Spearheaded by L. Knife and operated as a collaborative effort among beer passionate beverage wholesalers, GreatBrewers.com was relaunched in February 2009 with the mission of bridging the gap between the world’s great brewers and the consumers who enjoy their products, with a paramount focus on education and on enhancing beer distribution practices through the sharing of information. So far, it appears that the Great Brewers team is succeeding at this mission. Since its relaunch, GreatBrewers.com has rapidly become a favorite source for beer information and education, joining pioneering websites as one of the internet's most popular beer destinations.
With a diverse lineup of resources on GreatBrewers.com, this news may come as no surprise to the burgeoning community of more than 14,000 registered users. Differentiating itself from highly successful beer ratings sites (Great Brewers omits a five-star rating system for its beers), GreatBrewers.com focuses instead on services that are complementary rather than competitive with the likes of Beer Advocate and Rate Beer. Perhaps the most unique functionality on GreatBrewers.com is the recent creation of BeerCloud - a single destination where users can manage everything that's important in their beer lives. The web based version enables users to catalog their favorite beers and favorite brewers, and to map their favorite places to enjoy great beer. A user can also create and manage tasting notes, customized beer lists, and event signups from within his or her BeerCloud.
Given the relative youth of the new GreatBrewers.com (11 months), its skyrocketing popularity reflects the value that users are getting from the website. What these numbers do not show, however, is the explosive rise in mobile traffic since launching BeerCloud for Android (September 2009) and BeerCloud for iPhone (November 2009). In just a few weeks, the BeerCloud mobile app has connected more than 34,000 devices with one of the world's most extensive beer information databases. Already, BeerCloud mobile generates exponentially greater traffic than is illustrated by Alexa.com data. According to Eric McKay, the creator of GreatBrewers.com, "beer enthusiasts want to access information on the go - when they're searching for a favorite beer, selecting a beer to pair with a meal, or choosing between beers on a store shelf - and our team is working hard to satisfy that demand with the BeerCloud mobile app."
GreatBrewers.com was re-engineered from the ground up with a priority on scalability, reusability, and extensibility. Revealing the preference for open technologies, lead developer Jingsheng Wang explains that "at GreatBrewers.com, we think proprietary software is too closed to integrate, too slow to innovate, and too expensive to implement. Therefore, we have adapted open source software from server hosting stacks, to our content management system (Drupal), to the mobile operating system (Android) for which we develop." By embracing these core philosophies, GreatBrewers.com will provide beer consumers with greater access to beer information and education, enhance the level of collaboration among distributors and brewers, and improve communication between retailers and the rest of the beer community.
While often overlooked as the invisible force behind every beer transaction in America, beer wholesalers are uniquely positioned to manage and host the type of resources offered by GreatBrewers.com. Great Brewers member wholesalers partner with hundreds of the world's leading brewers to locally promote their brands. Their thousands of sales team members educate retailers on a wide range of fine beers and host hundreds of exciting beer events each month. And their operations teams deliver an outstanding variety of beer to more than 35,000 retailers in eight states. "Given our central role in the beer industry," explains McKay, "we're able to plug data that our member wholesalers manage into a system that can transmit massive amounts of highly sought-after, personalized information to the masses."
Through its new Voice of the Brewer program, the Great Brewers team offers brewers and importers direct control over how their brands and products are promoted on GreatBrewers.com, as well as through the BeerCloud mobile app. Member wholesaler sales team members can all post events and announce new product releases in the forum. And Beer Finder data is perpetually updated based on real deliveries to tens of thousands of bars, restaurants, and beer stores, so it is highly accurate.
"Perhaps the most frequent complaint we get from users," says McKay, "is that a broad range of distributor-specific resources offered by GreatBrewers.com is not yet available in all states." A recent National Beer Wholesalers Association survey suggests that most beer distributors do not have websites. Those that have attempted to create comprehensive web marketing platforms in recent years have either abandoned the projects altogether or severely limited features and functionality after realizing the cost prohibitive nature of independently pursuing such an endeavor. Fortunately, access to all of these marketing resources is becoming far more affordable through the Great Brewers Wholesaler Membership program. "We're currently setting up several new wholesalers with the Great Brewers platform, and the resources we can offer will continue improving with each new member," explains McKay. Wholesalers interested in membership should contact the Great Brewers team directly for more information.
The business model behind GreatBrewers.com is fairly straightforward. Funding comes from a group of beer passionate wholesalers with diverse portfolios. In return for membership dues, wholesalers get a full scale web marketing platform, they get plugged into a massive shared beer graphics database, they get access to a wide range of GreatBrewers.com marketing materials, and they get connected with a number of employee educational programs. Further, members collectively sponsor the improved image of beer nationwide through grassroots campaigns, localized advertising, and the sponsorship of every major event organized by the Brewers Association. "By taking an open, collaborative approach to promoting good beer, we hope to 'Unite the Beer Community' on a broader scale" states McKay.