This weekend marks the one year anniversary of Bottlenectar, the Goose Island and Bottleneck Management collaboration beer. We joined forces last year to release our own year-round, in-house beer so that we could treat our guests to something exclusive.
While the beer remains the same (tasty), the production and distribution has evolved and we have learned some lessons along the way. Here are some fun facts about the status of Bottlenectar, one year in.
One Year of Beer Stats
• To date, we have sold 43,715 glasses of Bottlenectar
• The beer accounts for approx 2.4% of our total draft beer sales
• At Sweetwater, they sell 174 glasses per week on average
• At City Works in Doral, FL, it makes up 3.4% of sales from their large draft beer variety
• At Boundary, Bottlenectar makes up almost 4% of their entire beer sales volume and over 2% of their ENTIRE beverage sales volume including wine and liquor
• City Works in Pittsburgh has only been open for a little over four months, but they have already served 2,796 glasses of Bottlenectar to guests
• On average, we are currently selling 24 kegs per week across all Bottleneck locations
The demand has increased dramatically over the last 12 months, a challenge that Kevin O’Hare, VP of Operations, has been working to keep up with;
“When we first started, we were in production at a rate of 76 kegs per quarter. However, guest demand and the continued growth of the City Works brand has quickly exceeded that,” O’Hare says. “We ran off 200 kegs this past May, and we are just about to complete another 200 kegs just 8 weeks after that in order to keep our restaurants supplied throughout the busy summer patio season.”
So there we have it. Our house beer, and the very first collaborative year-round production for Goose Island, had an amazing first year and things are looking very bright for the future.
Cheers!