Linda Falkenstein
food-workingdraftbeerlottery-04-25-2020
Working Draft Beer Company has worked hard to create a contactless beer delivery system.
It's a novel experience having to make an appointment to buy beer. Oh, and that's only if you've won the opportunity to do so through a lottery. But that's how people eager to drink the popular brews from the east side's Working Draft Beer Company are getting their IPAs and more.
Working Draft, the 2-year-old craft brewery and taproom at 1129 E. Wilson St., tried several procedures for selling its beer to-go after suspending taproom operations on March 15.
"At first, we were planning to sell tacos and crowlers, but we didn't have a good system for it and it seemed to be defeating the purpose of [the order for] closing for safety," says brewery co-owner Ryan Browne.
The brewery, which had brewed primarily for draught sales in its taproom, had canned its beer only once before, a small run of 100 to celebrate the brewery's second anniversary. "We were holding off on canning because our goal was always making the taproom a gathering place and community space," says Browne. Working Draft was used to selling crowlers (a 32-oz. can) to-go, but filling a lot of those is a fairly labor-intensive process.
There was demand, but foremost in the minds of the brewery's owners was keeping both staff and customers safe from transmission of the COVID-19 virus, says Browne.
Working Draft wanted to limit customer/staff contact as much as possible, but the "contactless ordering" possible with food — ordering online and paying with a credit card — was impossible. Along with other breweries in Wisconsin, Working Draft was hampered by a Wisconsin statute that mandates a face-to-face contact when buying beer, so ordering online with a credit card was out.
Browne credits the actions of Wisconsin Brewers Guild executive director Mark Garthwaite in helping state brewers clear that hurdle.
Garthwaite says he was eager to work out something with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, hoping the agency would relax its interpretation of the statute requiring these face-to-face transactions: "What stood out to me was it was the worst possible time to have face-to-face contact mandated by law."
It took a while, but eventually a new procedure was approved. The customer pre-paying for beer online with a credit card needs to be the same person who picks up the beer and must show a valid I.D., a confirmation email with a QR code matching the transaction, and not be (in accordance with state law) visibly intoxicated. "What we came up with is compliant with existing law," says Garthwaite. The online ordering procedure can continue even after COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed. Online beer sales kicked in on March 31.
At Working Draft, a first-come, first-served system in which customers claimed an appointment time online kept selling out too quickly. "The 75 appointment times were gone in four minutes," says Browne, and by the time he could actually turn off the function on the website, "145 people had managed to sign up."
To keep sales more equitable and to control the number of people showing up at one time to buy beer from the brewery, Working Draft moved to a lottery system on April 5.
Customers can register for the lottery at any time through the Working Draft website. At 5 p.m. on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, winners are chosen through a random number generator. Winners get an email; those not chosen — or even those who are — can register again for the next drawing.
"It's not a perfect solution," says Browne of the two-step procedure. Those who win a spot need to first sign up for an appointment time; after getting a confirmation email, they can then choose and pay for the beers they want.
In the Working Draft parking lot, chalk lines indicate safe zones where those waiting can stand. At the appointed time, the customer goes to the first "window" (actually Working Draft's entry door) and shows I.D. and the confirmation email with QR code through the glass.
"It does feel weird," Browne says of the impersonality of the procedure, "but everybody gets it, and people appreciate the caution. But there definitely are hiccups."
Sunday winners pick up their beers on Tuesday; Tuesday winners on Thursday and Thursday winners on Sunday. On the other days, staff preps the orders, both cans and crowlers. Working Draft is selling its most popular beers in 16-oz. four-pack cans and head brewer Clint Lohman is still able to experiment with new beers in smaller batches that are sold in crowlers.
Switching to canned and crowler sales was "basically like developing a brand new business on the fly over the course of a weekend," says Browne, made more difficult because Browne at the time was on a family trip to Arizona — where he remains. He credits the work of Lohman and Matt Adams, to-go sales supervisor, for being "boots on the ground" during this difficult period.
But "response has been good," he says. "We've been blown away on the amount of crowler to-go sales."
The brewery has been helped by a mobile canning company that comes to them to do the canning. Mobile canning is "a business model that's starting to thrive within the craft beer industry," says Browne. "We send them art and they show up with labels and the canner."
This new sales model is "probably not going away anytime soon," he adds.
While lottery systems are not that unusual for special craft beer bottle releases, Working Draft may be unique in controlling its everyday to-go sales this way. Browne isn't sure how many other craft breweries might be using such a system, but a Google search indicates that Working Draft is likely the sole example.
