![]() The Brass Tap, notes Cecil, has an existing kitchen layout and equipment package. This team wasn’t left to follow any and all whims, though. According to Cecil, the chain created a team of about a dozen chefs from around the country to develop new, on-brand food offerings. The Brass Tap started where projects like this should start with chefs. While the menu still offers bar staples like wings and a basic burger, it now features items like a Korean barbecue pork flatbread, tempura beer-battered chicken sliders and the LA Kogi Dog with kogi slaw, pickled onions, cotija cheese and the house’s “secret weapon sauce.” Making a Menuĭeveloping this new craft menu was itself a major undertaking. “If we truly are a craft beer place, we want to elevate the food offerings to match the level of the craft beer and craft cocktails we have in the building as well,” he states.Įarlier this year, then, the chain introduced a new chef-inspired menu that offers elevated food to pair with its elevated drinks. Simply put, The Brass Tap was offering craft beer, but not a craft menu. The full menu the concept first rolled out, says Cecil, was high quality, but not particularly inventive wings, fish and chips, a chicken quesadilla, etc. This area, which sits adjacent to the bar seating, enables extra storage for liquor and additional workspace.Įven with those numbers, The Brass Tap has found room for improvement. The chain expanded from its craft beer focus to now include craft cocktails (along with a full menu). “The addition of food, the addition of a full kitchen, the addition of liquor have really been paramount in helping us achieve some great sales numbers,” says Cecil. ![]() With those changes, The Brass Tap’s average store sales grew by $400,000, to roughly $1.2 million. “That worked well but we quickly saw from there that a full menu would work better, so we brought in burgers, wings and fries and also introduced liquor at that time.” ![]() It was just things we could knock out, like nachos, chips and salsa, pretzel bites that kind of thing,” Cecil says. We introduced what we called a snack menu. “We quickly realized that we needed a little bit of food and probably some alcohol as well. While the core of The Brass Tap was certainly strong, says Jamie Cecil, vice president of franchise development for FSC, some changes were in order. The company bought The Brass Tap from its founders and set about growing the concept. In 2012, Family Sports Concepts (FSC), owner of the 175-unit Beef ‘O’ Brady’s concept, came calling. Warm materials, like reclaimed wood, encourage guests at The Brass Tap to relax and just maybe order another round. At the time, craft beer was a big enough draw for the concept to succeed and within a few years, it grew to three units in the Tampa area. When the chain started in 2007, it offered craft beer and craft beer alone. The Brass Tap, a Tampa, Fla.-based craft beer bar, serves as a great example of this evolution. They need to give potential guests a real reason to visit. These places now need to offer good food and good times to match. After all, since consumers can now get a great IPA at a standard burger place, craft beer alone isn’t going to make an operation thrive. It makes sense that the craft beer market’s maturation has led to the evolution of craft beer-focused bars and restaurants. Today consumers find craft beers up and down the grocery store beer aisle, and craft beer offerings occupy more than their fair share of taps at the average bar. While these specialty brews were on the rise then, they could hardly be called mainstream. The market for craft beer today looks very different than it did back in the late 2000s.
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