon, told me this.

“Because beer is alive and produced by a living organism (yeast), in order to make better beer, the entire brew house should be clean. Everything the beer is going not touch needs to be clean.”

He tells me it tastes better and it’s more consistent when everything is clean. Not just surficially clean, really elbow grease scrubbed clean.

The dedication to a clean brew house and all its equipment is evident in fresh, clean beer – yes, you can taste the difference.

Any while contamination may not make you sick, it’s kind of a disheartening thought. To think that after all that effort, someone may be slipshod on cleanliness.

Quality assurance quality control makes sense to the senses.  Make sure your brewery is clean. All the way to the glassware.

This could be said for a great many things. I bring it up today remembering a brief interchange with David Walker this past May in San Diego.

“If you’re going to make a chair, make a chair.”

A chair is not a chair...

Okay – chairs…beer…women…Huh?

The overarching idea I took away from the exchange is that we can relate it to anything. Said another way, if you’re going to put effort into something, make sure the goal and the effort are worth it.

Chairs, beer, widgets. Quality & attention to detail pays off in everything.

Besides, women are paying attention. So are men.

I have a high amount of regard for Dr. Michael Lewis. He’s a class act, educated, affable, well spoken, extremely well versed in all things beer. A gentleman.

So I was really pleased to be able to take in his presentation at the latest Craft Brewers Conference in Boston, this past April.

One indication of the aforementioned qualities is this quote, which he offered during his talk:

“Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s bad or poor quality.”

It was in response to people referencing big brewers in the discussion. Indeed – to brew consistently, whether you like the taste of the beers made by industrial brewers or not, is quite remarkable.

Quality always outshines mediocrity or poor product.

How’s your quality of the beer, the customer experience and the authenticity of your brand (who you are)?