Mug Club Cost/Rewards

[nick79brew]

We are getting close to opening our brewpub and I'm looking for feedback on mug clubs. We definately are going to run one but are stuck on how much to charge, and what discounts to give. Originally we were thinking $25/year gets you a 20oz fill for the 16 oz price, dinner on your birthday, invitations to special meetings.....
The problem is that in addition to our standard line up we plan on having a good number of special high gravity beers that we would serve in a smaller glass for more money. We wouldnt want to fill up our regulars with 20 oz's of a 9% Belgian. So I'm wondering the best way to have a mug club, give discounts, but not have it be a complete pain in the ass for my servers and bartenders figureing out discount, etc. How do other brewpubs deal with this?

Thanks,
Nick
Block 15 Brewing Co.

[beauxman]

I was working on the exact same thing today and got stumped in the same spot! I would also like to hear some ideas that work to address this scenario.

Beaux

[GOOSE]

What we did, was limit the 20oz mug filled for the 16oz price to our standard 'session beers'. The high gravity ones cost more to make and you don't want to encourage people to get hammered. Your regulars will understand, most of them will be loyal to one of your standards anyway, my bet is to your pale ale or an IPA.

My 2 cents...

Cheers,

GOOSE

[Hophead78]

I just charge our members their Mug Club price for the smaller pour. It works well for our pricing structure, giving them a discount on the specialty ales without having to serve them 23oz of high gravity beer.


Cheers!

Dave