Beer is the new wine

I recently had some beers and a meal at a place called Little Creatures dinning hall in Melbourne Australia.

For the uninitiated, Little Creatures is a craft beer which has it’s origins in Australia and has recently opened a flagship ‘dinning hall’ – seen below.

little-creatures-dinning-hall

They’ve simply taken this to a new level. I’m not taking about the fact that they have weird and groovy beer flavours, all naturally brewed. I’m talking about the way they take you on a personal journey with their service.

My favourtie was the beer education programme. They have a ‘pony show’ – I don’t think it’s called that, but it is what I’ll call it for this post.

You get a taste in little groovy pony glasses of all their different beers, then choose one you like. One of their ‘Little Creatures Beer Experts’ comes and sits down on your table with you and they explain all the different types of beers. A real sit down for 10 minutes. A rare treat when the usual sitiation is waiting 10 minutes for crappy service in bars and restuarants. They teach you how to taste each beer and the slight nuances of each. They even provide an idea what type of people generally like the different types.

pony-show

It’s really nice and fun. I even heard the word “sessionable” to describe a beer – They invent some nice jargon to make you feel part of a tribe. Cool.

No need to advertise this little venture. We’ll do that for them….

And this is what cool startups are doing in retail.

3 thoughts on “Beer is the new wine

  1. Quick win for them (considering their location in Fitzroy) would be to get some vege grub on their menu. You only need one option that isn’t chips.

    Maybe I’m just bitter, though.

  2. Eating’s cheating Xavier 🙂

    Nice review Steve. Other microbrewers have being doing this for a while, of course, like Mountain Goat in Richmond and Bridge Rd up in Beechworth… but it’s good to see a pretty honourable mainstream version. Now if they could just keep the newer Brunswick St crowd out of there (lest it become the next Belgian Beer Cafe) it’d be great 🙂

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