The taproom already looks good. That's the problem. Somebody spent real money on the reclaimed wood, the steel, the logo behind the bar, and now the plan is to cover it in blue and white plastic for five weeks.
A brewery is the one venue where the default decorating approach actively works against you. Everywhere else you're building a look from nothing. Here you're layering on top of a look that already exists and that regulars come back for.
Layer, don't cover
The instinct is to blanket the room. Resist it. The move is to leave the identity surfaces alone and decorate everything around them.
Off limits: the tap wall, the bar face, your logo, and any wall art you'd be annoyed to hide. That's the taproom people already like. Fair game: the ceiling, the perimeter walls, the windows, the entrance, the patio, and every table.
Ceiling and perimeter carry the whole transformation. A 120 ft. pennant banner puts 65 plastic pennants on a single continuous line with a 17 inch drop, which runs the boundary of most taprooms without splicing. Whirls fill the vertical space in the middle of the room; the 12 per package version mixes six printed and six plain at lengths from 17.5 to 33.75 inches, which reads as texture from below rather than a repeated logo.
For windows, the pretzel clings come on 12 by 17 inch sheets with 8 pretzels per sheet, and they peel back off clean. On a leased space with a landlord who cares about the glass, that matters more than how they look.
The tap list is the sign that counts
Breweries get this backwards constantly. The Oktoberfest decor goes up, and then it partially obscures the one piece of signage every single customer needs to read.
Whatever else happens, the tap list stays legible from the door and from the back of the line. Decorate the frame around it, not the board itself.
- Sign cutouts at 4 by 24 inches are long and narrow on double-sided cardstock, which is the right shape to run above a chalkboard or along a rail without eating readable space.
- If you're pouring a seasonal, give it its own callout rather than burying the line in a list of twelve. A separate small sign moves more of it than a bigger tap board does.
- The Beer Garden sign banner at 5 feet by 21 inches on all-weather material with four grommets is what marks an outdoor pour station or the patio gate. It's the piece worth putting where people decide which line to stand in.
- A 3 by 5 foot Bavarian flag printed on both sides gives you an anchor at the entrance that doesn't compete with your own branding for wall space.
The merch table
Merch is usually the best-performing table in the building during a seasonal event and it usually looks like an afterthought, because it's a folding table with cardboard boxes underneath it.
The self-adhesive table skirt is 14 feet long and 29 inches tall, which wraps three sides of a full banquet table and screens everything stashed below. It peels and presses on, so no pins or clips near the shirts. A 6 foot printed runner at 11 inches wide gives the top a spine and leaves room on both sides for stacks.
Party buttons come 5 assorted per package in two sizes, or 60 per case, and they work three ways at once: an add-on at the register, a giveaway with a purchase, and a way to mark which people behind the table are staff.
Drinkware for the patio problem
Most taprooms have a no-glass rule outside, and that's where the disposables actually earn their keep rather than replacing your glassware.
The 17 ounce plastic party mug splits the difference between a pint and a full liter stein, so a pour holds without going warm at the bottom of an oversized vessel, and it's sold one per package or 6 per case. For flights, the 3 ounce mug shot glass is bigger than a standard shot and lines up well down a table; it comes 1 per package or 24 per case. Greaseproof pretzel bags at 6 by 5.75 inches, 50 per package or 600 per case, handle a soft pretzel without grease reaching the merch or the tables.
Plan the takedown before the setup
Five or six weeks is a long run, and the whole thing has to come off without leaving adhesive on finished wood. Hang from existing hardware where you can, use the string loops and grommets the products give you, and keep tape off anything sealed.
Order the case formats. Pennant banners are 1 per package or 12 per case, table skirts 1 or 6, sign cutouts 4 or 48. Across a season you will replace things, and a spare in the back beats a mid-September restock.
The one thing to skip: novelty inflatables. An inflatable pretzel next to a serious tap wall drags the whole room toward kids' birthday, and a brewery Oktoberfest is trading on looking like a real beer hall.
Pull your zones first, then shop the Oktoberfest collection for the perimeter and signage pieces, with solid color tableware for the plain covers underneath. Leave the tap wall alone.
If this is your first order with us, the code PARTY10 takes 10% off it. Worth putting toward the case quantities you already know you'll go through before the taps go back to normal.
