When Beer Is Worth Waiting For

If you’ve been on Twitter in the past few months, chances are you’ve come across Fast. Launched on September 2nd, Fast was built to reduce friction in the online checkout experience. It’s a one-click checkout for the whole internet. 

As a brand, the choice to sign up seems obvious. Reduce abandoned carts, get rid of account passwords, and don’t lose customers because they’re far from their credit cards. In ecommerce, everyone is looking for ways to make transactions as easy as possible. 

This post isn’t about Fast. It’s about the opposite, actually. While everyone in my feed was talking about frictionless checkouts, I had a checkout experience that couldn’t be more different. 

Buying beer at a craft brewery. 

Let me begin by saying that I don’t drink beer. If I’m choosing a golden drink, it’ll be whiskey. So when my brother asked me if we could stop at Tree House Brewing Co. on our way from Boston to New York (our parents live in Boston, us in New York), I didn’t fully understand the request. 

I started with the obvious questions.  You just want to pick up beer? Yes.  So then why don’t you buy it at a grocery store? They don’t distribute. Okay, so then why not just get a different brand? Because this is the best one. 

It wasn’t out of the way. The brewery in Charlton, MA lies on the route between the two cities.  So why not?

Well, I’ll tell you why not. When we got there, I saw a line of people that snaked around the parking lot. We were told the wait was around 45 minutes. The parking lot showed that people had traveled from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont. 

So we waited. And my brother got his beer. 

That was a few months ago. Recently, we visited the brewery again. This time, because of Covid-19 restrictions, we ordered online and waited in our cars. Again, the line snaked around the parking lot. Again, we waited for almost an hour. 

If I was surprised at the line the first time, I was even more surprised this time. 

At first, I had chalked it up to the experience. Before Covid-19, customers could enter the brewery and hang out. There was a bar for tastings, you could walk around to explore the brewing process, and spend time with friends. People wait in line for experiences all the time. Think concerts, talk shows, trendy bars, clubs, etc. 

But no. It turns out that most of the people in line were really in it for the beer. They thought it was worth it to travel all that way and wait for close to an hour just to pick up a few cases. 

My interest was piqued. 

Working in ecommerce, I’m always thinking about how to make our products easier to buy. After my visit to Tree House, I couldn’t stop thinking about the success of their brand despite the difficulty to access their products. 

Sure, we’re all familiar with exclusivity. Limited editions, one-time sales (I’m looking at you, Away), membership-only events, all the popular tactics to increase demand by making the product harder to come by. 

Here was an instance I hadn’t seen before. Zero distribution for a product that’s usually widely available. An exclusive pick-up location in the middle of nowhere. And people keep coming back for more. 

There had to be a reason that people were willing to wait.  

There are two ingredients that make Treehouse Brewing Co so successful. One, a kick ass product. Two, a die-hard community. 

If you’re into beer, chances are you’ll think theirs is excellent. They have six of the top 20 beers listed on Beer Advocate and the highest-rated beer on Untappd. 

In 2018, they were named the 42nd fastest growing brewery in the country. There is so much traffic for order pick-ups, that Tree House is working with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to widen Route 20, the road leading up to their 76,700 square foot facility. 

None of this would work if the product wasn’t great. And not marginally better than other beer, either. It has to be leaps and bounds ahead of anything else. They’re forcing people to come to them. It has to be worth it. 

Second, Tree House is tapping into (mind the pun) a community of beer fans. They didn’t invent beer zealots. There is already a social community centered around love of the drink. The app I mentioned earlier, Untappd, was designed for the cerevisaphile. You can use it to locate breweries, check in and rate beer, and unlock achievements for your activities. Tree House has been checked into over 4 million times. 

In his book Contagious, Jonah Berger describes six different reasons why people share things. One of which is social currency, we like to talk about things that make us look cool. 

Untappd provides social currency for beer drinkers. Checking in beers provides social status, and what’s cooler than checking in the #1? 

Tree House didn’t build Untappd. They simply created something that an existing community wouldn’t stop talking about. 

These two ingredients are heavily reliant on each other. If the drink isn’t great, it’s not worth trekking out for. If no one talks about the best beers, no one knows to trek out for it. If one of these is missing, Tree House would lose. 

Here’s the thing. 

When it comes to my work, I’m still going to be thinking about how to make our products easier to purchase. The no distribution model wouldn’t work well for us. I’m still a fan of Fast and what they want to accomplish. We still want our customers to get their orders as quickly as possible with two-day shipping. 

But that level of excitement? That brand loyalty? The willingness to travel to get it? Every brand should aim to have fans like that. It won’t be most of your customers, and it doesn’t have to be. You don’t actually need that, since, your brand likely doesn’t require travel. 

If we’re learning something from Tree House, here’s what you should do. 

Make something so good that people would be willing to put in effort to buy it.*

Make something so good that people who buy it feel special. 

Make something so great that people who buy it won’t stop talking about it. 

Join or build community. Find the people who care. 

Next time I drive to Boston, there’s a good chance my brother will ask me if we can stop at Tree House Brewing Co. I’ll say yes, even though I still don’t like beer, and this time, I’ll enjoy watching a great product at work. 

*PSA: Don’t actually make it difficult to buy. Just make it great.