
Next Glass Team Reflects on 2021
As 2021 nears its end, the team here at Next Glass, which includes our Untappd, Hop Culture, BeerAdvocate, Oznr, Ollie and FermentAble brands, are reflecting on some of the achievements and milestones we are most proud of this year.
This year saw Untappd reach its one billionth check-in, just a few months after celebrating its 10th anniversary in late-2020. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Untappd users supported their local breweries by purchasing beer to-go and checking-in through the Untappd at Home venue. Throughout the year, Untappd partnered with the Brewers Association to promote craft beer, including November’s Small Brewery Sunday, issuing a call to action to support local breweries alongside other local businesses. More than one million impressions were generated across the entire Next Glass ecosystem, helping spread the word about this important campaign.
We welcomed Angela Cearns, CEO of TrueTwins, a blockchain-based authentication platform, to our Board of Directors. Angela brings deep e-commerce experience across several verticals, including the food and beverage industry. Read more about Angela’s appointment to the Next Glass Board here.
During 2021, our LIVE! team had the opportunity to partner with some incredible sponsors to produce festivals and events. While we had to shift many events from in-person to virtual, we still produced several exciting festivals, including Beer Advocate’s Extreme Beer Fest presented by Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, and Hop Culture’s fourth annual Beers With(out) Beards presented by Yeti. Over the past four years, this celebration of women in beer has grown to attract thousands of attendees and showcase over sixty women-led breweries. We were honored to listen to the keynote conversation delivered by Mariah Calagione, and if you missed it, no worries! You can still check it out on our YouTube channel – you’ll be glad you did!
And while COVID-19 interfered with our original plans, we were still thrilled to hold Hop Culture’s inaugural Queer Beer Festival, presented by Sam Adams, virtually.
Queer Beer aims to capture the unique, vibrant, diverse, and thriving voices of the queer community in the industry. There were so many highlights during this festival, it’s hard to recount them all. Panels included “How to be an LGBTQ+ Leader in Craft Beer” and “Authenticity in Queer Spaces in Craft Beer.” If you didn’t get a chance to check out the programming, you can catch the entire event here. Please don’t miss the keynote delivered by Ren Navarro, Founder of Beer Diversity, we invite you to check it out and promise you will be inspired.
For Untappd, an important Untappd milestone was holding the community’s first in-person beer festival since the pandemic paused live events. Held at San Diego’s Petco Park, the Untappd Beer Festival saw more than 7,000 attendees enjoy conversations, connections, and incredible beer from around the country.
The amount of work that goes into putting together an event of this size and scale is tremendous, especially as attendee safety takes center stage. In addition to COVID-19 precautions, the Next Glass family of brands recently introduced enhanced safety measures built around an improved Next Glass Festival Code of Conduct, which was inspired by discussions of the many reports of sexual harassment and misconduct in the industry. This Code of Conduct will be an important staple of all future BeerAdvocate, Hop Culture, and Untappd festivals and will help ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all attendees and participating brewery staff members.
The implementation of Next Glass’s new Code of Conduct included #NotMe, a resolution-seeking reporting platform for those who’ve experienced or witnessed racism, harassment, or any type of discrimination or misconduct.
Working with input from industry stakeholders, the Next Glass events team researched best practices, vetted reporting vendors, identified gaps, built reporting infrastructure, trained staff, and integrated with venue security. This Code of Conduct is a natural extension of the work that has been done — and continues to be done — on inclusion and safety by employees of all Next Glass brands.
“As an all female identifying team who has been affected by sexism and misogyny ourselves, influencing change is something we take very seriously,” said Talia Spera, Vice President of Festivals & Live Events. “Every day we continue to prioritize ensuring a safe and inclusive festival experience. Sadly, misogyny, bias, discrimination, racism and harassment is still found in our industry, so there’s more to do. The team at Next Glass will continue to work together with industry and community stakeholders in 2022 to do our part in positively impacting the industry culture.”
Looking forward to 2022, the team continues to expand upon the Code of Conduct ahead of what is turning out to be an incredible festival lineup. These improvements include festival staff training as well as an enhanced vetting process and participation criteria.
The Next Glass commitment to diversity, inclusion and community service extends beyond festivals and events. Throughout 2021 we were able to work with and support some truly incredible organizations.
“At Hop Culture, it’s important to us that we’re creating the type of beer community in which we want to participate,” says Hop Culture founder and Next Glass Creative Director Kenny Gould. “Last year, we worked with Brewers Association Equity and Inclusion Partner Dr. J Jackson-Beckham to help codify our mission and values, and those are things we continue to discuss internally.”
As part of our 2021 festivals, Next Glass companies made donations supporting ALES for ALS, the Pink Boots Society, the Transgender Law Center, Wildlife Waystation, the pediatric abdominal transplant unit at the UPMC Children’s Hospital, and the Last Prisoner Project, among others. Additionally, our CEO, Trace Smith, personally matched all employee donations to 100 Black Men of America, Black Girls Code, and the It Gets Better Project, continuing financial commitments he and Next Glass made in 2020 to those organizations.
“Our team at Next Glass has prided itself on our philanthropic commitments and corporate social responsibility efforts,” said Trace Smith, CEO of Next Glass. “Our brands each have a long history of rallying their respective audiences to support causes committed to bettering both the bev-alc and tech industries. We will continue to commit resources – both time and money – to driving continued change.”
That work includes working on a local level. In the past, Next Glass has supported workplace training initiatives in the Wilmington area, home to one of Next Glass’s offices, including the TRU Colors training program. This program was designed to give gang members an opportunity to develop professional workforce skills. This year, we were also happy to have sponsored an intern in collaboration with Beer Kulture — our inaugural intern spent eight weeks with the Next Glass team getting hands-on experience and mentorship. This past summer, Untappd provided a full tuition scholarship to Appalachian State’s Summer Brewing Short Course to an individual who otherwise might not have had the opportunity to attend. Hop Culture’s Grace Weitz asked 20 questions of the recipient of the scholarship and wrote about it here!
And, lastly, Next Glass’s Marketing department is helping to provide opportunities in partnership with COOP Careers, a program designed to overcome underemployment amongst the BIPOC community by providing career and networking opportunities in marketing. If you are a business looking to hire marketing staff, please check out the link below in our resources section.
As 2021 comes to a close, we know we’re not done. We recognize that effecting real change is an ongoing journey, and in 2022 we’ll continue to work with others in the industry and our community to productively explore ways to put our values into action both in our day-to-day work and in the festivals and events we produce.
For those interested in learning more about the magnificent organizations Next Glass has partnered with and/or supported philanthropically, please check out the following resources:
Partner Spotlight: HopCat
With nine locations across Michigan, Indiana, and Nebraska, HopCat operates on one specific mission: Be a great place to find great local craft beer.
Operating nine establishments, each with their own unique identity, design, and taplists, poses its own unique set of challenges. Mainly, each location constantly rotates new beers across forty different taps that need to be maintained across a variety of print menus. Furthermore, each establishment strives to connect with its local community, finding new, engaging ways to serve its specific city or neighborhood.
Since 2018, HopCat has been leveraging Untappd for Business’ integrated digital menus and print menus to help organize and implement each location’s individual taplists. Additionally, the craft beer bar has partnered with Untappd for Business to create local and sponsored badges to cultivate community and tap into the gamification of the Untappd app. Partnering with Untappd has provided an all-inclusive, one-stop-shop for HopCat to efficiently maintain the huge, constantly rotating draft lists at each location and to connect with each location’s respective consumers.

Photography courtesy of HopCat
Overall, the Untappd for Business software has saved valuable labor hours that used to be spent updating menus and helped HopCat culturally connect with its customers.
We sat down with Justin Pollock, Beverage Manager at Project Barfly, to chat about how HopCat has evolved in a constantly changing craft beer industry, the importance of leveraging Untappd for Business’ print menus, and how Untappd’s local and sponsored badges help tap into HopCat’s unique identity.
Webinar: How to Take Your Beverage Sales to the Next Level
Wondering how to improve your beverage menu? Interested in improving your beverage sales? Curious about the benefits of Untappd for Business? Looking for advice on how to maximize your Untappd for Business account?
Join PourMyBeer, the self-pour technology that’s helping operators boost beverage sales, for an exclusive webinar on How to Take Your Beverage Sales to the Next Level.
On Tuesday, Oct. 26th, at 2pm CT, PourMyBeer will welcome Tessa Young, VP of Inside Sales at Untappd, and Austin Capps, Inside Sales Manager at Untappd, to share tips and strategies on how Untappd can help you boost your bottom line and bring your beverage business to that next level.
This webinar will feature:
Tessa Young, VP of Inside Sales at Untappd – Tessa has led a sales team dedicated to advancing the global beverage industry through innovative technology since May of 2016. She carries out this mission by growing sales reps and managers that are thoughtful, intentional, and absolute rockstars at challenging and changing the way people do business.
Austin Capps, Inside Sales Manager at Untappd – Austin has been with Untappd for Business since 2018, first as an SDR, then an Account Executive, and now in Management. He has worked with thousands of businesses to help them grow, save time, and engage with their customer base through our unique technology. As an Inside Sales Manager, he leads a team of amazing salespeople as they learn the needs of the hospitality industry and show how we can help meet those needs.
Which Beer Menu Type Is Right for Me?
As many breweries, bars, brewpubs, and restaurants reopen and business owners strategize around how to successfully run their companies in a pandemic climate, finding the best way to safely and efficiently display menus has become essential.
If you’re the person making a decision about menu displays for your organization, you’re probably asking yourself several questions. Should you start or continue using paperless QR codes? Go to a digital menu board? Or switch back to paper menus? The decision you make could have huge repercussions on whether or not you attract new customers, retain loyal ones, and boost your bottom line.
For the last three months, the CPG Restaurant Group has been leveraging Untappd for Business’ QR codes and digital menus to help organize and implement drink and food menus in a safe, contactless way across their two Cheesie’s Pub & Grub and Whiskey Business establishments in Chicago, IL. With over 45,000 menu views at Whiskey Business and both Cheesie’s Pub & Grub locations combined over three months, the CPG Restaurant Group reports that their experience with Untappd for Business has been overwhelmingly positive. For them, Untappd for Business QR codes have helped reduce printing costs and improve their bottom line, with whiskey sales for all of their locations increasing by a combined fifty percent.
But the PJW Restaurant Group, which operates twenty-six locations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has gone a different direction, using Untappd for Business software to create custom digital and print menus. In the last year and a half, they’ve racked up 300,000 menu views, almost 15,000 check-ins, and just under 10,000 unique users. However, like the CPG Restaurant Group, PJW reports that their experience with Untappd for Business has been very beneficial for a majority of its businesses.
Because businesses are unique, each of them have different needs. Below, we take a look at all three menu options available for Untappd for Business partners, along with the pros and cons of each.
Cheesie’s Pub & Grub’s Untappd Case Study
With three locations across Chicago, the CPG Restaurant Group operates a series of unique concepts including two Cheesie’s Pub & Grub grilled cheese restaurants and the Whiskey Business craft whiskey bar.
Operating several establishments each with their own variety of food, brunch, drink, and craft beer menus poses its own unique set of challenges. Mainly, each location needs to constantly maintain and update a rotating series of menus. Furthermore, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the CPG Restaurant Group wanted to find a secure, touchless way to display its menus to consumers.
For the last three months, the CPG Restaurant Group has been leveraging Untappd for Business’ QR codes and digital menus to help organize and implement each location’s drink and food menus while simultaneously providing a safe, contactless way for patrons to view what they can order. Partnering with Untappd has provided a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution for all three of the CPG Restaurant Group’s concepts.
With over 45K menu views at Whiskey Business and both Cheesie’s Pub & Grub locations combined, the CPG Restaurant Group reports that their experience with Untappd for Business has been overwhelmingly valuable. The Untappd for Business software has helped improve their bottom line and reduced printing and labor costs.
We sat down with Tony Contri, CSG Chief Operating Officer, and Juliette Driscoll, CSG Marketing Director, to chat about running a business that brings out the kid in adults, the importance of operating digital menus in a post-pandemic climate, and how Untappd for Business’ QR codes have helped Cheesie’s and Whiskey Business run easy-to-update, safe, streamlined digital menus.
5 Minutes with Trevor Tyler from the Eureka! Restaurant Group
With twenty-five locations across California, the Eureka! Restaurant Group operates a series of modern restaurants dedicated to supporting American craft beer. As the company writes on its website, “Eureka! is defined as expressing delight on finding, discovering, or solving something. Those that truly appreciate great food, craft beer, and small-batch spirits are discovering a better restaurant experience and Eureka! has elevated it to an art form.”
Operating a high number of establishments means that the Eureka! Restaurant Group is constantly striving to promote new beers, many of which are unique to each location. Additionally, educating their staff and guests on these location-specific craft beers is integral to Eureka!’s mission.
For about the last three years, the Eureka! Restaurant Group has been leveraging Untappd for Business (Try For Free Today!) to create custom menus to help promote not only their extensive craft beer list, but also their whiskey and specialty cocktails. From creating custom print menus to curating bespoke training materials for its staff, the Eureka! Restaurant Group has partnered with Untappd for Business for a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution.
We sat down with Trevor Tyler, Vice President of Beverage Operations at Eureka! Restaurant Group, to chat about how Untappd for Business has helped him create custom menus, efficiently operate menus at a large number of Eureka!’s high-volume establishments, and even how Untappd for Business’ analytics have helped him plan beer menus for future locations.
Partner Spotlight: P.J. Whelihan’s Pub + Restaurant
With 26 locations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the PJW Restaurant Group operates a series of unique concepts geared to beer fans—everything from sports bars and pour houses to a fine dining steakhouse, taco concept, and pizza bar. But, the majority of their locations fall under the P.J. Whelihan’s Pub + Restaurant concept, a sports bar known for the perfect blend of good food (such as PJ’s Famous wings), great beer and drinks, and fun in a relaxed atmosphere.
Operating a high number of establishments poses its own unique set of challenges. From a beer perspective, each location has its own drinks menu that needs to be constantly maintained and updated.
For about the last year and a half, to help organize and implement each location’s beer and drinks menu, P.J. Whelihan’s has been leveraging Untappd for Business. From creating intuitive digital and print menus to curating bespoke training materials for its staff, P.J. Whelihan’s has partnered with Untappd for a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution.
So far with over 300k menu views, almost 15k check-ins, and just under 10k unique users, P.J. Whelihan’s experience with Untappd for Business has been overwhelmingly beneficial for a majority of its businesses.
We sat down with Kristen Foord, Marketing Director at PJW Restaurant Group, to chat about how Untappd has helped a large number of their high-volume restaurants and sports bars operate its variety of menus more creatively and efficiently.
Untappd and Brewers Association engage French craft beer lovers
As France begins to experience its own craft beer revolution, the Brewers Association and Untappd are working together to showcase American craft beer to French beer enthusiasts through a multi-media campaign highlighting American craft producers, beer styles and food pairings.
The campaign features a website that includes educational content related to US Craft Beer styles and where to find American craft beer in France, along with beer rankings powered by Untappd.
Santé!
Untappd for Business Upgraded QR Codes
Untappd for Business provides an easy-to-use QR code tool that generates contactless menus for your customers.
In a post-COVID world, customers are increasingly demanding contactless, digital experiences. During the last few months, our business partners asked for more functionality in creating expanded contactless menus within the Untappd for Business platform.
You asked, we listened.
Now, within Untappd for Business, all it takes is a few clicks to create QR code menus for all of your menu items: beer, food, wine, cocktails. QR codes can be downloaded for digital use or embedded on easily customized printable menus or posters, all within one simple interface. QR codes can be downloaded for use in your custom marketing materials as well.
This new feature is included with your Untappd for Business subscription.
The Beer Community Shows Resilience During Pandemic
Small businesses are more than an important driver of our economy, they are part of the fabric of a neighborhood, of community. 2020 was a tough year for small businesses, and the neighborhood brewery was no exception. But we have seen stories of perseverance and resilience, of community and support, that helped keep many of these small businesses going during difficult times.
At Untappd, we are committed to being a partner to the breweries, bars, restaurants, and retail locations where craft beer drinkers come to learn, share, and purchase the world’s most enjoyed fermented beverage. Today, we share stories from some of our craft beer partners across the U.S. who found innovative ways to stay the course during the COVID pandemic.
In some cases, tap rooms and bars were able to serve a limited number of customers on-premise, in others, they shifted to ecommerce and to-go service. To support our brewery partners and our more than 9 million registered Untappd users around the world using the app to check-in beers, Untappd introduced its Untappd at Home venue, allowing users to continue to enjoy the social aspect of sharing a beer with friends – virtually.
For these community brewers, finding a way to continue to serve their employees and the community required some creative approaches.