The Taproom Manifesto
This is a cultural handbook of sorts which spells out the purpose and the operational philosophy of the Baird Beer Taproom business.
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What We Do
The raison d’être of our Taproom business is simple and clear: maximum customer enjoyment of the Baird Beer experience. Each Taproom functions as a key center of sales and word-of-mouth marketing for Baird Beer. The food, service and ambiance at each Taproom are conceived in symbiotic support of Baird Beer. Ultimately, the Taproom experience is meant to be the finest Baird Beer experience that customers will find anywhere in the world.
The Baird Brewing Company aims to foment a cultural craft beer revolution in Japan and the Taproom business is one of the key instruments by which we intend to do so.
Beer and pubs serve a simple but very important function: to make people happier than they otherwise would be. The immediate operational objective of each and every Taproom is to make patrons happier. The subsequent operational objective is to make money in order to grow the Baird Beer business and to remunerate owners, who supply capital, and workers, who supply labor.
How We Do It
The thoughtfully efficient provision to patrons of a high quality experience (beer, food, service, and ambiance) at a reasonable price is the method that a Taproom achieves the operational objectives listed above. The high quality will be realized through craftsmanship, not salesmanship; the reasonable price will be provided through intelligent efficiency and industriousness.
As a brewery and a pub-restaurant business we must work tirelessly to appeal to patrons on the basis of superior quality delivered at a reasonable price. When this is accomplished, indiscriminate discounting and paid-for advertising become superfluous and even wastefully unnecessary. If ever in doubt about the quality of an element of the Taproom experience, make it better not cheaper and inspire the patrons to do our advertising for us.
A Taproom should be viewed as our home and customers as warmly invited guests. As hosts in our home, our fervent desire is to make our guests feel welcome, comfortable and happy. Our guests, though, also have a responsibility to us. Namely, it is to abide by our house rules, to respect our environment and to appreciate our genuine good effort. Guests unable to do so should be invited to leave. Our goal is to make them happy, not to take their money. If we can’t accomplish the former then they should go elsewhere to achieve a more satisfactory feeling in the expenditure of their hard-earned money. Caution: if patrons need to be shown the door too often, or are voluntarily turning to the exits with anything but infrequency, then something is amiss. Take a close look at what you are doing, how and why.
As a brewery and a pub-restaurant business we must work tirelessly to appeal to patrons on the basis of superior quality delivered at a reasonable price. When this is accomplished, indiscriminate discounting and paid-for advertising become superfluous and even wastefully unnecessary. If ever in doubt about the quality of an element of the Taproom experience, make it better not cheaper and inspire the patrons to do our advertising for us.
Teamwork
As Taproom workers and Baird Beer representatives, each of us has a responsibility to effectively convey to patrons our individual enthusiasm, passion and pride in a way that is genuine, authentic and natural to our personalities. Be yourself, but understand your effect on customers, in particular their perception, through the quality and substance of their encounter with you, of craft beer in general and the Baird Beer/Taproom experience in particular. People love to see true passion and conviction. They can smell a fake from a mile away. They also can easily mistake reserve or aloofness for arrogance. Never let that happen!
The difference between a good pub-restaurant and a great one generally lies in a single area: staff service. Mediocre beer, food and ambiance can at times be overcome by great service; poor service, on the other hand, will always tend to wash away the advantage provided by excellent beer, food and ambiance. At the end of the day, a staff is a team, and good service stems from outstanding teamwork.
It is a privilege and an honor, not a duty or obligation, to work in the pub-restaurant business in the wonderful arena of craft beer. If you do not understand this point, you likely will find neither success nor happiness in the endeavor. Best probably to rethink what it is you want to do in life. Working for a Taproom team and being a member of the broader Baird Beer team needs to be much more than a job and a paycheck.
Our company goal in the management and operation of Taproom businesses is not to create highly standardized pub-restaurants with rigid rules that are micro-managed from afar. Rather, the aim is to build a diverse collection of loosely managed (i.e. substantially self-directed and entrepreneurial) pub-restaurants, the character and daily operation of which are determined in good measure by the individual managers and their respective staffs. The achievement of this goal requires passionate, self-motivated, mature, honest and well-organized managers and staff who relish the bearing of responsibility. People of this nature will flourish as Baird Beer Taproom team members.
