Hello all,
The Parched Eagle opened on April 30^th, a little over five months ago. Our product has been well-received from the start and everyone seems to like the ambiance of the space. That said, from a business perspective, it has been touch and go. We have had a couple of good sales months and a couple of really slow ones. Overall we have been just breaking even, but September didn’t quite make it into the black. We will be looking at some cost savings measures, but many of our costs are fixed. That leaves us with increasing sales. We have noticed that events like special beer releases bring in a much bigger crowd. Live music events at the Parched Eagle have been especially enjoyable and well attended, so we plan to do more of that (including Maury Smith & the Orchestra Bordenave tomorrow night!). While our food has been well-received, the food sales haven’t been hitting the mark, so we are looking at changes in that area. We may do away with the costly and time consuming sandwich bar, and go with locally made pizzas. We will definitely continue to offer pretzels, as this has been our most popular food item. We will also likely continue to offer the sausage and cheese plates. We know that visibility is an issue at our location, so we are looking at our signage options. Of course we are all about the beer and with our small system we run out of batches of any particular beer fairly quickly. We are looking at increasing our production in the short term and our capacity as soon as feasible. Longer term we are looking at getting our product into stores and other bars around town.

How can you help? Obviously coming in for a beer and bringing lots of friends is a good start. Word of mouth is always important for a small local business like ours, so please tell your friends (and family) about us. We have noticed the high ratings you have been giving us on untappd and we are honored. We also want to hear from you about how we can serve you better, your ideas for offerings or events, or people and other businesses you think we should know about.

We are passionate about making outstanding beer, but it doesn’t mean anything without you there to enjoy it. On our back bar we have a bumper sticker from the Brewers Association that states “Support Your Local Brewery”: that fits us to a tee! We need the grand community of craft beer drinkers to come through our front door in order to prosper (and make more and more great beer in return).

Cheers!
Jim and Tom, co-owners