Tripleseat Insider: A Real-Life Perspective of Managing Brewery Events

If you’re considering Tripleseat event management software, getting the inside scoop on managing brewery events is amazing intel! Knowing how this software is informed by real-world hospitality experience is insightful in making business decisions. We highlight Stephanie Nale, Tripleseat’s Customer Onboarding Manager, who brings valuable insights from her time at Denizens Brewing Co. as a General Manager using Tripleseat.

Tripleseat is more than just software; it’s a product of our CEO’s two-decade passion for hospitality. This foundation shapes our core values and offerings. Our development approach focuses on addressing real challenges in the hospitality sector. We believe in having a team with first-hand hospitality experience, as they offer invaluable insights into the industry’s unique stresses and nuances.

What sets Tripleseat apart is that many of our team members were once users of our software. Their direct experience in the field allows us to innovate and craft products that truly resonate with our customers. By showcasing these hospitality veterans, we offer our customers not just a tool but a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the event management landscape.

Stephanie Nale | General Manager, Denizens Brewing Co., Maryland

Interviewer: Catarina Martins is a Tripleseat Marketing Manager. In this new blog series, she shares conversations with various team members about their past hospitality and Tripleseat event management software experiences. More interviews to come!

Interviewee: Steph is a Tripleseat Customer Onboarding Manager. Before working at Tripleseat, Steph was a General Manager at Denizens Brewing Co.

Questions and Answers

Catarina: Hi Steph, how’s it going? Did you have a good Thanksgiving?

Steph: I did! I stayed local this year and had a Friendsgiving, where I usually pick and choose holidays to spend with my family. I grew up in New York, then lived in Washington, D.C. for a while, and then moved here to Denver.

Catarina: New York? Nice! I really would love to spend a weekend there during Christmas time since New York seems so wonderful during the holiday season.

Steph: One of my family traditions since childhood is going into the city after Thanksgiving and going to Bryant Park. They have this adorable Christmas Market, an ice skating rink, the decorations are all up, and it’s beautiful. I’m always sad when I don’t get to make it. 

Streamlining Events with Tripleseat

Catarina: Well, hopefully you can soon, and I’ll also try to make it! Without taking up too much time, let’s dig into this interview: Tell me where you worked, for how long, and what your role was.

Steph: I was the General Manager at Denizens Brewing Co. in Maryland for three years. 

Catarina: Great! Was Denizens already using Tripleseat, or did it come into play after you started working?

Steph: So it came in after the fact. When I first started, I was a floor shift leader and ultimately the General Manager. Right after I got into that role, we hired an event manager, and she was the one who brought Tripleseat. She did a lot of research and then pitched Tripleseat as the best event management software to bring on for us there. It was something new. 

Catarina: I usually ask what the pushback was, if any, and it sounds like you had a role in the decision-making process. So please share any concerns you had about Tripleseat when it was pitched to you.

Steph: It was a collaboration between myself and my boss, so it did go higher up, but I was one of the people involved in the approval process. Regarding pushback, we knew we wanted to expand our private event business. The space itself had two floors and a huge beer garden. We didn’t have a reservation system at the time; it was just first-come-first-serve. We started to get a lot of people asking about events and needed a better way to manage those inquiries. Within 1-2 years of the business opening, we were pretty new at establishing ourselves in the neighborhood, and so once the requests started coming in, that prompted the need for some sort of an event management system. And the trust was in our event manager to find the right solution. 

As far as the kinds of events we did would be, for example, booking tables in the beer garden for a birthday party, and sometimes that meant just reserving a couple of tables, or other times it meant getting food preordered for the party, which actually prompted us to create a catering menu. It all happened at the same time.

Catarina: During your event manager’s pitch to go with Tripleseat, do you recall any particular features or benefits that persuaded your team to move forward with this software? 

Steph: I don’t know off the top of my head. What I can imagine based on what we appreciated about it was the ease of use and overall all the features that were included. I can also get back to you on this and ask the event manager at that time because she is actually my best friend, so I can text her and ask.

Catarina: That is incredible. Absolutely, go for it and see if she still remembers! Is she still out in D.C.?

[Here is the text response from Amy Smith, who was the event manager at the time: It was one of the only ones that could effectively manage both internal and external events. I was looking for something akin to what I had used in hotels because I knew that functionality would work for what we needed. It needed to be able to block the calendar for what the event was and quickly and easily generate contracts and BEOs. Overall, Tripleseat was the only platform I evaluated that had all of the necessary functionality, was user-friendly, and didn’t cost a fortune like the software I used in the past.]

Steph: She actually moved out here. In fact, a lot of us who met working at that brewery all moved out here years later. 

Catarina: You really do get some lifelong friends when you are in this industry! 

Tripleseat Features to Manage Brewery Events

Catarina: How about features or benefits from the Tripleseat platform. How did it make your job easier?

Steph: It was a central place to keep a lot of information about events that were happening and enabled us to grow our event program because we had something to keep us organized and help manage it. Also, having documentation for our FOH team and BOH team was huge because we lived and died by those BEOs.

Catarina: Here’s the tough question …. what was your favorite feature?

Steph: The documents. Building out the picklists and documents. 

Catarina: When you know, you know. Plain and simple! Okay, to wrap up the interview, do you have a favorite memory from your time at Denizens?

Steph: Just awesome people I worked with; as I mentioned, I’ve made lifelong friendships from that job, so it’s brought a lot of good into my life.

And then another great memory was this big sour beer festival that we’d host called “Make it Funky.” We’d host like 40 breweries from across the country. And I know some of the event management and organization was done through the Tripleseat platform. It was a lot of work but it became a neighborhood staple, so that was really cool.

Catarina: That sounds like such a fun time! Was there anything else that you’d like to share?

Steph: Sure! So I actually used Tripleseat again after Denizens. After I moved on from there, I worked at District Winery in D.C. as an event manager. They are actually still a very active and loyal Tripleseat customer. We used Tripleseat all the time. We lived and breathed by Tripleseat. Lots of wedding and corporate events, and we used it just for the event portion. We had a whole event space upstairs, different from the restaurant and the winery. Now they have a private dining room in the restaurant, and they’re using Tripleseat in the restaurant as well. They expanded into the restaurant with Tripleseat, which is pretty cool.

Is Your Brewery Looking to Streamline Events?

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