Jack’s Abby Beer Garden Anniversary

How Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers Used Competitive Benchmarking to Elevate Family-Friendly Experiences

In an increasingly competitive market, craft breweries are continuously trying to stay ahead of the curve by offering top-notch in-person experiences in addition to amazing beer. For Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers, part of the strategy to navigate the year ahead is staying true to core values. “Family First is one of our 5 core values. We are a family-owned company, and we believe that we can balance a family friendly location with casual drinkers as well,” said Rob Day, Vice President of Marketing. To further understand brand positioning compared to competitors from the consumer’s perspective, Craft Beer Advisory Services completed a customized study benchmarking Jack’s Abby’s on-premise experience to a collection of other establishments.

Goals of the report

Most breweries have a solid understanding of what is going on inside their walls, and Jack’s Abby was no different. “We have a lot of information on who we are, who we want to be, and what our reviews say. But we thought it was important to check our performance against our values and how that relates to other players in the field.”

Using data mining techniques and natural language processing, Craft Beer Advisory Services gathered information, analyzed the data, and compared the Jack’s Abby experience to the benchmark.

“We set out with two goals for this study. First, to start the baseline gut check against our values and brand position. The second goal was to see if there were blind spots, or improvements to make that we were not getting feedback on otherwise,” Rob said.

Evaluating results

“We believed that we were a beer driven location where the food was a surprising benefit to guests for its quality. We also believed we were punching above the competition on service and family friendliness. We were quite unsure about the environment and entertainment,” Rob added.

The report validated a lot of preexisting notions about the brewery, but one particular statistic stood out. Consumers associated Jack’s Abby as a “family friendly” venue three times more than their competitors. While this may not have been a complete surprise, the data was a valuable piece to confirm their consumer brand identity matched their core values.

Insights to action

Jack’s Abby knew they were known for offering a family friendly experience, and they were already thinking about an idea to further solidify that as a core tenet of their on-premise experience. “We’ve been toying around with the idea to add a ‘kindergarten’ section to our outdoor space. We notice that kids just want to run off some energy and have a good time while their parents socialize. Creating spaces that are designed to facilitate this gives all of our guests the best experience possible and adds a unique and fun element to our space,” Rob stated.

An investment like a Kindergarten section would take time and precious resources, particularly in a year where each dollar counts perhaps more than ever across the industry.

“This data suggested that we have done a good job promoting family friendliness within our space and that it has been a bright spot for our hospitality versus competition. This gives us the confidence to move forward with the plan and set it motion. It was all guesswork before we had this information, and now we can be very targeted and confident in these decisions and associated budgets.”

Putting it all together

Craft beer and particularly on-premise visits are increasingly about experiences. To appeal to a broader consumer base, breweries must be creative and meet customers where they are at. Without data on customer experiences, it becomes much more challenging.

“Data is the foundation of our decision-making process. We start with data wherever possible and seek data where we don’t have it. It’s not the end all. You do need creative, critical analysis of what you see in the data, but it is the best place to start and can give you a competitive advantage in decision making,” Rob concluded.