Beer Menus

Posted on 06.09.08 11:23AM under Stories

Most of the time when you go out to eat, the first thing that the waiter/waitress wants to know is your drink order. Most of the time you have to ask them what beers they have. This is a real chore for everyone. I need time to decide what beer I actually want. They must get tired of rattling off the beer list all day and all night. The perfect solution is beer menus.

A beer menu provides a list of beer at a minimum. It is also a great place to provide descriptions of each beer, in case the person ordering has never had a beer before, or one of the options is new to the customer. Here it can also show the price of various serving options (bottle, draft pint, draft 22-ounce, etc.), as well as other cool information like where it’s made, etc.

This weekend, I was lucky enough to go out to dinner at a Ruby Tuesday. For those of you that don’t know, Ruby Tuesday is a chain “casual dining” restaurant. They were at one point most well known for their awesome salad bar. They have a great line of burgers. At one time they put the calories information on the menus, but I guess people don’t really want to know that the turkey burger with fries they’re about to order has 1,500 calories. So now it isn’t there any more. At any rate, it’s just pretty much a normal restaurant. Nothing fancy, but pretty good.

They have a drinks and dessert menu that’s propped up on the table, and stays there. It’s separate from the food menu. Many places have these sorts of things. All too often, the beer section is small and practically hidden amongst the pages of green, blue, red, and pink drinks with names like “Tropical Wowie Daquari Treat”. But not at Ruby Tuesday. They have a whole page highlighting craft beer. They talk about small batch, locally made, etc. benefits of craft beer. Of course not all craft beer is local. For example, Sierra Nevada is a craft beer, but it is not local to Connecticut. But anyway. It was great to see a whole page about craft beer on their menu. They must have someone in corporate that is keen on good beer.

There was only one problem. And that’s sort of the point of this post. The information on the menu was not correct. For example, it said that they had Yeungling on draft. But we can’t get that beer here in CT, and I was a combination of suspicious and eager when I saw it on there. Sure, it’s no Lost Abbey, but a beer I’ve never had is always exciting to me. Sure enough, when I asked the server if the beer list was accurate, he rattled off the list, which did not include the Yeungling. Still happy to be able to get a Sierra Nevada, I ordered that instead.

Actually the same thing happened to me last time I went to this Ruby Tuesday. The menu said that they had Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA in bottles, and I was ready to buy. But alas, they didn’t have it. Even though you can get DFH in CT. This weekend, I didn’t ask about the bottled options. I can get bottles at home. I don’t have draft at home…yet.

So the moral of the story is that all restaurants should have beer menus. It saves the servers wear and tear of rattling off the beer list all the time. It allows consumers plenty of time to make the incredibly important choice of what beer to order. And it helps sell beer by providing snappy descriptions of the beer. The “Mambo Jumbo Mega Lime Blast Margarita” has a little writeup, why not give Sam Adams Summer Ale the same treatment? The catch is that the menu should be accurate: it should reflect the beer that the restaurant actually stocks and serves.

Read Comments

  1. Posted by Chipper Dave on 06.09.08 2:03 pm

    I went to a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Colorado over the weekend. They too had a drinks menu. Unfortunately for me, the only beers they listed on the menu were macro beers with one exception – Samuel Adams. They didn’t say which Sam Adams beer they had other than the side word of “Seasonal”. Seeing how I didn’t want a big macro brew I ordered the Sam Adams despite them being a borderline macro producer themselves. The beer wasn’t their lager, but a lighter Maibock or something similar. I wish they’d expand their offerings but the big name contract beers seem to come in and take over a place.

  2. Posted by phlyingpenguin on 06.09.08 4:59 pm

    Unless I’m at a beer haunt, I generally don’t care to get into beer buying at restaurants simply because the vast majority only stock macro brews. There’s no need for a beer list when the only thing people order is a bud light. :( However, your point about a misleading beer list is something I’ve encountered as well. Cheddar’s (a similar casual dining chain) claimed that they stock Fat Tire when it’s not sold anywhere near this side of the US. AFIK, it’s not east of the Mississippi.

  3. Posted by Keith Brainard on 06.09.08 8:40 pm

    Thanks for the comments, guys!

    That Sam Adams “Seasonal” thing gets me, too. If it’s late August or September, I am not sure if it’s Summer Ale or Oktoberfest. As it turns out, my Dad got the Sam Adams Summer, which is pretty decent. And I’d rather he got that than a Coors Light or something.

    Beer is just about the only thing I would like to drink. I can enjoy whisky and stuff, but they’re not as relaxing as a beer to me.

    What’s it going to take to get more people wanting beer other than BMC?

  4. Posted by Alcohol Posts » Beer Menus on 06.10.08 8:11 am

    [...] Keith Brainard wrote a fantastic post today on “Beer Menus”Here’s ONLY a quick extractMost of the time you have to ask them what beers they have. This is a real chore for everyone. I need time to decide what beer I actually want. They must get tired of rattling off the beer list all day and all night. … [...]

  5. Posted by BobbyO on 06.10.08 9:28 pm

    I think that it boils down to economics. Restaurants have a much higher profit margin on the fancy colored fru-fru drinks than they do on beer, and they make more on beer than they do on soda. Correspondingly, the efforts that they put into selling each beverage, respectively, reflect the amount of markup on each. So, you end up with three pages of colorful, professional photographs of technicolor frozen drinks with little umbrellas on top, while the beer selection gets shortchanged.

  6. Posted by Keith Brainard on 06.11.08 5:46 am

    I’m probably in the minority, but I’d pay more to have a more well represented beer list. I think that a proper beer list with descriptions helps sell more beer, because people can read about the beer and get excited to drink it.

  7. Posted by E.S. Delia on 06.11.08 2:49 pm

    I think it also serves to improve the image of beer in the eyes of the consumer. You look at all those brightly-colored frozen fruit drinks, then see a page with different beer options laid out in a respectful manner… which would you choose? I think there’s also an element of gender-role-driven marketing there, but you get my drift.

    I think this is a noble (and perhaps profitable?) step taken by certain restaurant chains. It may not be Westvleteren, but at least it’s a choice. I’d be more inclined to order a SNPA or Sam Adams offering if available, but would not go for beer at all if something interesting weren’t on tap, and perhaps some places realize this.

    Hopefully more menus means more options!

  8. Posted by Keith Brainard on 06.11.08 8:12 pm

    I don’t know if I’d go as far as to not get a beer. But if you’re getting spirits or wine instead, that’s a trade up that the restaurants probably want you to make. On the other hand, if you’re opting for water instead, then they would lose out.

    E.S. – how’s your homebrewing working out?

  9. Posted by E.S. Delia on 06.13.08 12:43 pm

    Well, we’ve got our Belgian-style Abbey Brown laying down for a couple months bottle conditioning, so it should be ready by the middle to end of next month. We had some siphoning issues that concerned me, but I’m hoping it didn’t aerate the beer too much.

    In the meantime, I think we might whip up an ESB or Mild, something that’ll be an easy sipper with some flavor for the summer, and with quicker turnaround.

    Thanks for asking, Keith. I’ll post the results once either of these little projects is ready to drink. Hopefully they’ll be somewhat palatable!

    Cheers!

Post Comments

You must be logged in to post a comment.