Fredericton Craft Beer App Introduces Brewery Hopping
FREDERICTON – There’s no question that craft beer is bumpin’ in New Brunswick. And with the rise in popularity of locally produced brews, services that cater to craft beer lovers have been popping up as offshoots of the industry.
BrewHopper is one of these offshoots. As an app and shuttle service, BrewHopper allows users to experience the variety of craft beer offered in their town through self-guided tours.
We chatted with BrewHopper founders Al Sturgeon and Mike Legere to find out how it all got started.
How does the app work? What are the benefits?
Sturgeon: The app’s designed so that if you and I are out at one of the craft breweries and we’re interested in picking up the ride, the shuttle is currently running and we see on the app that the bus is close by or we get a notification and say “Great, the bus is coming.” It’s going to notify us. And then we can get on the bus. We’ve got a cashless payment system so there’s no money exchanged. It’s preloaded passes. And then we can get onto the bus, stop at the next stop or continue on wherever we’d like. Within the app, we’ll see the stops that are available … We can see what’s on tap. We can see maybe if they’ve got any specials.
When are the shuttles running and how often?
Sturgeon: Right now we’re in beta testing just so we can make sure that the way the technology is expected to work is and we’ve done two runs now. We’ve got a third coming up and the way it runs is it’s a loop. It’s about a fifty-minute loop so no matter where you are, the bus will be back in fifty minutes … Right now we do one run per weekend as we’re testing it out and then we’ll start to run them on regular loops like think about Thursday, Friday, Saturday from five until the craft brew pubs close.
How did things get started? Where did the idea come from?
Legere: The idea started with myself. Al and I have known each other for some time so I ran the idea by Al and he has more of an IT background than myself. I have more of a manufacturing background. It’s something that I had contemplated for quite some time, especially with the rise in popularity of craft breweries, certainly in the Fredericton area and in other cities. I’d been on a number of conventional brewery tours and always thought to myself that there really has to be a better way of being able to still have that experience, the sort of craft your own experience but providing the flexibility.
One of the downsides of a conventional tour is that it’s all planned out for you. You hop on a shuttle with maybe 30 people or so and you’re with the same group for the entire tour. The places you visit are dictated to you so I really felt there had to be a way we could do this that allowed people to create their own experience.
Have you had any feedback from people trying it out or the pubs and breweries?
Legere: The interest has been tremendous. We find that everybody is really attracted to the idea of being able to hop on and off the shuttle according to their schedule. We’re calling it the new twist on tour. It still sort of has that tour, sort of pub crawl feel but at the same time it’s very flexible.
Breweries like it for the fact that the model and the concept is such that you don’t have a full shuttle-load of people getting off at one stop so the craft brewers are not totally inundated with a busload of people all at once. For them it’s about getting people in the door, trying their beers and experiencing new flavours on a regular basis. What we are providing is direct communication with their target market. … It’s far more efficient for the establishment, for the craft breweries, the pubs and the hotels.
Was the idea inspired by anything similar you’d seen?
Legere: There are existing shuttle services that have regularly scheduled departures from certain locations but I’ve not seen anyone combining the technology with the shuttle service. BrewHopper is not a shuttle operator. The shuttles will actually be contracted out. What we’re developing is essentially a kit that we can supply to existing shuttle operators to help enhance their business model and open up new markets for them. We’re all about using existing infrastructure and resources.
What are your biggest hopes for this? Where do you hope to take it going forward?
Sturgeon: The idea is that you should be able to go to any city and go BrewHopping … Anybody that already has a fleet of buses or anybody that already has some notion of a brew tour, we want to work with them to give them our kit. We can map out their routes and then they run it on behalf of BrewHopper.
We want to play well with everyone. I like to leverage existing technology, existing companies and it just so happens that we’ve got some great ones in Atlantic Canada. That’s one of my focuses, bringing opportunities for other people to bring their technology into different spaces… The ReadyPass guys from Fredericton are one of our technology partners because of the work they’ve done. We’ve got another technology partner out of Saint John called Yimbie. Together we’ll be creating this homogenous effect. We’re pretty excited.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.