TOPIC:

Overheads for the licensed trade are too high for that sort of specialisation.

That's true. I guess my thought is, why focus on the introductory beers. They'll be different for everyone and will be mostly dependent on who is doing the introducing. If you have a well stocked beer list, respected by the people who can appreciate it, they will organically pull more people into their circle.

I have a friend who is from St. Louis and loves his hometown beer, Bud. He lives here in Dublin now, and after having been dragged constantly to the Porterhouse, he eventually got curious and started sampling new beers.

Maybe a guiness tap, a BMC/Heineken/Budvar tap, and then everything else should be well chosen, highly prized brews that people can grow into? A frequent drinker card (buy 10, get a freebie) that you can only get nice beer with?

"justflow1983":207j8c49 wrote: Maybe a guiness tap, a BMC/Heineken/Budvar tap, and then everything else should be well chosen[/quote:207j8c49]That's not too far from Messrs Maguire, and you can see how well it works there.

"justflow1983":207j8c49 wrote: A frequent drinker card (buy 10, get a freebie) that you can only get nice beer with?[/quote:207j8c49]Illegal.

"TheBeerNut":2pw3bdsk wrote: Overheads for the licensed trade are too high for that sort of specialisation.[/quote:2pw3bdsk]

I don't know about that. The Porterhouse started off selling only their own beers and bottled imports.

No, the Porterhouse started off by buying a pub, selling Guinness and Heineken, and raising capital to build a brewery. The original Porterhouse still depends on macro beer otherwise it wouldn't sell them.

Messrs McGuire is set up horribly though. Look at the difference in the type of interaction people have between there and B&C. The way the space works isn't set up for someone who wants to have some nice beers and enjoy them. B&C has crap on tap too, but you get people there to enjoy the nice beers because the scale of the pub lends itself to that type of person. Someone who goes looking for a pint of Rogue River isn't going to be in a bar where the tables are too far apart and its full of morons looking for a snog.

They also make some of the worst microbrews I've ever had. Its been about a year, but I don't remember being too impressed with anything on tap there and ended up just leaving.

The "can't do, won't do, nobody will do" response to everything in this country always gets to me. If you know your market and target it effectively, success in anything is pretty guaranteed.