Important, Exciting Changes at Your Co-op!
After seeing the results of the member-0wner survey, we announced our 2012 goals at the Spring Members’-Assembly Meeting.
- Purchase an exterior sign
- Increase seating
- Track patronage
- Create a more welcoming and comfortable environment
- Provide lunch service
The first step was to take advantage of our available patio space. With more seating, leash holders, and native plants, our patio is a great place to enjoy a pint with friends. As you might have seen already, the exterior signs were installed last month and we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in the frantic calls for directions. This week, we’re expecting a delivery of a few booths, adding interior seating, and a living plant wall to aid in sound dampening. Our final step for improving the ambiance is to do more sound dampening.
And I’ve saved the best for last: we’re tracking your patronage beginning June 18th. From June 18 to June 21 from 4pm – 9pm, I’ll be in the pub printing new membership cards. Yes, you can still use your old paper card, but we would love to see you for what we’re calling Member-Owner Madness! To save the Co-op on administrative costs, we encourage you to come in during this time to get your new member card and see the improvements. As an added incentive, we’ll have something fun for you each night: member-owner appreciation night, caskermelons, 100th batch brew night, and more!
AND, we’re opening for weekend lunch service starting June 22! Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we’ll open at 11:00 am with the hopes of moving toward weekday lunch in the future.
I want to personally thank Jeff for all his hard work. He spearheaded many of these projects: getting a great sign that fit our tight budget, reconfiguring the interior space, solving the patronage tracking issues with our point of sale system, and so much more. Next time you see him, make sure and give him a thumbs up (or some equivalent show of appreciation of your choice), because he’s a pretty awesome guy. Seriously Jeff. I love you, man.
Will there be opportunities to get the new membership card outside of the June 18-June 21 window? My boyfriend and I have since moved out of town, but we come back to Austin every once in a while and would still love to be Black Star patrons.
Perhaps at larger member events. Just send an email to membership@blackstar.coop and we’ll mail them to you!
The lunch service announcement just made my day!
These changes sound great! Are there any plans to address the long order lines? That is my number one issue with the co-op, and the reason why I don’t go more often.
We’ve added some interior signage to help newer patrons navigate the co-op. We’re created two lines: one for food and drinks, the other just for drinks/closing tabs which tends to move much more quickly and have a shorter line. We’ve created a more up-to-date and thorough drink menu with descriptions of our commercial beer, allowing patrons to have a better idea of what to order when they approach the register. We’ve also increased staffing on busier nights to offer better customer service. Additionally, we continue to offer counter service to patrons sitting at the bar. Long lines are a product of being busy (and we’re so glad we’re busy because it funded these improvements) and we will continue make service faster. On busy nights, we recommend getting back in line before you finish your last sip, or better yet, ordering a pitcher to avoid waiting in line. We also recommend taking your time in line to look over the menu and decide what you’d like to order. We hope you’re please when you see these changes!
Man, what REALLY needs to be done is to either get a real awning over the patio area, Or at a minimum have a sun screen or something that can be lowered/raised on the west end of the patio area starting about 5pm to make sitting on the patio bearable. Find a welder that can fabricate two 10-15 foot tall poles (4 inch steel pipe should work) bolt them into the concrete, and then have a couple of pulleys at the top of each pole. Rig up some 60-80% shade cloth and at 5pm, hoist the mainsail and block the sun into the patio. It only has to be up for 3-4 hours and it really would eliminate the direct sun that the cheesy umbrellas can’t block. it probably would also drop the preceived temp by 10 degrees letting all that concrete cool off way faster. $10 says this wouldn’t cost $2000 to do and you’d recoupe that in a weekend from additional traffic.
We agree! We’re still looking in to it. Unfortunately the patio area is not technically ours, so any improvements/modifications would have to go through (or approved by) our landlord. We’ll be meeting with them soon to discuss possible courses of action.