Tree House Brewing (2022)

As soon as he dropped, “as many of you know, I cover this industry”, the whole, “we’ve been over this” seems to be applicable. It’s far more likely that people understand tree house rules, than know who he is, or what he does.

There isn’t one brewery out there with the massive weekend lines that Tree House consistently has.

 

Yes, far more the staff interactions than the overall process, which I stand by about being silly. The defense of, “They probably get the same questions 500 times a day” won’t fly with me either. You’re in hospitality.

They don’t know I’m on Beer Advocate. They don’t know what I do for a living. I could be a complete dumb dumb who doesn’t know how to read. Don’t treat me or my family (or anyone) that way. My wife, patient and kind, who used to come with me to Brimfield said immediately, “Wow, this experience has changed.”

 

No matter how many times it’s stated on the website it’s dumb they make you prepay for all of your drinks, and any non-alcoholic drink for that matter. It’s fine they require reservations to gauge the crowd, but why then do I need to buy an NA seltzer that I don’t want? (I mean I know why, but it’s still annoying)

 

That I was one of Matt’s gripes, but the reservations and splitting pours/tickets was another. Again, it may be dumb, but you shouldn’t complain about it if you failed to read the clearly stated how to’s on the site.

I’m not glossing over the poor staff interactions. That I’m on board with and shouldn’t happen, but don’t gloss over his opening paragraph.

 

I don't think Matt is faultless but I also feel like they were at the "where do we go from here" "here's what we can do" part and they blew that.

 

I understand why Tree House is the way it is, but that doesn't mean I accept it. I mean, any beer-related interaction that's more complicated and involves more planning than me say 'I think I'll stop in for a beer,' and you saying 'Hi! What can I get you?' has stopped being fun and is fundamentally flawed.

 

By nature of its postage stamp parking lot and high traffic location, Cape Tree House is kind of fundamentally flawed by default. Its existence is more or less a compromise, and ultimately I think it’s cool that it exists and it having some annoying process quirks is worth it when the alternative is probably no Cape Tree House.

Sucks that they weren’t super friendly about it - customer service above all else when dealing with non-rude people imo. And no disagreement the reservation system is a bit goofy at best and annoying at worst. But it kind of is what it is.

 

As a teacher, if I have to answer the same questions over and over again then I’ve probably framed the assignment poorly.

 

Please don’t extrapolate one customer service experience to an entire company, especially now, where many businesses in all kinds of industries (hospitality & others) are struggling to find workers and fill shifts.

 

Pre-paying for drinks is stupid and also dangerous. Plenty of people feel pressured to keep drinking with the group they’re with, don’t realize how hard a 8.8% DIPA will hit them, may have a situation come up where they absolutely need to get in their car and drive immediately after finishing their second strong beer, or, simply just don’t know how to limit themselves.
Exchanging a ticket for a can is a start, but still not ideal.
As for the customer service, this was inevitable once they started to expand. The wholesome crew of familiar faces at one location was never sustainable, and there’s also going to be a disconnect with employees at the different location. Not to mention hiring is tough right now and sometimes you need to settle for someone that might not be an ideal choice.

I also had a not so ideal experience at Deerfield, but that was more due to the crowd size. I’ve yet to have a negative experience at Charlton

 

This may have been said but I glossed over some of the recent posts... this is 100% an issue that is pretty unique to Tree House and should be fixed eventually. Visiting their locations is not an intuitive process.

There's so many little rules and structured ways to how they do things that can be overwhelming to customers and also leads to staff being asked the same thing over and over again, wearing them down.

Clearly nitpicking in the grand scheme because they're doing just fine, but IMO visiting a brewery should not require reading a tutorial before hand.

 

I was going to make the same point as VodkaPong87. If you're forced to pay in advance for your drinks, you're more likely to drink them, even if you shouldn't. Exchanging money for drinks at the time of purchase has worked in all different venues in all kinds of places. No reason it can't work for Tree House, even if they require a reservation first.

 

Yeah, I wonder why they don’t go with something like GoTab the way so many others do.

 

If only they had a more streamlined way to utilize the pour process. I absolutely hate how they do things. Forcing people to use the online ordering slows things down because a chunk of people have no idea until they get there or even until they get to the bar. Yes, there’s a sign, but if you’re in line for the first time at a hyped brewery with your friends, you have a good chance at missing it. A LOT of people go to Tree House every week, and most of those people are not beer geeks like us on here, and are in the know with all the current information. 99% of breweries work the same way: show up, go to the bar (which has no line), look at the tap list, order. This is not how it works at TH, and you just have to do some simple math to see that even if 10-20% of people that go are uninformed, that’s probably 100-200 people a day, and probably up to 500 people on a busy weekend. This will cause issues and cause irritation among the staff who deal with the same questions every day, that many times a day.

They have these massive bars and don’t use them in the best way imo. I usually see 4-6 people being served at a time. The big one in Charlton is like 30 feet long and has 48 taps. They could easily serve 12 people at once. This is of course my uninformed opinion. Maybe there’s a good reason they do this, but just visually, there’s a lot of wasted space and potential when it comes to pour efficiency. It should never take over an hour to get a glass of beer. Just my opinion

 

We thought once they moved to Charlton it would be a relaxed stop by and drink as you wish atmosphere. Then we thought when they had 3 locations open it would be a relaxed stop and drink as you wish atmosphere. Seems like TH needs to go full Rock Bottom Brewery and spread across the country to ease the congestion and necessity for rules.

Seriously though, a side benefit of the reservation system and neighborhood limitations should be that Sandwich is not so overcrowded they can't provide good customer service to each person there and adapt to things slightly out of the ordinary. I have not been to Sandwich yet, but at least 15-25% of the people in pour lines at Charlton with me are first timers or haven't visited tree house post-expansion from Monson. Matt is probably closer to the 50 percentile of knowing the process in Sandwich just by actually making reservations, so if he gets the high hat then damn...

 

Induced demand, anyone?

 

I’m certainly not trying to discount his experience. I don’t go on weekends specifically due to the fact that it’s busy af and doesn’t seem like an ideal brewery experience. As proven.

I’m just saying, the majority of people who went that day, had a fine experience because they knew the details.

 

Nah, in Sandwich they have all those b.s. procedures to try to mollify the neighbors who were so opposed to them opening there. Now that summer is over and it seems that the neighbors were satisfied with how things went (there haven't been a ton of neighbor complaints AFAIK), it will be interesting to see how/if they change their operations.

In Charlton, they'd need a lot more staff to change the terrible procedures and while every business is struggling with staffing, I know TH gets a large number of applicants for every open position so I'm not sure why they can't improve/simplify there.

 

I would say Sandwich needs Treehouse more than Treehouse needs Sandwich. The business they bring other businesses in the towns they are in is immeasurable. TH could have opened another location anywhere with the demand for their beers and had a bigger upside revenue wise. Why they would open in a town that is placing so many restrictions on them is questionable, but I guess an investment in Beachfront property is never a bad idea.