The Top 6 Brewery Menu Design Ideas (2024)

The craft brewery game has burst onto the scene over the past decade. Once a small industry catering to devoted fans and hop heads, it’s become a global phenomenon with multiple breweries in every major city that specialize in craft beer. 

But now that new craft breweries are popping up all over the place, opening a brewery has become increasingly difficult with all the competition. So, how do you create brewery menu ideas that stand out from the crowd?

Tapping into newfound innovation is easier said than done for any bar or restaurant  — especially in the somewhat niche, entirely overcrowded brewery space. You need to find a brewpub-style model or other brewery business plan that keeps the customers coming and the craft beers flowing.

The good news is that it’s certainly doable. You’ve got the entire culinary world and history of brewing at your fingertips for coming up with new brewery menu ideas. You can even draw inspiration from all types of world cuisine for beer and food ingredients.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to create wonderful brewery menu ideas that balance popularity with profitability. You’ll learn from real-world examples how to create a beer and food menu that attracts a loyal following and earns you a positive reputation.

What’s in This Guide?

• How to Create a Popular & Profitable Brewery Menu

• Real-World Brewery Menu Examples

• Boost Your Beer Sales with Restaurant Tech

• FAQs

How to Create a Popular & Profitable Brewery Menu

Your brewery menu ideas should offer something unique and delicious while strengthening your profits. This balance is essential for all brewery concepts — whether you’re serving just beer in-house, in-house and takeout, beer with food, or a range of additional beverages.

You must create a drinking and dining experience (or just drinking if you’re not about the food) that resonates with customers and maximizes your inventory to boost your bottom line.

I’ll now offer three pieces of advice that helped me during my brewery ventures, which I hope will help you during yours. Follow these three guidelines to seamlessly blend popularity and profitability throughout your brewery menu items.

1. Do the Basics Right

Your beer has to be delicious. Period. The main reason people will come to your brewery is for the great beer menu, so make sure you get your beer list right.

Many breweries have three to five beers that are always on tap. These should be workhorses for both popularity and profitability, as they’re more or less permanent taps and are relatively low-cost to provide, boosting your overall margin and allowing you to develop more adventurous, costly brews. You can’t have that seasonal pumpkin ale without a classic IPA to cover the costs.

Your food (if you provide it) has to be delicious, too, and your brewery experience should always be on point. Beer, food, and atmosphere — these are the basics you must get right.

2. Add Customizations to Your Menu

To maximize your profits and make more money as a brewery, you need to be able to squeeze extra profit margins out of your menu items. Customizations, such as modifiers and add-ons, are great tools for this. 

If you’re in charge of the food at your brewery and don’t employ an external caterer, think strategically about low-cost sides and modifiers that customers will want to add to existing menu items. For example, offer the opportunity to upgrade a free side of fries to waffle fries or triple-cooked fries for an extra few dollars.

It’s not quite as straightforward for your beers, but it’s still perfectly applicable. A couple of options may include offering pitchers, half-pours, and flights. You could also consider growlers and crowlers as modifiers, assuming you can support beer to-go.

3. Calculate Your Costs

Whether you’re keeping it classic with straightforward lagers or infusing your brews with a hoppy or smoky flavor, costing your beers is essential. This includes all the ingredients that go into your final product — even the cans and bottles if you’re offering takeout beers.

Your ability to calculate costs accurately will depend on how consistently you record your ingredient prices. This starts with processing your supplier invoices, which is where your ingredient costs live. Restaurant invoice automation platforms, such as xtraCHEF by Toast, digitize your invoices and extract critical pricing details from the information provided.

Real-World Brewery Menu Examples

If you’re seeking inspiration for your new brewery menu ideas, whether you’re looking for new tasting notes or ways to create dishes that complement your brews, I’ve got you covered. In this next section, I’ve collected six examples of real-world breweries with great menu ideas to help you get your creative juices flowing.

Partner with Local Purveyors

If you’re looking to expand your customer base, consider partnering with some adjacent purveyors. You could draw attention to the distillery or vineyard the barrels came from for an upcoming barrel-aged beer. Alternatively, you could create a limited edition porter with coffee or chocolate sourced from local or fair trade plantations. This opens you up to a new community and audience.

For example, Hill Farmstead in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, released a barrel-aged stout flavored with coffee from Coffee Collective. This clever partnership helped both brands gain a loyal following and improve their reputation for quality products.

Create Demand Through Exclusivity

Scarcity and exclusivity can be a great ally for your brewery menu. Whether it’s created artificially or dictated by seasons and other yearly patterns, you can drum up interest in an annual or semi-annual brewery menu item release.

Once a year, Jester King Brewery in Austin, Texas, throws their customer base into a tizzy with the release of their raspberry sour, Atrial Rubicite. It’s so in demand that a new batch is often sold out within days!

Offer Great Food & Beer Pairings

Not all breweries need to offer food. That’s totally up to you as a business and should not be taken lightly. Serving food is a great idea, but remember that it will be an entirely separate business from running your brewery. 

If you’re going to serve food at your brewery, make sure it’s delicious and desirable. Smoky mains like tender pork and short ribs or picky bits like cheese curds and chicken wings go down extremely well with craft beer.

TailGate Brewery in Nashville, Tennessee, boasts a delicious menu of bar food classics and pizzas that all pair well with a cold one.

Consider a Food Truck to Take the Pressure Off

If you opt out of managing food in-house, you can always bring in a local truck or restaurant to serve your beer drinkers. Just like with purveyors, this can be a great way to extend your reach to a new audience — and there’s little to no risk to you as the brewery if the food isn’t up to scratch! Just remember to try and match the food type to your brewery branding.

Find an agreement that works for all parties, give it a shot, and reap the benefits, or reassess if necessary. Take St. Elmo Brewing Co. in Austin, Texas, for instance. This brewery hires Spicy Boys Fried Chicken (food pictured) to dish out a delectable menu from their food trailer permanently placed in the St. Elmo beer garden.

Think Beyond the Beer

Breweries are always going to attract beer drinkers at face value. That said, there’s often space to tap into non-beer drinkers by simply offering a few different adult beverages. Shandies are an obvious choice, while hard seltzers are also trending at the moment. Wine is a classic for a reason, and spritzers are a great way to level up your standard table wines.

Alaro Brewing in Sacramento, California, serves a range of delicious cocktails alongside its craft beer to accommodate non-beer drinkers.

Make It Easy to Take Away

You’re in a unique position as a brewery — it’s not necessarily a single transaction like a restaurant or bar. You’re able to sell beers for consumption on site as well as off site. Take advantage of this with strategically placed coolers so your customers can easily grab a six-pack or some speciality cans and bottles on the way out.

Uptown Beer Co. in Portland, Oregon, has a range of fridges, coolers, cans, and growlers for customers looking to take their beer to-go.

FAQs

How can I improve my brewery?

The best breweries serve a carefully curated selection of beer, food, and other alcoholic beverages. To give your brewery the best chance of success, you need to create a menu that entices customers while maximizing profits. This could involve creating seasonal and exclusive beers that increase demand or offering modifiers and add-ons like takeout, pitchers, and flights to boost the profit margins of low-cost products.

How do I make my brewery unique?

The best way to solidify your brewery as a unique and interesting place to drink is to establish a brand and stick to it. If you’re going down a punk route, name your craft beers after different rock bands and design your labels accordingly. Create themed snacks, hold events like quizzes and live music, and decorate your premises with rustic or original pieces.

How do I get people into my brewery?

By designing a menu that incorporates the local community, either by using locally sourced ingredients or taking inspiration from the regional culture, you can establish a loyal following of customers. Once the word is out that your beer list and food is tasty and unique, you’ll soon see more and more people flocking to your brewery.

Boost Your Beer Sales with Restaurant Tech

Just like any other eating or drinking establishment, your brewery has the potential to be a neighborhood watering hole. Add to that the extra benefit of manufacturing special beers that attract local and regional customers, and you have a formula for success.

Your brewery menu obviously plays a huge role in your success. Make sure you’re managing costs, nailing your brand, and promoting all the food, drinks, and events that keep your customers coming back week in and week out.

To give your brewery menu ideas the best chance of success, you need the right equipment and technology. For example, handheld point-of-sale systems help you take orders more easily, and you can even set your brewery website up with an online ordering system that helps your customers buy takeouts or order ahead before their visit.

Whichever brewery ideas and concepts you choose, make sure to set your place up for success. Try the Toast demo today to revolutionize your brewery!

Related Brewery Resources

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• Brewery Marketing Ideas

• Brewery Name Ideas

• Best Brewery Websites

• Brewery Equipment List

• Brewery Floor Plans