Brewery receives ‘threats’ after banning children after 7pm
Eastside Brewing Company, based in Ohio, has faced backlash and “threats” for its child-free evenings policy, posing the question: what is the best approach?
The brewery, which launched in Buckeye Lake in 2012 before moving to its bigger premises in Reynoldsburg, has a policy of remaining open to everyone from Tuesday-Sunday. However, the brewery taproom is only open to guests that are aged at least 21 after 7pm.
Other craft have recently outlined “you don’t have to be a beer drinker to hang out at a brewery” in a bid to stay relevant within the sector and continue to attract business by appealing to families. But this is not every brewery’s position and Eastside has re-emphasised this to make the point clear for patrons.
Despite its adults-only policy not being new, this week, Eastside owner, Rich Hennosy, said he had felt the need to re-address the issue following a few incidents. Yet Hennosy said that, by enforcing the point, his standpoint had not been well-received.
Hennosy said: “We are receiving threats from customers who don’t agree with our policies.”
Describing the situation, Hennosy addressed the issue via the brewery’s Facebook page and said: “I thought it was important to communicate what our taproom was intended to be.”
Hennosy insisted that he is not a “child-hater” and reasserted that there were many other breweries in the area that were designed to be child-friendly and safe for play. However, Eastside Brewing was not one of these.
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Hennosy explained: “Although things have been going very well for us, there is one sore spot, that seems to come back again and again. Unsupervised children. It’s not that we don’t like kids. We manufacture alcohol. Our thoughts about production, marketing, the ambiance, are all geared toward providing this product for our customers to enjoy.”
Describing how it was not everyone, Hennosy said: “Many families with children come and enjoy the brewery and are respectful of our property and our customers. They play board games at the table and enjoy having a pint while their kids sit with them.”
But, he said, there were other parents who “sit inside the taproom drinking beer while they let their kids go outside to ‘play’”.
According to Hennosy, the policy was not being respected and so he felt he should reassert it and also address the reasons why it exists. He added: “There are kickballs and frisbees to dodge. Some kids like to dig up rocks in the beer garden and create hazards for our adult guests to trip over. They antagonise our neighbour’s dogs through the fence. Our patio swing had to be taken down as it was confused with an amusement park ride. The bolts nearly fell out. The ping pong table is broken and we rarely put corn hole out as the bags end up on the roof.”
Hennosy added: “We work hard to provide a place for you to come and enjoy one another’s company over a pint.”
In a deep dive piece into changes to US consumption patterns, db recently looked into why young people are turning away from alcohol after half of millennials and 60% of Gen Z refrained from drinking for a week or more over six months in 2024, according to data from the IWSR.
In a recent tips piece on breweries staying relevant, Sacramento’s Touchstone Brewing marketing manager Kristen Madigan revealed that breweries need to try to connect with their community on a few different levels. In some cases, this may mean being child-friendly, but in others it may be to understand that child-free timings are just as crucial for other guests and the business itself.
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