Other Half Brewing November 2017

Weren’t the limits lowered for the super hyped trillium collab (triangles?)

And even with that huge #hazeboi line, there was still stuff available after the line went away at 11. Contrast that to Saturday’s release where two of the offerings were gone before they got halfway through the line.

It’s simple. Lower limits. Nobody is buying 2+ cases for individual consumption every drop.

 

I didn't say they aren't successful nor that they don't know what they are doing, but rather from a business/economic perspective that they are leaving money on the table.

The key to any brick and mortar retail establishment is to drive traffic/volume to the store. Cutting allotments in half might not drive twice the traffic to the brewery, but it will definitely bring an increased number of consumers who will more than likely buy additional merchandise or have a few drinks. That's incremental revenue without making any significant changes to their business model or adding any material expenses.

Any economist would say that their current situation is very inefficient. Any time demand far exceeds your supply and you sell out instantly, you are either priced way too low or you need to ramp up production. Increased production is expensive nor does OH want to price itself out of the market but they can lower their allotments all the way down to say 1pp if they wanted to artificially increase supply and drive incremental traffic to their establishment.

Sure, if they still had that original taproom it probably doesn't make sense because they can't accommodate more visitors efficiently, but now they can.

 

I agree, that's the lamest argument on this site.

 

I'm surprised they haven't stopped canning completely. When you charge a $1 an oz for every 4oz pour you're screwing everyone, not just locals! $4 for a taster of session IPA?! Where am I?! How did I get here?

 

@dhaakon and @SpinSamzo i completely understand the points you are making. I know they owe a lot to the people who locally visited them in the beginning but i think at some point most local businesses dream of expanding past just local and becoming a global brand without “selling out” to the big bad guys. The collabs, merch, trading, reselling, etc. as much as they can be annoying as hell (some more than others) have allowed them to do that without the actual “sell out” label.

Full disclosure, I currently live in long island (boooo) and i do go every saturday at 6am and as you can see in my profile i do trade, but i rarely ever get a full allotment. I keep 1-2 cans of each for myself and trade the other 6-10 cans to my trade buddies (i dont really seek out new traders, just have the same 4 or 5 every week), so I dont know if you consider me part of the problem or not.

My overall point i think was that whether i buy them to drink myself because they are delicious, buy them to say i have them, buy them so i dont miss out, buy them to collect, or buy them to share with other people, i just dont see why one of those makes me more worthy of the beer than the others.

In all honesty, and im not saying this in an antagonistic way at all, you should prob start hitting up some of the other breweries that are not as popular and skip other half all together if you really dont like the direction they are going in. Now they may not notice, but other breweries are starting to build their own hype (just look at equillibrium today, people on line before 4/5am for a noon release) so who knows what will actually end up happening.

Either way i enjoy other half and dont mind waiting in line, but i do understand that others remember when it wasnt like that and dont like what its become.

 

Went to the release with a few buddies from Jersey yesterday. I was one of 'bad guys' that maxed out because I won't be able to get back to OH until probably 2018, and I will be trading with my friends that are attending other local releases (hudson valley, equillibrium, etc) that I can't get to. The beer I just bought should last me through Christmas with these trades. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I think there are more buyers in my situation than are recognized by the crew here. My friends and I are not "#hazebois", we're just semi-local dudes that appreciate other half and other local breweries but can't dedicate every saturday to running there, or other local breweries, for a 4 pack or 2.

Anyways, now that I'm probably hated by 90% of the people in this thread..

A guy that I've seen at almost every release I've attended came up to my friends and I in the tap room asking if we could part with a 4 pack of DMD, since it had sold out. We gladly obliged and he offered to venmo me the $20. He pulled up my profile, but the payment never went through for whatever reason. I sincerely doubt he was trying to steal a 4 pack, so I figured I'd post here to see if he was around. I didn't catch his name but he's a jovial guy about 6 foot, with glasses black hair, black beard.

*goes back to lurking*

 

out of shear curiosity, how much do you spend regularly on shipping?

 

It depends but around $30-40 a week. When i said trade “weekly” i meant for each weekly release; I usually do 2-3 packages a week at the most, staggering them a bit.

 

Every single OH collab I've had has been a let down. Their regular beers are just much better. Its all hype with no quality.

 

gtocha thanks, just could see it getting pretty expensive

 

Personally-speaking I am totally on your page and would love to see lower limits, and one or two other tweaks

But from a business standpoint I don’t think there’s much of a need to drive additional people to the taproom. Whenever I go it’s either busy or very busy or mobbed, except for one or two instances where I’ve arrived right at opening on a day where there are no cans for sale.

Right now they sell cans direct from the brewery (at high margins compared to distro’d package beer), they generally sell out same day, and they have tons of traffic in the taproom. I can understand not being in a rush to fuck with that.

 

It defintely can. When i actually first got going i was trading wayyy too much. Decided i dont need them all that badly so i just kept trading with a handful.

 

Just for comparison and as an FYI... Tree House has 6,100 cases available today and has limited to people to 32 cans PP in total for the three releases.

That's insane production.

http://treehousebrew.com/on-tap

 

I can understand that but I wonder how busy they will be today with no can sales vs today with some can being available. You would have to reasonably assume it would drive incremental sales that they will ultimately miss out on but who knows.

If that is truly the case, that they can't support any more people in the taproom especially right after the expansion then I'd say they greatly under estimated demand and failed to really capitalize on the full potential they have available. I know space is insanely expensive in this area but it's not good that they are already maxed up in their new space.

 

And they will still sell all of that either today or Friday! Obviously they're completely different size production breweries but I do appreciate that even when they were smaller, their limits reflected the fact that they wanted to get the beer in most visitors hands that day. The limits reflect an actual thought out decision, unlike this full case nonsense at OH.

 

Exactly...it's obviously apples to oranges in terms of production but to your point they actually make it a point of emphasis to find the perfect balance between getting everyone who makes the trek cans and yet selling out at insane scales...and the consumer appreciates it.

 

But what is the happy medium? Treehouse sells out within a day or 2 even at 6 cans pp. If OH did 6 cans pp i think the beer would last multiple weeks. I’m not sure that is ideal.

This is kind of my overall point; how do you calculate the proper amount for limits to ensure more people get allotments but so the beer isnt left over the following saturday?

 

The sand city collab and no lay ups were very very good beers. Oh, and the first city slickers was great. Maybe you missed out on the good ones.

 

Did you try All Infinity Everything? Or Raining Threes?

On principle, I fully agree that collaborations are primarily used as marketing techniques. But I think the onus for the “hype” attached to them is on the consumer who interprets two+ breweries coming together as some sort of indication of higher quality. There is no reason to assume that OH collaborating with another brewery will result in a better beer, but many jump to that expectation despite little/no indication from OH.

That said, I actually really like the spirit with which OH approaches collaborations, seeming to view them as opportunities for experimentation. Florida Plates was a great recent example. While I didn’t enjoy the beer as much as most of their standard DIPAs, I thought it was a really fun concept!

TL;DR: Don’t go into collaborations expecting the quality of the beer to be the sum of the participating breweries... that is, unless The Answer or Sand City are involved

 

Trial and error.

None of these allotments/allocations are legally binding nor is there a ton of red tape required so they can literally change them as often as they like.

Why not drop the allotments by 1 four pack per release until they find that sweet spot for them in terms of driving incremental consumers and not having beer sitting after the weekend (or longer than they would like). They don't have to make drastic changes overnight but they can ease into it with minimal disruption which is what's it's all about.

The fact that most releases, there are people on line who don't get everything or sometimes amy cans at all tells me what OH has a lot of room to drop the allotments that won't result in beer sitting around for very long. If they cut the allocations in half, I highly doubt a single batch makes it's through a normal Saturday but having it sell out at 8pm is different than 12pm in terms of driving incremental revenue in the taproom.