How to Build a Legendary Brewery Brand

Rohrbach Brewing Company – An Interview on How to Build a Legendary Brewery Brand

Rohrbach Brewing Company’s marketing director, Brittany Statt, sat down and had a candid conversation with Dejabrew about what they are doing as a brewery to stand out, how important glassware is, and tips on how to build a legacy brewery brand. You’ll find this interview provides insight on how to Build a Legendary Brewery Brand.

Who is Rohrbach?

Rohrbach’s Brewing Company has a long history, starting in 1991. They are the first craft beer brewery in Rochester, NY. The inspiration for the brewery was drawn by the owner’s experience living in Germany while working at Kodak. The first location that opened up in 1991 was the German House on South Ave. Their biggest establishment is located by the Rochester Public Market, at 97 Railroad Street Rochester, NY.

“We’re more a leader than a trend chaser. We try to stay true to who we are”– Brittany

Here are some of the questions we asked Brittany.

What makes Rohrbach’s different? An important aspect of building a brewery is standing out so we wanted to know what makes Rohrbach’s different.

Brittany replied, “The longevity. The long-standing history and relationship we have with our community. We are involved with our community and are routinely engaging with them on a regular basis via collaborations with other local businesses. Additionally, we actively participate in charity work and raising donation funds. Hosting release parties for seasonal offerings allows us to stay engaged with our loyal client base on a personal level”

How can you stand out as a brewery or winery? How are you engaging in the local community?

Brittany described the brand as

Long-standing
Classic
Our motto is, “the beer you can depend on”
High quality

It was clear that Brittany and the team at Rohrbach are clear on who they are, what they stand for and who they serve.

As glassware experts, we know and understand how important having printed glassware to represent your brand but we wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

How important is branded glassware to your company and customers?

Brittany replied, “It’s very important for our customer experience and we are able to use the glassware in our creative marketing strategies. It’s an important piece of our business that we rely on and leverage as a sales tool.

Are you using your glassware as a selling tool?

Brittany explained, “ Custom decorated glasses impact our brand and help establish our brand better in the market. Having branded glassware helps people remember us. ”

How do you decide on the type of glassware you select?

Many breweries and wineries we print using an array of glassware types and printing. Check out our news article, 9 beer glasses you can’t go without to learn more.

Brittany replied, “We use the basic pint glass for most, however, we use proper glassware when appropriate. This allows us to utilize them in a number of ways to grow our brand. Sometimes we’ll order Belgians if we see the need, like with our upcoming Imperial Stout release.”

When asked why the pint? She replied,

Our pint glasses are what customers are used to and a lot of times prefer
The Pint glass style is nice to use as a giveaway during events we might have
You’re also able to put a larger printed image on the pint glass
Pint glasses are also an optimal glass for co-branding opportunities with our customers and community partners. This acts as a huge value add for them.

Release party fuels brand growth and help retain customers

We asked how do you leverage your glassware in other ways? She replied, “Another way to create brand loyalty through our glassware is to leverage glassware to get people into the door at a new beer release by offering them a complimentary branded glass with the seasonal beer logo on it. People collect these and keep their collection growing – this creates loyalty and excitement, creates a buzz around our brand.”

The struggle with brand loyalty within the brewery industry

We asked Brittany, “What are challenges regarding keeping the customer excited about the beer and brewery?” She replied, “Everyone is waiting for the newest beer to come out, constantly checking new places out. It’s become a hobby for many. As fun as this is, much like any other breweries, it creates challenges for us to retain new customers, which in turn makes it hard to keep brand loyalty.”

We asked how are you combating this? Here is what she listed off.

Be dependable. Create a beer that people can count on. This creates consistency that in turn creates loyalty.
Maintain a high quality of product and service.
Experiential marketing. Think about adapting staff training and events to expose and attract new customers to your establishment.
Listen to your customers and give them what they want.

Brewery Trend Predictions

Staying fresh in the brewery industry also is dependent on staying in the know which is why we’ve decided to showcase our new blog on our website. What does a leader like, Rohrbach’s do to stay up to date? Brittany replied, “We seek out trends through sales data & conferences. We take this seriously because the industry is always changing. Our customers look to us to make sure we’re staying on top of things so it’s important and we take it very seriously.”

We asked Brittany, what are some of your biggest trend predictions? And She delivered!

Trend#1.

Health Conscious

According to Brittany she believes that as the world becomes more health-conscious there will be more emphasis put on how beer is made and what types of ingredients are used, allowing the lighter beer styles to become more favored.

Trend #2.

Cannabis in beer

Using cannabis in beer may spur a new way of thinking between the recreational drug of choice and the pairing of a new beer or wine. Think less as an ingredient and more in correlation based on a healthy lifestyle. The lighter beers will correlate into the cannabis-centric consumers’ overall emphasis on a healthy lifestyle – you’ll start to see more of that as this trend grows.

We wanted to know, how do you Build a Legendary Brewery? Here’s what she had to say.

Consistency – A high-quality beer and consistent great service
Staying true to who we are – We know we are and who we are not, so do our customers
Not chasing trends, but listening to your customers to give them what they want
Innovative – finding new ways to engage customers and our local community

Lightning Round: Let’s get to know Brittany!

Favorite Beer?

Rohrbach’s Harvest Ale, due to the local fresh hops we use from our Buffalo Rd location

Favorite Festival?

Flour City Brewers fest

What do you like most about what you do?

It’s creative! I love to get my hands in every touchpoint from doing events to designing packaging. It’s something different every day.

What’s your favorite design you’ve created?

Pineapple wheat Very Retro – We’re digging this, Brittany – awesome job!

Favorite industry podcast/blog

Good beer hunting podcast, craft beer.com and Brewers association

We hope you’ve found some takeaways to help your brewery or winery be its own brand of uniqueness through glassware as well as other forms of creative marketing. We would love to hear your thoughts on how to Build a Legendary Brewery Brand. Please comment below!

Thank you, Brittany, for your time and for sharing some helpful tips on How to Build a Legendary Brewery Brand.

An Interview with a Rochester Legacy Brand is brought to you by Dejabrew.