Someone email Russian River and ask Vinny what he thinks about keeping a Bud Light tap on hand. I bet you he would have plenty to say on the subject of why this is a
bad idea.
When you are in business you need to be consistent. If you are going fort a prestige and quality beer as your goal, you had better stick to that. Putting bud light on tap is an inconsistent message.
Even when Drew mentioned the pub that had Stella Artois on tap - we all know what Stella is, but at the very least it says "Prestige". I can understand that at a beer bar, certainly.
And the "Mexican Rest. keeping hamburgers on" is really not the best analogy. A better analogy for that would be a Brewpub keeping a root beer tap on hand. Few adults that don't care for mexican food are going to find themselves in a mexican restaurant eating a hamburger. If they don't like Mexi. food, they most likely simply won't be in there.
mexi food places keep the burger and chix fingers for the kids - brewpubs keep the Cream Soda and Rootbeer on draft for the kids.
How many times have you been ina restaurant that doesn;t carry anything except BMC? I can mention lots of restaurants. because those restaurants are not catering to craft beer drinkers.
But if a Brew Pub is trying to promote an image, that image is to appeal to Craft Beer drinkers - and having a Bud Light tap up there with your house taps is not sending the right image. And the folks who don;t enjoy craft beer will probably just not set foot in there.
The VERY last thing I will say (this time for real
) is that our local craft beer joing does not carry any Bud products. If you go in there and ask for a Bud you get
Budwar - and the bar staff tells me that most of the bud drinker that come in there find themselves pleasantly surprised.
If you are a pub owner, and you want to show that you have faith in your beer and you want to project an image to those craft beer drinkers that you are serious about beer, you are doing a bad job by having a Coors Light tap in line with your house taps. And if craft beer drinkers don't take your beer seriously then you really are shooting yourself in the foot. And buy the negative responses in this post I'd guess you are turning at least 50% or more craft beer drinkers off. That's a serious chunk of your business right there. If the craft beer drinkers don't take you seriously, but you get the BMC croud in the doors - then what exactly are you?
OK - I've just said the same thing in several different ways over and over again. I'm done.