Spirits and wine brands support on-premise accounts while growing depletion. How so?
I’ve been doing considerable research on the state of the industry lately. Workforce issues lead the list as the biggest issue facing operators. Margins remain razor thin and some hours have had to be modified to account for staffing issues.
Here at Shared Spirits, our focus for the year is the restaurant or bar operator that’s been killed via covid-19 hurdles.
We have some thoughts on how the spirits, wine, and beer industries may support these key on-premise partners and still win in ways never before imagined.
It is important to show some love to some companies that get it. Let’s look at an example.
Lara Krug, vice president of marketing for Stella Artois, a brand of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, explains how far-reaching the pandemic’s impact on bars and restaurants has become.
“[W]e know in general that the impact of the pandemic had and continues to have to bars and restaurants continues to have been huge,” she says. “I believe more than 80 percent of restaurants across the country are warning that they’re still at risk of closure, and obviously thousands of them have closed over the last year. It obviously has hit nationwide, it obviously hit even harder in some of the big cities, so something that as a personal effort, it’s incredibly important for us and to me that those come back.” From BevIndustry.com
In the case of Stella, in partnership with The James Beard Foundation, in late April Stella Artois released its Open For Good bottle, an aluminum bottle that will contribute a portion of the proceeds to helping the restaurant industry. Named after the foundation’s Open For Good campaign, Stella Artois new Open For Good aluminum bottle also gives consumers the chance to help rebuild the restaurant industry. The bottle also features custom QR code technology, a Stella Artois U.S. innovation, to further recognize and support local restaurants, according to the company.
All good. Examples like this need to be more frequent. However, there are better ways.
With Shared Spirits technology, spirits, wine, and beer brands could be doing the following.
Repurposing promotional dollars that would have gone toward distributor incentives, POS, print and out of home advertising or other sampling efforts into digital activations that serve to lift the fortunes and revenues of on-premise partners, puts liquid to lips, provides actionable and measurable promotions into the cash registers of key on-premise accounts.
Through the use of Patent Pending Shared Spirits Beverage Marketing Software, suppliers can target key accounts to support with specific marketing budgets. Our technology compliantly converts the marketing dollars into appropriately branded digital drink credits redeemable at the targeted on-premise partners.
Our technology distributes those digital drink credits out to a network of Ambassadors/Influencers tied to that on-premise account. These ambassadors then share the drink credits out of their inventory to key contacts. These recipients are encouraged to redeem the received drink credits as soon as possible.
The on-premise account becomes eligible for these promotions free of charge and all they have to do is onboard themselves to the Shared Spirits platform. There are numerous advantages for doing so that stand alone from potential brand spends.
When a recipient comes into the establishment to redeem the promotion’s digital drink, it is almost certain, they’ll bring a friend, buy some appetizers, another drink or two, and maybe stay for dinner.
By utilizing activation dollars this way, the brand is supporting the partnering account, the distributor, gleaning incredible, never before available data about consumers, and increasing depletion out of complete necessity.
Shared Spirits technology knows who has received drink credits, how well they deployed the sharable credits to others and whether or not the recipients ever redeemed the drink credit.
The on-premise partner account has a record of average tab size related to the promo as well.
We feel this is the most appropriate way for spirits, wine, and beer brands to grow on-premise depletion.
Everyone in the alcohol supply chain wins with this new approach.
We have launched a Channel Partner program for those interested in sharing this category creating technology with brands, bars, and restaurants. Click here to learn more.
For spirits, wine, and beer brands that understand how important getting someone to sample your brand is and feel supporting key on-premise partners is also important, schedule a demo of what we’re doing by clicking this link.
