Conversation Series: Our Customers Deserve an Experience; a Chat with Alistair Williams
While we continue to navigate the many challenges of social distancing and selling to-go beers we’re reminded that our customers still deserve an experience when they walk through our doors and follow our social distancing protocol. While we can’t offer you a seat at the bar, we do believe in our brand and continue to look for ways you can experience this while our taproom is closed.
We went straight to the source and called our friend Alistair Williams, a professor with Johnson and Whales University. He holds a PhD in Experiential Marketing for Hospitality and Leisure and a Masters in Consumer Behavior. Dr. Williams has published and presented extensively within hospitality and tourism marketing. Alistair practices what he preaches as a partner in The Portrait Gallery Restaurant & Bar, in downtown Matthews, and understands the COVID-19 challenges first-hand as a business owner. He’s classes are all virtual these days, which isn’t new for him. He claims that teaching marketing online is easy but teaching the art of tequila, well, that’s a nightmare.
While breweries are busy selling beers, and some slashing prices, he’s passionate about keeping the taproom experience alive – it’s the business model that saved the industry. “If we turn this industry back into commodity with packaging and pricing, then the taproom model is not sustainable,” he says. “Craft beer is an experience, not a commodity.”
Williams shares the 5 components of a building an experience. Here are a few ways that we’ll be bringing our taproom alive and reminders for all of us in this collaborative industry to keep the experience (and the dream!) alive:
Cognitive
“Teach people something by building an experience,” says Williams. We have more time on our hands to watch and read and have seen so many examples of education offered online, from cooking classes to painting and wine pairings. At Lost Worlds, we want to share the art of brewing and will continue to bring behind the scene footage of stories of our beers.
Emotional
How can we make the experience aspirational? Williams suggests looking for ways to build exclusivity and generate excitement. Did you catch our Tiramisu Porter limited release this week? We’re working on a few more, along with limited edition merchandise.
Sensory
Williams reminds us to play with the senses. “Put raw hops and grains into packets and let your customers smell the ingredients you’re working with,” he said. For us, we’re open during brew days and the smell of beer brewing is, well, what we all need right now;-)
Pragmatic
What’s your call to action? Maybe we’ll design a beer to launch when we can all be together again. At Lost Worlds, we’re going to start entering our beers into competitions this fall. We’ve made some pretty tasty beers and want to see what the judges think.
Relational
We have a desire to be together, but we can’t right now. So how can we relate and share? “I’ve seen a lot of good things around virtual happy hours, virtual music nights, and I think it’s great,” says Williams. He encouraged us to co-create content too. Which is exactly what we’ll do, and we get to know our taproom guests that we haven’t met yet.
What would you like to see from Lost Worlds Brewing in the days and months ahead?