Brewing Success

The beer industry's sales reached $100 billion last year, according to the Brewers Association, a nonprofit that focuses on small and independent American breweries and represents more than 70 percent of the industry. While Anheuser-Busch Inc. (Budweiser, Michelob, etc.), MillerCoors and Pabst Brewing Co. remained the top three beer-selling companies, craft beer production and sales hit all-time highs last year with 15 million barrels produced and $14.3 billion sold. Today, there are more than 2,800 breweries in the U.S.—2,768 of which were craft as of last year's count, according to the Brewers Association.

This opens up an entire new sector of the beverage industry to pursue for promotional product sales. Promo Marketing spoke to Ed Yashinsky, general manager of Tröegs Brewery, a Hershey, Pennsylvania-based beer maker that produced 55,000 barrels of beer last year, about the brewery's promotional product purchasing. The brewery has three areas of business where promotional products come into play.

BREWPUB
A few years ago the brewery relocated to its current facility, which boasts a 5,000 sq. ft. tasting room with a snack bar. While glasses, coasters, trays, etc., are necessary for that aspect, they're not a big portion of Tröegs promotional budget. "The thing is our pub is less than 5 percent of our business, so our main production business is selling to wholesalers, so the kind of things we need for those guys are completely different than what we need internally," Yashinsky said.

RETAIL
That tasting room, however, brings a lot of foot traffic to its retail store. T-shirts and hats sell well, but Yashinsky noted its bottle opener, featuring the logo of its popular seasonal, Nugget Nectar, is its top seller. "It's like a $5 item, and we sell literally hundreds per week," he said.

But it's more unique items that Tröegs enjoys offering. Even though the success of atypical items is hard to predict, Tröegs has found them to be popular, as was the case with the growler coolers. "We were kind of reluctant to buy [the growler coolers]," Yashinsky said. "We never thought that there'd be that kind of interest in [them], and I think the first three times we ordered them, we ordered small quantities because we weren't sure. And I think we were literally selling out in a week, so we had to step that up."

Tröegs visitors often purchase traditional shaker pints branded with specific beer logos, so the brewery added (and has had great success with) specialty glasses customized with its beer brands. For example, Tröegs has a Bavarian tumbler for its year-round HopBack amber ale; a chalice for its winter beer, Mad Elf; and a goblet for its seasonal barleywine-style beer, Flying Mouflan, among others. "I don't think we're as concerned about what the price per piece is as much as we're concerned about seeing something that sort of stands outside the realm of what's typical," Yashinsky said.

However, sometimes certain items may have a following, but don't move off the shelves quickly enough to make the high order count worth the purchase. For example, bike jerseys do well, but its hockey jerseys imprinted with the Tröegs Troegenator logo didn't fare well enough to keep them around long-term. "They did OK, but [a] hockey audience in the middle of summer? You're not really going to sell that, and also it's a dedicated audience," he said. "And we didn't have a lot of them so when certain sizes ran out, they ran out. And it was an item that while it was cool, it was a Troegenator jersey, it stood out, it was a great piece—it never got traction and had people asking for it over and over again, so some of those decisions [on whether or not to reorder] are easy to make."

DISTRIBUTION
Tröegs distributes to nine states from Massachusetts to Virginia, with plans to expand to North Carolina this fall, so it often splits costs for promotional items, like dart boards, A-frame chalkboards and L.E.D. light signs, with retailers and bars.

Yashinsky noted that individual beer logos are not the best option for the distribution side, as it limits the item's use. For tap handles, Tröegs has a generic one with a space within the "O" in "Tröegs" where a sticker for the current selection can be placed. "We want convertibility on that item, so we don't want a separate tap handle for every beer we make," he said. "You'd be running around in circles delivering tap handles to the same bar and every bar would have like 27 of your tap handles in their inventory, so you have to be a little plain for that kind of stuff."

However, there is always an exception. In Tröegs' case, the company has branched into branding its beers via neon signs, but that decision is on a case-by-case basis. "We have a neon right now for Perpetual IPA, which is our fastest-growing brand, so that beer, based on how fast its selling, we're trying to look for individual pieces that work for that beer because the beer's getting a lot of regular placements. … It's a nice distinctive sign and it puts off a good image that goes with the brand," Yashinsky said.