A Better Loyalty Program for the Craft Beverage Industry

Visiting a brewery, winery, cidery, or distillery is as much about the experience as the beverages. Whether you visit for a special release, outdoor seating with a view, live music, or trivia night, it’s these experiences that produce repeat customers.

As soon as we began building LoyalBrew for our initial use case, we were plotting a course for the next one – a loyalty platform based on events and activities that encourages repeat business, strengthens brand awareness, and rewards your most enthusiastic fans. Too many loyalty programs are bland and under utilized because they are solely based on the amount you spend. We wanted to build a loyalty program that engages and motivates customers to do more than just spend money.

With our latest release, LoyalBrew can be used by individual breweries, wineries, cideries, and distilleries to reward customers through:

• Event attendance
• Visiting multiple taprooms
• Merch purchases
• Brand promotion

For example, Archetype Brewing out of Asheville, North Carolina, has set up their loyalty program on LoyalBrew with the following activities:

1. Visiting their West Asheville taproom
2. Visiting their Downtown Asheville taproom
3. Attending several of their recurring events, such as Charcuterie night on Sundays, Monday Mission Pint Night, Locals Night on Wednesdays, and Trivia Night at both of their locations
4. Sharing a selfie at one of their upcoming special events

Customers can claim a stamp for each activity. Once they claim all stamps, they will receive a reward, and the cycle will begin again.

In order to claim a stamp at one of Archetype’s taprooms, LoyalBrew uses your phone’s location services to determine if you are at one of Archetype’s two taprooms. If LoyalBrew determines that you are not at Archetype or you don’t want to share your location with LoyalBrew, then the app prompts you to take and share a selfie with Archetype by uploading it to LoyalBrew.

In order to claim a stamp for any of Archetype’s recurring events, LoyalBrew will check your location and the current date/time to determine if the stamp can be claimed. Like the previous scenario, a selfie can also be uploaded to prove your attendance and claim your stamp. Since these events are recurring, there are many opportunities for customers to claim stamps.

Archetype’s special event stamp can only be claimed by sharing a photo through LoyalBrew. Special events are one-off events and Archetype is giving their customers plenty of opportunities to claim this stamp by including many of their upcoming special events.

All of these events and activities will result in revenue for Archetype as a loyalty program should. However, it will also result in a more engaged customer who might attend events that she or he never considered before LoyalBrew. In addition, Archetype will accumulate a bank of user-generated images to use on their social media channels. It’s a win-win for everyone.

This is simply the beginning though. We can’t wait to see how breweries, wineries, cideries, and distilleries will use LoyalBrew to reward their biggest fans and we will be there to support them along the way.

To see LoyalBrew in action, check out Archetype Brewing on LoyalBrew.