With a new app designed for fun and sales, Great Notion Brewing is taking a cue from direct-to-consumer brands to build engaging digital worlds where fans can interact and stock up on beer and other merch for use in the real world.
It’s a move that has helped the brewery navigate the uncertainty of 2020, grow its business, and keep some taproom staff working.
Since its inception, Portland's Great Notion has focused on selling beers directly to consumers and eschewing the more traditional distributor route. This has meant opening more brick-and-mortar retail locations not only across Portland but in other cities.
And that expansion has a cost anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 per location, said co-founder and CEO Paul Reiter. The six-year-old brewery has five locations across Portland, Beaverton and Seattle.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Reiter thought there could be a better way. He looked around and saw companies in other industries building brands backed by strong direct to consumer sales and driven by apps.
“Why don't we build one? Why don't we go direct to consumer and deliver the beer and ship the beer, you know? So we started thinking about this two, three years ago,” he said.
The result was a direct-to-consumer app that hit the market in April of 2020, right as the Covid-19 pandemic landed and the brewery was forced to close its taprooms.
The app allowed people to pick up beer or order local delivery and collect points based on purchases and activity in the app. It turned out to be critical to the company.
“Over 90% of our sales now come through the app,” he said. “We have 55,000 people that created an account with us and out of that, 15,000 have placed an order using our app.”
The current version of the app allows the brewery to ship to customers in 9 states and the District of Columbia: Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, Kentucky and Virginia.
The first two versions of the app helped the company get through 2020 but version three is on the way and adds features designed to make the app “sticky” and engage consumers through a game, an Instagram filter and augmented reality characters that can be placed in the real world — while viewing the real world through the app, that is.
The AR characters are based on the woodland creatures that inhabit the world created by Great Notion on its labels. The first version of the app allowed consumers to read each character’s backstory, learn about the world they inhabit and order merchandise.
Three of the characters have been rendered in the AR and can be placed in the real world, Reiter said.
This latest version of the app, which is slated to launch May 10, also features a game with the brewery’s lumberjack character Victoria Lane. The game is reminiscent of the 80s classic Frogger, but instead of guiding the title character across a busy street, you are helping Lane climb a tree and avoid falling branches.
“We just wanted to make the Great Notion forest world come to life digitally, and make them fun,” Reiter said. “I'm one of the three co-founders, the other two guys were home brewers, I didn't make beer. I love fun stuff like video games and comic books. I wanted to keep beer fun.”
Keeping beer fun started with the brewery's playful flavors and the app is the latest effort to connect fans of the brand to each other and the brewery.
The app, games and AR characters were designed and built using contract firms that specialize in this work. Some of the design and build work was local and some happened overseas, Reiter said.
Great Notion has about 70 people on staff now. Many are tied to the taprooms and are furloughed. However, as the app sales have grown, the company has been able to bring back some of the taproom employees in new roles tied to fulfillment and marketing in this new direct-to-consumer model.
“We moved a former server who started helping with Instagram, and then she is doing more copy writing for the app and now she is our product manager,” he said. “We are trying to grow people up.”
The first versions of the app featured local delivery based out of the brewery’s Northwest 28th location in Portland. Version three will include local delivery from all five locations with a DoorDash integration.
Later this summer the brewery is planning a fourth update of the app that will include a store where consumers can purchase small items using the points they have gathered in the app — think of it as the Chuck-E-Cheese store but for the 21 and over set.
