What Do you look for?

What does everyone look for in a LHBS? A friend and I are looking to start one and I was wondering what people found most important. Price, service, location knowledge etc, etc. I have only a few in my area but none of them are really all that great and information I get from them seems to not always be that useful. Also do you think a good website to go with it is neccasary or can one get by without internet sales or be just an internet site?

btw noticed this probly should have been in general beer discussion if a mod can move it would be appreciated

As a beginner I view my LHBS as invaluable source of knowledge. As there are two that I go to I think selection is very important. One of my stores has easily twice as many specialty grains as the other, which is why I shop there more often.

I would think the internet can only help you, all of the brew stores I have been to also have online sales, though they don't seem to offer everything like AHS or Northern Brewer do.

Good luck in your endeavor!

I like the convenience of being able to pick up ingredients without waiting for shipping. My LHBS is also the base for the local homebrew club. I tend to use my LHBS website to verify that they have certain less-common ingredients before I make the trip, just in case I need to order something or go elsewhere. I'd say you need a website at the very least, perhaps not an online store, but that's nice as well.

Number one is to be friendly. Greet everyone that comes in the store with "hello". Secondly...have variety. Substituting on occasion is OK...but every time sucks.

Friendly service for sure. I have shopped a handful of LHBS in the past few years moving around the country. I have encountered about a 50/50 mix of owners; half being totally friendly and having the attitude that brewing is awesome and should be fun no matter what level you are at, and the other half being snobbish and condescending pretty much no matter what you say.

When I get friendly service, I shop at the store. When I dont, I order online. Here in OKC I shop at the LHBS. Great service and friendly vibe. Not the best selection, but I buy what i can there and only order what they dont stock online. When I lived in Fayetteville AR, I only shopped online. Every time I went into the local store the owner treated me like I was a nuisance, just another customer bugging him.

strat_thru_marshall said:

Friendly service for sure. I have shopped a handful of LHBS in the past few years moving around the country. I have encountered about a 50/50 mix of owners; half being totally friendly and having the attitude that brewing is awesome and should be fun no matter what level you are at, and the other half being snobbish and condescending pretty much no matter what you say.

When I get friendly service, I shop at the store. When I dont, I order online. Here in OKC I shop at the LHBS. Great service and friendly vibe. Not the best selection, but I buy what i can there and only order what they dont stock online. When I lived in Fayetteville AR, I only shopped online. Every time I went into the local store the owner treated me like I was a nuisance, just another customer bugging him.

Click to expand...

The Brew Shop on Penn?
Been there once and need to get back Saturday before I bottle. The guy there seemed nice enough.

SoonerDoc said:

The Brew Shop on Penn?
Been there once and need to get back Saturday before I bottle. The guy there seemed nice enough.

Click to expand...

Thats the one. The owner Chuck is a super cool guy. He treats you like you've been friends for years from day one.

Even on a busy Saturday when the store was full of customers he took the time to chat about my upcoming brew day. I buy all of my ingredients there and some of my equipment. They dont stock a lot of the bigger all-grain equipment, but it's nice having a friendly place to stop by once a week or so to get ingredients!

I would list friendly service first, and experience and knowledge a close second. I mean, I'd rather you be nice and tell me that you don't know, than to actually know and be rude about it. And as a substitute to knowledge, you could point them here.

Of course a decent selection is a must, as is fresh ingredients.

A proper understanding of basic and advanced brewing techniques among all employees. This may be asking a lot, but it is frustrating to ask for munich and be handed cara-munich, with any protest being met with an eye-roll.

To be honest, I think that the homebrew supply really lends itself better to an internet-centric business. I have always preferred the selection, products, and personal service of the websites that I order from over the shops I've been to. I say have a good website that accurately showcases all of your inventory, and aggressively advertise on the web and and the magazines. It should be pretty easy to target your advertising to the homebrewer!

I'm pretty loyal to brewmaster's warehouse. If you want to know what I look for in a homebrew supply, just look at them.

There is only one in Las Vegas, and it is too far out of the way for me to go to, so I just order everything online. I'm pretty good at planning and having extra supplies on hand, so I rarely need something right away.

Location and friendliness are the two most important items for me.

1) Friendliness
2) Time to help out some newbies
3) Knowledge
4) Inventory
5) If there is an online shop... make it so as to ship to Canada...

price, service, location knowledge etc, etc.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily in that order. If I can get good service (number one in my book) from friendly knowledgeable people who are offering the better grade of things I'll be back even if the prices are higher.

I think better material and equipment when used well means you have a better shot at better beer.

But before you incur the cost of starting up I suggest that you do some demographic research. Maybe even do a mailing campaign with pre-paid returns to see how many interested responses you get.

I'm going to say moderately reasonable prices. I've stopped going to my LHBS for ingredients since I realized that even with shipping prices, it was cheaper to order ingredients for one recipe at a time than to go to the store. I did a mild, the ingredients online were like $15 + $7.99 shipping. I went to the LHBS expecting to pay a little less since there wasn't much in the grain bill, but the total cost for the same ingredients was $24. The only reason I go there any more is for minor equipment purchases (airlocks, grain bags, etc) or if I forget something when I place an order online.

I agree with everything said above about friendly service, good variety, at least generally above-average knowledge, and all the other general (important) customer service aspects of a good company. I also think you will need a good selection of extract recipes ready to go.

My LHBS has a wall of recipes in different styles that, frankly, were a godsend when I first started out. All are extract + steeping grains, with instructions printed out in an easy-to-understand format. (Check out their page here.) You can walk in, grab one of the recipe sheets, build your kit, and ask questions as you assemble the kit. Also, they are remarkably simple recipes--all using 3,6, or 9 lbs. of extract plus some specialty grains. Good business model.

My LHBS has some very knowledgeable people, but their prices are not competitive - at all - with the online suppliers. My LHBS got me started, but it didn't take long to figure out how to save quite a bit by buying online. Once my confidence was significant enough to be more independent, I haven't had much use for the LHBS simply because of price.

service. service, service.

You probably won't be able to compete with price against most on-line shops (just the nature of business these days) . So you gotta make up for it with service.

My LHBS is the local microbrewery. I can e-mail them ahead of time with the grain bill, hops, etc I need. I tell them when I plan on picking it up and they have it all ready to go, milled and all. All I do is go in, pick the bag with my name on it, pay and I am out the door. Can't beat that. hardly ever order on-line any more.

I liked this format so I'm going to steal it

1) Friendliness (hobbies are supposed to be fun, right?)
2) Inventory (always have at least the basics and offer to special order odd ingredients)
3) Cleanliness (keep store organized and clean, it's amazing how dusty these shops get with grain dust)
4) Knowledge (this is especially important when it comes to needing substitutions)
5) Only give personal opinions when asked for it; Keep recommendations objective.

The last one is a huge pet peeve of mine. Beer style preference is very subjective and if I say I want to recreate the Citra hop flavor profile of SN Torpedo, don't tell me that you couldn't stand it when you tried one. Opinions are like a rear-end, everybody has one.

Special Hops said:

My LHBS is the local microbrewery. I can e-mail them ahead of time with the grain bill, hops, etc I need. I tell them when I plan on picking it up and they have it all ready to go, milled and all. All I do is go in, pick the bag with my name on it, pay and I am out the door. Can't beat that. hardly ever order on-line any more.

Click to expand...

That would be great. My LHBS won't sell less than a pound, so I can't really construct a recipe there.

Any LHBS has to have fresh ingredients and at least moderate pricing. Variety is a HUGE plus too. Especially for the more advanced brewer. Price/selection/freshness is probably a difficult balance for a new shop because your volume will obviously start out pretty low. Internet sales could help with this.

Everyone has mentioned it is important to have a friendly staff but I think it is equally important (if not more important) to be helpful. Train your staff to ask questions. It's pretty intimidating walking into a homebrew shop for the first time. There's all these strange products lying around, you don't know exactly what you need, and you are by far the most ignorant person in the room.

My first trip to my LHBS was great. I walked in with a decent idea of what I needed but the clerk was super helpful. He asked a lot of questions and I walked out of there with exactly what I needed. I spent quite a bit of money too. That was three years and about 50 batches ago. I've probably spent about $1000 at that shop since then. If I hadn't started off on the right foot I may have quit after one batch. They cultivated a lifetime customer. Well as long as I live in the area anyway. Hosting free homebrew classes and more advanced clinics would probably be a good way to cultivate business too.

Good luck with the venture!

SC_Ryan said:

Hosting free homebrew classes and more advanced clinics would probably be a good way to cultivate business too.

Click to expand...

That's a great recommendation. My LHBS is fairly shortsighted on this. They offer $40 classes (lunch included), but the value add just isn't there for me to spend that kind of cash considering I can get most techniques in a book or here on homebrewtalk.com. If they offered free classes I would no doubt go and buy ingredients for the demonstration batch while I'm there. Hell, I would say offer a class brewing a specific recipe that uses ingredients that are nearing the end of their shelf life and offer a discount on kits for the demonstration brew. You have happy customers that get a free class and discounted recipe kits and you move product that may go bad anyway.

An hour or two class costs the shop about $40 in wages, if that. If you can round up 10-15 people in a class you will more than pay for it.

I think having a website would help a ton! I order once or twice a month from my lhbs, but they have a great website. I go on the site, shop for my list, and look at there sale items, i usually end up getting more than i was planning on. Allso I would advise putting together your own kits for the extract brewers out there, the are easy to do, and i would asume profitable for the seller. I allways like to buy the brew shop kits over the brewers best kits. The rest of the stuff has been metioned, friendly, good inventory, clubs, knowledgable.

Good luck , hope you do it!!!

1 -Location (I'm a cheap bastard like everyone else and don't want to pay for shipping, but I don't want to drive 30 miles)

2 -Price (Now that I've switched to AG and have my Barley Crusher I buy grain in bulk -10# and 50# bags

3 - Variety and quality of ingredients (My LHBS carries Breiss, Hugh Baird, GW, etc. -large variety of grains!)

1) Selection (you can be the friendliest sort on the planet, but if you don't have a huge selection of stuff it really limits your market)

2) Friendliness/helpfulness/knowledge - (without arrogance and being condescending) - why, for instance would you not carry Mr. Beer kits??? Isn't that where quite a few homebrewers started? I know I did.

3) Cleanliness (yes the "charm" of some LHBSs is sorta cool when they're in an alley in what looks like a storage unit, but why can't they be clean (or at least look it)???)

4) FREE Homebrew classes would be really cool. Why would you even need to charge? If you educate people with free classes, won't they then be your customers for equipment/grain/hops/etc? Won't they even feel like "yeah I can order that friggin pot online for $20 cheaper, but these guys/gals taught me how to do this for free - so heck I'll gladly pay them that extra $20!!!"

That's my 2 cents.

I would say service. Business of any sort is about creating loyal customers. You can only do that by making them comfortable with your shop and its employees. If you have a ****** bag working there your customers won't come back. Treat the newbs and the brewmasters with equal respect and patience and you will be successful.

service location friendliness and thoroughness. being able to get anything at one shop is pretty close to necessary. where i am the only fully equipped beer brewing store is over an hour walk away and i dont always have a ride. there are 3+ other stores and they are almost all wine based wit little more then a few extracts and maybe a fermentor or two.

thanks for all the great replies, lots to think about but its great to hear what everyone thinks