For breweries ยท E-commerce
Online stores for breweries.
Merch and gift cards are the easy part of a brewery store. The hard part is beer, because what you can sell online, ship or hold for pickup depends on your license, not on the software.
Or text (508) 546-9942
Slide it
You vs. Joe Blow Brewing.
Left is your website today. Right is the one Joe Blow Brewing has. Drag the line, then hit the button.
Crickets on the left. That is the problem.
Welcome To Our Web Site
Visitors: 000417
Copyright 2014 · call 508-555-0123 · best viewed in a browser
Illustration. Joe is made up. Your competitor is not.
What you are paying for
E-commerce.
A store built end to end, from the name on it to the checkout.
- The storefront, designed and built on Shopify
- Product pages that answer the question before it is asked
- Collection architecture, so browsing goes somewhere
- Visual merchandising, and the photography direction to feed it
- Mobile checkout flow, tested on an actual phone
- Launch assets: banners, email, social, the lot
Next step
Book thirty minutes and I will tell you exactly what it would take.
What I would build
For a brewery.
Shirts, hats, glassware and stickers organized into collections, with your label artist's work presented the way it deserves. Print-on-demand where it fits, so a limited design does not leave boxes of unsold mediums stacked in the cold room.
Digital gift cards with a mobile checkout tested on an actual phone. Before launch, redemption gets sorted with your point-of-sale, so a card bought online works at the bar. If your point-of-sale already sells them online, I link to that instead.
A product page for the release with the art, the tasting notes and the details. Whether that page takes payment for beer or simply announces the date depends on what your license allows. It gets built either way, and you confirm which before launch.
Direction for product shots that look like your taproom, not a stock catalog: the hoodie on a regular at the bar, a glass catching the window light. The store launches with banners, an email to opted-in customers and posts for social.
The brewery version
Why it matters.
The hoodie with your logo is walking advertising, and people buy it as a souvenir of a good Saturday. Gift cards move in December from people shopping for the beer drinker in their life. Release days pull people in from across the region, and some of them want the glassware or the can art print while they are still excited. A store catches those sales after the taproom closes.
Beer itself is a different question. Whether you can take online payment for cans, offer pickup preorders or ship anything at all depends on your license and current state rules, and that is a conversation for your licensing contact, not your designer. I build around what you are already permitted to sell, and nothing beyond it. I have built stores from nothing, start to finish, so the merch side is familiar ground.
The mistake I see
Building the store before asking what you can sell
A brewery gets a good-looking store with cans in the cart, then finds out the license does not cover online sales, or that shipping is off the table. The beer gets pulled, the store looks empty, and the launch post has to be walked back. Confirm what is allowed first, then design the shelf around it.
How it goes
For a brewery, step by step.
→ Keep scrolling. It moves sideways.
Know the shelf
What you sell, who buys it, and what they compare it against.
Structure first
Collections, categories, the path through.
Look, then build
The look applied to templates rather than to one page, then products loaded and the buying flow tested end to end.
Launch and watch
Watch what people actually do, and fix that.
Step five is you.
The free Receipt shows what your brewery should fix first. Free, no card.
Print my Receipt →
Questions
What breweries ask.
Can I sell cans online for pickup?
Maybe. It depends on your license type and current state rules, and those do change. I am not a lawyer, so that one is not my call. Check with your licensing contact, and I build the store around whatever answer comes back, including a merch-only store if that is where it lands.
Is merch worth the effort for a small taproom?
If people already ask about the shirts your staff wear, yes. Merch earns a little and advertises a lot, every time someone wears it to the beach. Print-on-demand keeps the risk low, since nothing is printed until someone orders. If nobody has asked, a few items behind the bar will tell you before any store gets built.
Should the store live on my website or separately?
Linked closely, on the same domain or a shop subdomain, with the same look. Visitors should not feel they left the brewery to buy a hat. The site handles hours, the tap list and events. The store handles products. Each links to the other, so neither has to pretend to be both.
Where I work
Southeastern MA, Worcester County, Cape Cod, RI and NH.
Start here
See what your customers see.
The Receipt looks your brewery up the way a customer would and itemizes what is costing you calls. It is free. Or skip it and book fifteen minutes with me.
Or text (508) 546-9942