"PROST! The Bavarian Beerhouse Story" A few Excerpts!
- susannewagnerva
- Dec 12, 2024
- 5 min read
You might have heard or read about our new book "PROST! The Bavarian Beerhouse Story." Today, we'd like to give you the opportunity to actually read a bit of what's actually in the book. So... enjoy! :)
From the Chapter “Little Malaysia” goes “Little Bavaria”
A major German brewery had promised to supply us with the beer kegs and furnish us with a mobile tap system ("Bier-Zapfanlage") for the Beer festival. But on the very morning of our event, we received a phone call from the brewery to the tune of "So sorry, but you can't have the tap system!"
That was a major problem, and I was simply furious! After all, we had 250 bookings for the evening. Given the circumstances, I did not have much time to spend on being furious. All ranting and storming and complaining would not substitute the missing tap system. What we needed now was a solution, and quickly!
But how can you pour beer from a keg - on a commercial scale - WITHOUT A TAP SYSTEM? As far as we were concerned - you couldn't! But what was the alternative?
"Well," the brewery people suggested, "we could deliver you beer in… bottles instead."
BOTTLES!?
Yes, we could pour the beer from bottles, even if it was not quite the proper Beer Festival way. But the concept of such an event without the beer was even less feasible. So, bottled beer it was going to be!
And the temperature? How were we going to chill the bottles? German beer tends to be served at a much colder temperature than its English variant. Clearly, the restaurant fridge would not quite do the trick here. After all, we were talking about enough bottles for 250 beer-thirsty guests. We were unsure how to calculate the amount of beer we would need and discussed this with the brewery. Considering the number of expected guests and operating under the assumption of getting 60% men vs. 40% women and the fact that some of them would probably drink wine as well (which we were also offering), they estimated that we would need between 3 and 4 liters of beer per person. That meant we needed 700 bottles of beer, and we needed to keep them cold during the whole evening.
So, again, we had to improvise. We went out again and headed to a cheap supermarket chain, where we bought several huge trash bins. I got 200 kg (about 440 lbs) of ice from an ice cube company. These 200 kgs of ice cubes joined 700 bottles of Bavarian beer inside, so we got a group of giant makeshift beer coolers.
This was going to work just fine!
As it turned out, our worries about keeping all that beer cold for the whole evening had been unnecessary. They had been unnecessary for the simple reason that we had run out of beer by 9 pm! Neither we nor the people at the Bavarian brewery had considered how the British people's drinking behavior might differ from the Germans'!
Once more: What to do now??
We were stuck with a Malaysian Restaurant full of people, and our bottled Bavarian brew had just run out with the evening still in full swing. This was a massive problem for us, to put it mildly. Apparently, we could not afford to be sticklers regarding the origin of our beer: The restaurant still had its own stock of beverages. Of course, their beer was Asian, but at least it was beer! So now we served Asian beer in Bavarian Beer Steins at our German-Bavarian Beer Festival without anyone being the wiser. At least we did that while it lasted, which was for about an hour.
It was around 10 pm when I showed up at a French restaurant in the vicinity and surprised them by asking to buy their whole supply of Stella Artois beer (a Belgian Pilsner). This eventually kept us afloat just long enough to get through the evening. Our guests were happy, quite a few rather sloshed, and had received an almost cosmopolitan overview of brews in their German Steins.
From the Chapter "The Bundesliga Situation"
The “Bundesliga”[1]is the German Federal Soccer/Football League, and fans know the games are televised live on Saturday afternoons (MEZ).
The problem back then was that if you were not located in Germany, watching the games live was somewhat problematic. We, however, managed to show them! Great, right?
So, Saturday came, and we were packed! Fantastic, right?
Well - yes and no. The guests were indeed happy! But when I checked the day's sales, I got an unpleasant surprise: They were minimal! How was this possible?
As the waitstaff explained to me, there must have been a misunderstanding, so to speak. This misunderstanding consisted of the fact that quite a few of our sports-loving guests had been under the delusion that it was totally okay to go to a restaurant, watch their sports program and not order anything but some tap water. And for further sustenance, they had apparently brought some fast food from the McDonald's nearby! That, at least, was suggested by the empty packages we found strewn across the place!
Wow! Just… wow! That was the sort of behavior we had been entirely unprepared for! Who does that?
Obviously, we needed a solution, and quickly!
As it turned out, the solution was not that complicated after all. From then on, we handed our Saturday visitors a ticket at the entrance and explained that it cost 10 GBP. Many did not like that at all! An admission fee?
No, we explained this is not an admission fee at all! This ticket included food and/or drink for the value of 10 GPB. This means the 10 bucks represented the minimum consumption for each guest during the games.
Well, some guests still did not like this, and we gently reminded them that it would not be easy to find another place in the UK where they would be able to watch their Bundesliga!
And so, yes, some of the sports fans did not return on Saturdays. Our number of visitors during those hours went down by 50%. But the good news for us: Our sales quadrupled! Problem solved!
And now? More of "PROST! The Bavarian Beerhouse Story?"
Would you like to read more? No problem! "PROST! The Bavarian Beerhouse Story" is available on Amazon (internationally)!
And if you need any help with your own restaurant and have any questions about our consulting services: Simply contact us here! We look forward to hearing from you!
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