I saw (and grabbed) one of the printed beer menus last time I was in – THANKS – great solution.

Kevo

We’re going to keep just a chalk board with house beers for now. The reason is twofold. First, selling house beers is better for the Co-op and we try to sell a higher ratio of house beer to commercial beer. Second, a chalk board full of house taps (of which there are at least 7) and commercial taps (20) is too hard for most people to read and a huge cause of long lines.

However, we now a commercial beer menu, updated weekly, located near the front door for your reading pleasure while in line. We’ve also included an “on deck” section to account for the frequent changes in the taps. I hope this solves the problem!

The blackboard/wall menu is more important (to me) for making my beer buying decision. The problem with the blackboard is adding/removing one beer means the menu may need to be reconfigured. What I would suggest is a beer menu board with places for 20 (or whatever the number) beers. I would use cup hooks – though you could also do it as a rack board. Then make up 20-30 individual pieces (could be hardboard painted with blackboard paint) – with hooks or whatever to fit onto the menu board. Then when a new beers is added, write it out on a menu board, and hang it on the board. One beer, one change. That would eliminate the issue of reconfiguring the whole menu for one change.
You could also add other info – ABV, etc to the individual menu boards as the spirit strikes.

This sounds more complicated than it would be to construct ( though you’d also need to find a space on the wall, etc, etc.)

Kevo

It sounds to me like you just made the perfect argument FOR a chalkboard. Surely it cant be that hard to wipe and write… And that wouldn’t have people looking at their phones for an ‘updated’ beer list.

Thanks,
Andrew

P.S. how is the member dividend plan development going??

Our commercial tap wall changes quite frequently. In fact, the list of commercial beers that we start each day with is often the not the same list by the end of that day. In order to keep a truly up to date list, we would have to print menus, update an already cluttered and difficult to read board, and change the “Drink” section of our website daily–more than once a day during our busiest times. The other alternative would be to pick the commercial beers for the week and when a keg is done, we would put a cup over the tap, leaving it empty until the next week when we update the list/tap wall. This would mean less variety for our patrons, fewer sales for our Co-op, and an esthetically unpleasing look for our tap wall. However, we welcome any suggestions from our Member-Owners and always value feedback of any kind. We look forward to coming up with a creative solution to these aforementioned obstacles.