Georgia Beer and Wine store leverages Bottlecapps’ presale feature to achieve record sales numbers

Ever wondered if presale tactics could help drive your sales?

“It’s been a huge win for us,” says Sarah Peterson, Director of Retail Operations at Hop City Craft Beer and Wine in Georgia.

Earlier this year, The Veil Brewing Company was looking for someone who could handle 300 cases for a 1–day pop-up event, and they turned to Hop City. So Hop City went to work figuring out how to create a (COVID-safe) blowout event.

That’s where Bottlecapps came in.

With about a month of foresight for the event, Sarah spoke with Kyle Herrod, Senior Onboarding Manager at Bottlecapps, about the possibility of utilizing their ecommerce resources to have a presale for the Veil products. Kyle made it happen.

With the system in place, Hop City ended up having two presales—the first was for 450 North Brewing and served as a “trial run” of this new presale strategy, and it allowed them to work out any bugs before offering Veil’s products.

Anything online isn’t perfect, but as Sarah says, “everything is fixable.” Taking everything they learned from the 450 North presale, Hop City published information about the Veil presale on social media, covering virtually every question customers might have about the process.

The result was a resounding success.

On the first day it was announced, the presale generated $15,000. The pop-up event itself was the second best day on record for their restaurant space, Boxcar, and their parking lot was overflowing. They did half of their weekly sales on that day alone.

“People love that their beer was guaranteed,” Sarah explains. They held on to the Veil products for about a week for any customers who couldn’t attend the pop-up event, and anything that wasn’t claimed was added to their regular inventory.

So what is Sarah’s advice for stores looking to leverage presale tactics? She focuses on three main points:

Outward messaging—get ahead of the presale by setting expectations for the experience. Have FAQs in place, teach your staff how the process is going to work, and be up front with customers.

Hold back some inventory, because tech isn’t perfect. Hop City held back about 10% of each SKU to prevent overselling, and to have backup in case of lost or damaged products. “Look like the hero!” as Sarah puts it.

Don’t always trust the customer to be prepared. Be prepared yourself. Create a system that will help you streamline the process and compensate for any customer oversight.

And if anything does go off course, Sarah has a great strategy for handling that as well: “Let’s have a beer and talk about it, and let’s find an answer.”

Hear our full conversation with Sarah on our podcast here.