Beer, Bacon, Burlesque: A Cautionary Tale

It's common knowledge that the number of beer and food festivals in Nashville has been increasing rapidly over the past few years, and that can make it difficult to tell one from the other. Unfortunately, it appears as if one of them went south last weekend when the

festival was held at Track One near Greer Stadium. The Facebook pages of

and

, Hootenanny Productions, have lit up with complaints from attendees (of which I was admittedly not one), asserting that for a festival dedicated to beer and bacon, there was precious little of either.

Accounts of the event vary, but I have spoken to several people who said several of the breweries that were listed as participants had run out of beer within two hours of the beginning of what was advertised as a six-hour festival, and that there was very little bacon to be found after the first hour. In response to patrons' complaints about the event, the organizers responded with a statement that reads, in part, "Sorry about your less-than-positive experience yesterday. We work very closely with distributors and brewers to ensure that an adequate amount of beer is on hand at our events and that we have enough back ups to guarantee that we don't run out."

I spoke with Sean Clem, the organizer of the event and he expressed contrition and explained some of the things that went wrong. "We've done a lot of these events, and if you do a lot of them, you're going to have one that goes wrong. Usually, when things go wrong at an event, they happen consecutively. On Saturday, they all happened concurrently."

Clem explains, "Between 1:45 and 2, things went haywire. When you plan an event like this, you have to estimate consumption based on attendance, the length of the event and the size of each serving. Last year, at the first Beer, Bacon, Burlesque, we hit it spot-on. We didn't underorder to rip people off. We have no financial incentive by not ordering additional kegs, as distributors/brewers take back kegs that remain untapped."

He admits that Hootenanny did not expect so many of the 1,700 ticket buyers to arrive so early and drink so quickly. "It's not like a concert. Usually not everybody is in the room at one time. So between 2 and 3, almost all the taps blew at once, and we had to scramble to reconfigure the event and put new kegs on the empty taps." (It does appear that most of the people negatively commenting on Facebook were at the event around that time.) "We simply made a mistake estimating how many people would show up early."

One difficulty during the tap changeover was that all the tap handles weren't immediately swapped out, so for example, Little Harpeth beer was being poured out of a jockey box that had Yazoo tap handles. This is of concern as a misrepresentation of the product. Michael Kwas of Little Harpeth Brewing expressed his disappointment, saying, "We're a young company trying to expose new customers to our beer, so that sort of thing has the potential to do damage to our brand." Part of the reason to attend a beer festival is to learn about new brands you haven't tried yet, so if they are misidentified, that sort of defeats the purpose.

Clem says he recognizes the position the breweries were put in. "We value our relationships with the brewers and distributors. They did everything exactly as they were supposed to. How we manage food and beverage at one of our events stops with me."

In the end, Hootenanny did get the tap handle situation fixed and was able to get the beer flowing again. Clem says there were still 1,000 people there after 5 p.m., and there was plenty of beer at that point, but he does admit that the bacon samples ran out very quickly. The lack of food available does reflect poorly on the event from a safety standpoint, because as Clem responded to people who complained about the 3-ounce pours in small 5-ounce cups, "a beer festival is not a keg party." (Without much to do but drink, listen to music and watch young ladies dance, it does sound a little bit like keggers I remember.)

Clem says he's taking steps to appease disappointed attendees. "This is strictly a reputation business, and we've had a good one before now. This is not what I wanted to deal with, and we want to make it right." He invites patrons to email him directly at sean@hootenannyevents.com, and he will arrange for them to attend another Hootenanny production this spring or summer for free. Specifically to those who were inconvenienced during that fretful hour when the taps ran dry, he will offer a 50% refund on their ticket.

Anyone who feels like he or she didn't get enough bacon to eat can ask for a free $25 gift card to one of the event sponsors (also owned by Clem), the Field House at 5th and Main, where they can eat bacon to their heart's (dis)content. So you have to give him credit for at least reaching out.

But there are also damages that are more difficult to undo. I spoke to Bailey Spaulding of Jackalope Brewing Company, who told me she spent much of her Saturday responding to social media complaints like this:

Watching from afar on Twitter, I saw that Neil McCormick of

was also dealing with those sort of complaints, despite the fact that none of the breweries had anything to do with the amount of beer that was purchased through distributors for the event. Spaulding notes, "They bought the beer, and we were not consulted on how much beer to buy. We didn't send any of our representatives to the event, and didn't really like seeing our name used to promote it, since it wasn't something that we helped to plan or execute."

She continues, "We were put in a pretty tough position having to respond to complaints after our beer ran out. So we've made the decision that we will not participate in any more festivals that we can't attend. This isn't necessarily an indictment of festivals we don't participate in; sometimes they just don't fit in our schedule or business plan. But this policy gives us back some of the control again, and we want to take power over the quality of the interaction."

Carl Meier, one of the owners of Black Abbey Brewing Co. also has strong opinions about the various beer festivals in town. He tells me he had been approached to sell beer to this particular festival, but had for his own reasons declined to participate. "We participated in 25 festivals last year, and we felt that this particular event didn't fit our brand. I like bacon as much as the next guy, but we want to interact with the crowd and prefer to actually do the pouring."

Black Abbey was at the first Beer, Bacon Burlesque event last year, but decided that their resources would be better served interacting with patrons Saturday in their own Fellowship Hall taproom, where the drinkers had made a conscious choice to come learn about the Black Abbey experience. "Events can really help your brand," Meier says. "Back when you could still serve homebrew at festivals, we introduced ourselves at the first 12South Winter Warmer before we had a brewery. Really, before we had a brand. But people remember that first taste and were excited about our efforts before we even opened." On the other hand, he says, "Festivals can have the opposite effect if they aren't organized well and your brand can be severely damaged. To see people feel like they were ripped off in the name of craft beer sucks."

I spoke with Matt Leff of Rhizome Productions — who as I've previously stated, puts on the most professionally run beer festivals in town — for some more insight. "We try to put on events that are worth the time and effort that everyone puts into them," Leff says. "Breweries need to be smart about what festivals they do. There are some distributors who won't participate in any first-time events."

Rhizome requires breweries to send representatives to all of their events, but the production company takes ultimate responsibility for capping the number of attendees to ensure a positive experience for all involved and to provide for enough beer for everyone. While they may offer discounts to early birds who are willing to commit to events in advance, Leff promises you'll never see a half-off Groupon or Living Social deal to try to boost attendance at any of his events. Of course, they almost all sell out anyway. Leff sees changes coming in the local festival scene. "We may be approaching a shakeout period for events over the next year or so."

So what should you as a potential ticket-buyer and festival attendee look for to make an informed decision about whether a particular event is for you? First, find out who the organizer is, and note whether you have enjoyed their events in the past. Will the actual brewery representatives be in attendance so you can interact with them? What sort of glassware is provided? If you're drinking out of a 12-ounce Solo cup, bless you if that's what you're looking for, but that's probably a throw-down instead of what should be called a beer festival. Plastic cups are fine, but beer really does taste better out of a promotional glass, plus you get a souvenir.

Be wary of events that blast 2-for-1 deals in the final few days before the date of the festival. First of all, if I paid full price early, I'd be ticked to have to wait in longer lines with a bunch of folks who got in for half-off. Additionally, a late influx of ticket buyers might not necessarily be figured in to the amount of beer that has already been ordered to supply the event, so the chances of running out early are increased.

Is parking provided for? You can imagine the situation of trying to find parking for 1,700 people in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, and some attendees were chagrined to have to pay $20 for a satellite lot after shelling out $50 to $100 for their tickets. Finally, has some provision been made for Designated Driver tickets and is there something non-alcoholic available for those kind souls to drink at the event? Another bonus is some sort of promotion for sober transport like shuttle service or deals with Lyft or Uber.

You wouldn't think that beer festivals would be this complicated, but when you appreciate the many layers of planning and distribution that go into an event like this, it's not surprising things occasionally go wrong. Hopefully with all this background, you can make good choices of how you spend your leisure time and drinking money.