How much would you pay to wet your whistle once a week for the rest of your days?
If the answer is at least $350, you can join an exclusive new club at Shaketown Brewing Co.
Precisely 100 “Shaketonian of the Month Club” memberships are now up for grabs at the North Vancouver brewery, which will get you a fancy card and lifetime beer-drinking privileges.
While a couple other local establishments have recently offered similar deals, Shaketown is the first in the area to make such a bold offer.
After brainstorming the membership, co-founder Ryan Scholz wondered if the card was too good to be true. At the same time, he knew that once-a-month memberships don’t pay off until year two, and that wasn’t aggressive enough.
“For me, everything Shaketown … my ethos is go big or go home,” Scholz said. “We have a pretty aggressive happy hour for $3 beers from Monday to Wednesday at Shaketown, and the same thing I wanted to capture with this too.”
The idea is an extension of the ongoing Shaketonian of the Month posts on the brewery’s social media, which carries the semi or completely fictional bent that flows through all of the business’s branding.
Lifetime beer membership pays off in month nine
“With one a one-time fee of $350, you get this really fancy little numbered, exclusive membership card that we’re going to make look really cool,” Scholz explained. “It will act like a little punch card, and you can come in once a week and get a free 20 ounce beer of anything on the menu.”
If you go every week, the card pays itself off in month nine. Every brew after that is on the house. In its first week on offer, 10 cards were claimed.
To justify the math, Scholz said the community building and associated purchases make the long-term memberships add up.
While breweries like Beere Brewing and House of Funk have more of an established fan base, one-year-old Shaketown is one of the new kids on the block.
“We decided to sort of launch this to reward the people that have been frequenting us and it gives them a little financial gift if they are coming on a regular basis, but also maybe create some more loyalty for people who are living in the area, and maybe they haven’t given us a try,” he said.
Shaketonian members who come in are also likely to have more than one beer, bring their friends or buy merchandise.
“The way it’s structured in B.C. in terms of tasting rooms and breweries, tasting rooms are where most people make their money in terms of margins,” Scholz said. “Obviously, outside sales are huge part of the business as well, but the tasting room is your home base.”
Shaketown is one of the participants in the North Vancouver brewery district’s Easter Monday beer crawl. Tickets are $3, which gets you $3 off your first beer at each brewery in the area.
