06 Sep Reasons To Host A Festival: Hoosier Brewing’s Beer & Band Fest
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
Walter and I took a trip down to Greenwood this past weekend for the inaugural Hoosier Brewing Company Beer & Band Fest. If you don’t know Greenwood, you should – even if it’s just for beer. We learned a lot about the town and its people from this event, even though we make regular trips there for beer. The experience left us discussing how this festival epitomized the reasons for considering a beer festival for your town – the benefits are myriad.
Show off your brand. For Hoosier Brewing Company, hosting their own festival was great way to bring in many people to drink their beer and to enjoy their taproom (before or after). The essence of the brewery taproom business is to get people to come spend money at your place, so a festival seems a no-brainer, and will pay dividends in the months and years to come as people return to visit them again and again.
By planning your own festival, you have added time to think about what beers you’d like to feature, experiments you’d like to make, series you’d like to introduce. By agreeing to pour at someone else’s festival, you just try to find beer within your brewing schedule that will be available, no matter what it is. But with your own event, you can be much more meticulous in what you pour and how you frame your products. That alone makes starting your own festival a good idea.
image credit: Hoosier Brewing Company
However, the above features are not the only way the festival benefits Hoosier’s future visits. Beer tourism is a definite thing, and by hosting a festival that included SmockTown Brewery and Planetary Brewing, Hoosier helped to introduce those brands to new people as well. It’s amazing that there are three breweries within a block of each other, and in the future, you know that there will be beer fans that plan a trip to Greenwood to visit all three breweries when they wouldn’t have made the trip otherwise.
Show off your town. Breweries are vital businesses in both small towns and large cities. They bring money from out of town, they provide a social gathering space, and they put a face on your town for visitors. Breweries are good partners, and they are proud of their town as well. Therefore, Hoosier Brewing’s festival did a great job of showing off Greenwood.
Who are they showing their town off to? Well, it’s not just beer fans. Those same beer fans are often business owners too. They are residents of some place, and might be looking for a new place. By hosting a great event, Hoosier was introducing Greenwood to prospective residents and businesses.
How do they show off their town – by having people drive there, park there and walk the streets, and by coming to the venue. Hoosier Brewing had their Beer & Band Fest at the Greenwood Amphitheatre, a venue Walter and I had driven passed often, but had never really looked at – it’s gorgeous. Surrounded by trees, in an area that is partly hidden by the side of a hill, next to a small stream, and well kept – the Greenwood Amphitheatre is a hidden gem, and we wouldn’t have learned about it without this festival. Greenwood definitely benefits from having Hoosier’s event there.
Greenwood Amphitheater is a great venue. image credit: drive the nation
Commune with other breweries. As part of the brewing community, it’s good to get out and build relationships with other breweries. By bringing many local and regional breweries to their event, Hoosier helped strengthen the bonds of the community as a whole. Brewers and brewery staff have much less time than you can imagine to go out and see their brethren, especially in this era of frighteningly low staffing.
Breweries that are invited to participate feel good about it, and they come to know Hoosier as friends and colleagues. Six months from now, collaborations may show up because of this, or ingredients/ideas/advice will change hands because of this festival. This is a less visible way of having a rising tide lift all boats, but it’s important.
Support local artisans and musicians. Craft beer festivals are almost always more than just craft beer. Hoosier Brewing has a new music venue in downtown Greenwood called The Release, and Beer & Band Fest was a great way to bring attention and new fans to local, regional, and national bands. Every gig a band gets from playing a festival like this is money in their pocket and the chance to bring in other gigs.
The bands at the festival Saturday included local artists Tommy Kelly Band and the Pushing Daisies Band – a big gig like this will surely benefit them in the future. There was also the headliner Wheatus, who brought in people from all over, and helped Hoosier show of their brewery, their town, that great amphitheatre, etc.
The new music venue from Hoosier shows how much they value music. image credit: Do317
Bring the community together. It wasn’t just local bands that benefited from the Hoosier Brewing event. Having sponsors and local business booths at the festival showed how Hoosier is a good local business partner, and provided several businesses with heightened public awareness, including Chuy’s Mexican, Accutek Radar Imaging, FC Tucker – Dave Johnson, Tried & True Alehouse, Bailey & Wood, Miller Insurance, Herkert Family Eye Care, ISG Property Collection-KW, and Modern Woodmen.
Local small business always need to support one other, and a festival like Beer & Band fest is a different and potent way to help them raise their profile. Potential sponsors and booth takers please take note – all these local businesses wouldn’t keep doing it if it didn’t work. As one example – Crossroads Kombucha (from Franklin) was introduced to us by the event Saturday, and now they have agreed to come to several more festivals in the future, again raising their profile and having the ability to sell product at the events.
Support local charities. As part of the community-mindedness of local breweries, their events almost always include a charity partner(s) that benefit from a festival. Sometimes the charity partner is a visible part of the event in addition to gaining funds, like when Lagers in Lawrence uses coaches and clients from Village of Merici (support for adults with disabilities) as volunteers for the event. Other times, the charity is just the beneficiary of some of the profits from the event. Hoosier Brewing understands the importance of bringing in a charity partner for this event, and the 2023 will have a prominent charity involved in the event.
A good combination of local and less common beer brands made Hoosier Brewing’s Beer & Band Fest a help in expanding beer fans’ world. image credit: Walter
Create new craft fans. Finally, the festival on Saturday was just another way to build regulars as well as new craft beer fans. Hoosier had several local breweries on hand to help support Indiana beer (Metazoa, Hog Molly, Planetary, SmockTown, Bier, Beech Bank, Sun King, Brew Link, HopLore, 2Toms, Bloomington Brewing, Taxman, Quaff On!, Pax Verum, Foreign Local, Moon Drops Distillery, Black Dog, Windmill, and Nailers), but they also brought in brands that casual beer fan would be less aware of (MORE, Beer Zombies, Abomination, Barrell Craft Spirits, Against The Grain, Untitled Art, Superstition Meadery, Energy City, Equilibrium, and Prairie Artisan).
Besides having additional beers and other alcohols to try, the expanded offerings do a lot to expand the craft beverage draw in general. Take Barrell Craft Spirits for instance – Walter is big bourbon fan, but she hadn’t heard of this brand before. Now we know them, have tried and liked them, and will ask for them at places we go. Plus, we made a new friend – Hi Dani.
Congratulations to Brian Nentrup, Brian Pine, Sierra Agnew, and the entire Hoosier Brewing Company team for a job well done. They provided a lot of people with a great afternoon/evening, and they provided a good example of how events like this benefit more than just the craft beer fan.
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