Last Call for the Beer Bar?

Where in NJ? I have never seen a retail store that could serve beer. wine or liquor.

 

Really? Technically any business with a #32 liquor license can do it (although, it might be dependent on the municipality allowing it).

The way I understand it, any NJ liquor store with a growler station has to have that type of license, even if they don't have a bar.

It used to be pretty common to find liquor stores with a little bar in the back or off to the side - I can think of a handful that existed in Edison, Old Bridge, North Brunswick and East Brunswick and in the general Plainfield area and many stores in the old Bilow Liquors chain (some in the towns noted above) used to have bars, too.

I used to get a glass of a German import that was on tap (DAB, maybe?) in the E.B. Bilow's on Rt. 18 when buying beer there - it seemed to be popular with NYC commuters when they got off the bus after work.
"Yeah, lemme go get a drink before I head home...".

 

Ha, yeah this is definitely true.

We don’t NEED this concept, but it would be cool. Although I’d probably never leave the liquor store…already spend enough time in there as it is.

You sure that wasn’t because of the alcohol?

I doubt it. MA has archaic alcohol laws. We’re not even allowed to have happy hours.

 

Not a big bar person myself although I understand the attraction. On the other hand a brewery taproom is a place where I can be quite comfortable.

 

Ah yes, 1974, I had a house two blocks off campus and the parties started on Friday after class. Early Saturday morning found me sitting on the front steps waiting for my girlfriend, beer in one hand, coffee in the other, alternatively drinking from each. She arrived and smiling ever so sweetly casually asked, "are you aware there are two people asleep on your roof"?

 

We must meet up sometime.

 

This article made me think about a lot of the things that Paste's article earlier this year about the decline of beer bars (also using Falling Rock's closing as the main example) did as well.

From talking to a couple of current/former bar owners, I'd echo @bubseymour's point above about restaurant revenue. If you don't have some standout gimmick or a complementary bottle shop business, I've been told you probably need 55%+ of your revenue to come from food. Obviously this is somewhat location dependent as well, but that's probably making it very difficult for these kinds of bars to survive in a lot of places.

Another issue I kind of wonder about with some of these older beer bars that are closing or struggling has to do with how much they rely on legacy and established connections with distributors. Even before COVID, I had noticed a shift where some of the more established places in areas I'm familiar with started losing ground to upstarts that had owners more willing to reach out to and drive hours away to get stuff from breweries that didn't have distribution contracts (including the hyped hazies and sours that a lot of us older BA users may grumble about). These can often be a much bigger draw in today's market than getting exclusives from an established distributor of older but less hyped breweries like Bell's or Stone. Unfortunately however, there's a limit to "drive far away to get exclusives" as any kind of sustainable strategy for remaining beer bars, particularly since there won't always be a hype brewery that's hard to get available in a given state.

For older beer bars, these struggles can of course also be compounded by local breweries you do have connections with expanding taprooms or even opening nearby. I'm not familiar enough with Denver's scene to know if Falling Rock itself may have had these issues and would defer to anyone from there (though I know Oskar Blues, New Belgium, and Odell all opened locations nearby in the last few years) but it's a dynamic I've seen elsewhere.

In the areas I'm familiar with, my impression is that beer bars and nearby taprooms may have been able to coexist prior to COVID, but that the pandemic heightened the conflict. For one thing it was harder to compete on to-go beers unless your place doubled as a store prior to the pandemic. When the pandemic took off last year, I initially thought places licensed to sell growlers may do okay, but the price of fills was almost always going to be bad compared to going directly to a brewery. Another issue is that the economic impact of the pandemic resulted in beer bars offering less generous happy hours in many cases, which was always one of the major draws of opting to go to one rather than a nearby taproom (sorry MA people).

Overall, I'm someone who has always preferred drinking at a beer bar atmosphere to a taproom, so I lament the loss of a lot of these places. I like being able to try multiple breweries and feel like I'm more likely to see a well-curated selection than I necessarily will at a given brewery. Unfortunately the main consideration for me during COVID however has been finding places with a good deal of space or outdoor seating, so my habits have changed as well despite my preferences.

 

Thanks, I've never seen one. Guess I don't get around as much as I think I do!

 

South Jersey, the one I specifically went to when I used to live there was called Passion Vines in Somers Point, NJ. Lovely rotating beer list, and great people! The best part, the only people sitting at that bar are either beer or whiskey snobs, which makes for excellent conversation!

 

Well, I think that those types of licenses, and thus the establishments that took advantage of them, were more common outside of the northeast counties that had been denser and more urbanized when NJ re-wrote their liquor laws in 1947-1948. I've never studied the topic real closely (and what I had learned I've mostly forgotten ) but it has to do with older towns having more "bar" licenses - PLENARY RETAIL CONSUMPTION LICENSE (“33”) - than the new law permitted based on population limits and they were grandfathered in. Hints are given in the NJ ABC Handbook explanation for retail consumption licenses:

The towns I noted were, for the most part, pretty rural in 1947 and just started becoming "suburban" in that immediate post-WWII era. Conversely, I remember that some smaller "landlocked" municipalities, due to a lot of grandfathered licenses, had a lot more bars than the new law permitted. Back in the 60s and 70s, both South River and South Amboy were said to have more bars per person than many other bigger cities.

Municipalities have a lot of control over liquor licenses in NJ:

...and many don't allow new licenses when the population increases and make it difficult to transfer existing licenses. There's all sorts of legal technicalities about "Pocket Licenses" and "Inactive Licenses" (see that ABC pdf).

 

Beer bars have always been a big part of my beer drinking experience. Maybe a part of that has been living in cities. It's much easier to get to the local beer centric bar vs getting to a brewery. Also, as life circumstances change, I've been less likely to drive off to a random brewery vs going somewhere both my GF and I like. Bars, usually with a good food menu and other forms of beverages, provide a much better experience for us. Food is a huge plus to me regardless of everything. Oh, and not all food trucks are created equal.

I think that the taproom model has really overthrown things for bars. In the past, breweries have been bars' partners. Now, they are competitors (something Falling Rock alluded to). The breweries are not letting everything get to distro and a lot are holding back specialty stuff from hitting retailers and bars. There's more draw to breweries if individual breweries are your thing. Taprooms are cool too. Bars are not. I think where consumers have been going reflects that.

The bar business itself is so traditional. It feels like a lot of them, the people that run them, are very set in their ways. The creativity isn't there to change the business model. You can't just survive based on past notoriety. You need to continue to innovate and collaborate. You need to maintain quality. You can't just get by from existing.

 

If you were a craft beer bar owner what 'changes' would you make to keep things fresh/relevant for the craft beer consumers of 2021?

Cheers!

 

More often than not, I go to a brewery, the beer is fresher, and the scene is usually less hectic, getting to speak to the actual brewers is always a plus and increases my general knowledge of beer.
There is one Taproom, Tapped in Greenville NC that I frequent when in town there.
They stay very busy with good beer, variety, freshness, and knowledgeable beer tenders.
Going to the brewery is definitely the trend, but maybe some of these tap houses need to step up their game?

 

I was at a small, local brewery's taproom last evening and the brewer came over and sat at our table and we chatted for 15-20 minutes. I agree that this aspect is a plus.

Cheers!

 

While this is something I've enjoyed as well, it is also exceedingly rare in my experience. Certainly wouldn't count it as a default benefit of breweries

 

True, in my experience it happens infrequently, but OTOH it happens more often to me (and likely Jack) than it seems to happen to others. And it happens to others often enough that I have heard people talk of it. In my case my looks and long association with the beer scene make it so there are folks I've never met who know who I am (which can be weird). Wouldn't be surprised if Jack also is more well known in his beer scene than he realizes.

Others have mentioned great food as an attraction of the beer bar. In my experience more brewers at breweries come to hang and talk than there are instances of finding great food at a beer bar.

 

I will still go to a Beer Bar. I am always fascinated by these articles because it never seems to take into account places that aren't big cities. I don't have 25 breweries in my city or any bottle shops that have taps. So I will still go to a beer bar to drink things that aren't bottled or canned.

 

Yes, the craft beer scene does indeed vary depending upon the area/region we live in. And for the non-American BAs it is even more variable.

Cheers!

 

Ha that is definitely true in my experience. I do not associate beer bars with good food at all. There are definitely good restaurants that also have well curated tap lists but I don't know that any of the great beer bars I've enjoyed were places I would go for dinner. There are definitely a number of breweries that I've visited that I would go to again just for the food.

As to your other point, it's definitely true that the experience of encountering brewers at the brewery likely has a lot to do with your personal involvement with your local beer scene. Other factors I've noticed in the instances I've met brewers is the size of the brewery (with smaller operations being more likely than larger), the age of the brewery (with it being more likely at newer operations than older operations), the time of day/week (with weekday afternoons being more common than a weekend night). obviously you're a lot more likely to meet the brewer at the brewery than at a random bar. I just wouldn't say that it's something anyone should count on as a reason to go to a brewery.

Ironically, one of my very favorite interactions with a brewer happened at one of my favorite beer bars. He was in town visiting some of the new accounts that he had just started serving with expanding distribution. It was a great chat, and I was happy to see that he was ordering Belgian beers.

 

Here in Melbourne, FL, we have 2 nice-sized breweries (one of them isn't very good but is always hopping because it is downtown and has a good theme), and 2 Tap-houses. BJ's Brewhouse, and Mr. Brew that just opened this year and they are ALWAYS busy. So it just may be a regional thing? But I do understand that nationwide the Tap-houses are suffering overall...