Make gov't better for bars and restaurants

For this week's interview, we talked with Megan Rickerson of Someday Bar about hospitality advocacy in general and how her local involvement landed her on the executive board of the NYC Hospitality Alliance and the NYC Mayor's Small Business Council.

Here are some takeaways from the interview:

• This stuff is hard. Government is intimidating, daunting, complicated, and frustrating, and often seems like its designed that way.
• And it's especially tough to advocate for hospitality.
• To get things done you really do need to be the squeaky wheel. You can't be a people pleaser, which is tough for those in the industry.
• But here's the good news: once you take that first step, it gets easier. So write an email. Once you start, you've got momentum.
• It's your rep's job to advocate for you. Don't ever feel like you're putting them out.

Check out the interview clip for more from Megan about how to get involved and the wins Megan has accomplished through her advocacy. It's inspiring stuff!

Why?

For a beer drinker there isn’t much worse than getting excited about a beer you’re going to order, ordering it, then being told it’s no longer available.

You’re disappointed, and instead of straight-up joy, you’re starting the night off with a bad experience.

(The experience isn’t much better for the bartender—I know from experience.)

Depending on how out-of-date your menu is and how many folks come in, you could be providing dozens of folks a bad start to their visit.

You should avoid this experience, even if updating a menu is a pain in the ass (though it doesn’t have to be—more on that below).

How?

You can do this manually. How you implement it depends on what works for your team, but it could look like this:

• Create an editable menu doc in Google Docs, Word, Powerpoint, or whatever
• Make sure everyone has access to the doc and knows how to update it
• Make updating the menu part of the opening checklist and/or shift change checklist

It certainly takes some time, but if you avoid just a few bad customer experiences, that time is well worth it.

• Sam Adams releases 14th edition of its Utopias, this time hitting 30% ABV. The media coverage has been intense. It seems the big hook is that the beer is illegal in 15 states. I've never had Utopias and wouldn't mind giving it a shot someday, but probably won't be shelling out the $240 to do so. I've got mouths to feed.
• Heineken sales down. Q3 brought a significant drop in sales for the giant. The culprit? Falling demand and trade uncertainty. Sales in the US fell by "low teens" percent. That's a really steep drop.
• Molson Coors cutting 9% of North American and South American workforce. It isn't clear where the cuts will occur, but I can attest that Milwaukee is hoping it doesn't happen here. The company cites tariff woes/economic uncertainty for the cuts, but I do wonder how many larger companies may be using that as an excuse to shed some employee costs. It certainly wouldn't be the first time corporations found that kind of convenience in bad economic conditions.