2023 Beer Memberships: Adding, Keeping, and Dropping

If I were local, I'd gladly pay the $30 to be a member. Their BA strong ales are some of the best out there.

 

I will gladly pay the $30 admin fee. Somebody add me to Private Press. Thank you.

 

Considering how badly some clubs have been run *cough* Lost Abbey *cough* I have no issue with a fee for administration as long as I'm seeing my money come back in the form of communication, smooth pickups and remediation of issues.

 

Or a membership you pay $400 for that’s supposed to include $80 in bar credits but the bar credits aren’t available until a week after the brewery location near you closes down on extremely short notice.

 

Takes time and energy to run a club, no?

 

Pay as you go, no admin fee, and available beer determined by capacity...isn't that basically just how every brewery who doesn't have a club sells their beer? Do you expect a brewery to offer you first right of refusal on buying the beer they produce without you making some sort of financial contribution to the process?

 

I do. There's an opportunity cost for the brewery to offer me first right of refusal and hope I purchase enough to make it worthwhile for them.

If it's pay as you go and there's no administrative fee - as you said, you don't feel you should have to put any skin in the game - where exactly is the guaranteed income for them? Sure, they can boot you out after a year if you simply don't buy anything, but scale that risk out to a full club and consider the differences between the wine club model you cite and beer:
1) Beer is more perishable than wine and there's inherently more risk for the brewery in holding on to unsold product.
2) Many beer clubs are fairly young and the breweries running them have less sales data to model out members' spending habits, what percentage of people will fall out, etc. It's considerably easier to run that style of club when you have years of data to work from to manage your costs and risk.

Managing risk absolutely has a benefit, but allowing customers to take up a slot without any investment on their part barely qualifies as managing risk.

I think there's a point to be made about advocating for consumers to not absorb excess risk in club scenarios - I've lived through some of them with Lost Abbey and Modern Times, I get it - but I think that a sustainable club is predicated on both the brewery and members recognizing the value they derive from a given setup.

If you choose to only engage clubs in which you don't have to make even a nominal investment to gain access, that's entirely fair. But attempting to extend that to an objective truth where that could, should, or would work for every brewery misses the mark.

 

I can see both sides, but believe the $30 fee is the better route to care for your best customers under this membership format.

The $30 is collected upfront, so there is some skin in the game and there is less of a chance of scalpers or on the fence customers to just throw their name on the list with no repercussions beyond not being able to do so the following year.

If the $30 approximates calculated fixed costs in terms of labor time to maintain the list and secondary website portal, etc., by charging $3.75 per bottle more instead of $30 upfront, your least valuable members buying 0-8 bottles are subsidized by your best customers willing to buy 8, 12, 20 bottles.

The other benefit is upfront cash flow to cover the costs for brewing initial batches. For programs which collect the entire membership cost upfront ($400 for x, y and z), there is no variable component so it would not be warranted to charge an administrative fee.

 

This! Or makes you pay for expensive shipping to get the beers you paid for.

 

Is Lost Abbey restarting Sinners? I don't count 2022. The DDG Club or whatever.

 

Same

 

They did not tailor-make this club for you, it seems. Can we move on?