Using the regular dinner menu to suggest beer-food pairings is certainly an effective way to encourage trial of new beers, but why stop there when craft beer can connect your customers with a whole new epicurean experience. Here’s what we mean. The wide range of craft beers available today offers incredible opportunities for finding new, exciting and unique beer-food flavor combinations that are truly synergistic, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the WOW Factor.
You can make a magical connection by adding a beer pairing suggestion to the daily entree special. This way the chef can carefully plan the dish and beer selection together, specifically to produce a WOWing combination.
In the past restaurants may have done this with wine, but craft beer provides new opportunities for WOW pairings that were not available with wine. Not only does craft beer offer an incredibly wide range of new flavors, but it also provides flavor pairing options for foods that wine could not really match — with hot spicy foods, for example. Craft beers truly open new doors for culinary creativity.
New tools for creative chefs
For creative chefs, simply handing them a mixed six-pack of award-winning craft beers and turning them loose in the kitchen is like handing Claude Monet a new color palate of oil paints and turning him loose in the flower garden. It won’t take long for them to create new masterpieces. Thinking about beer this way is new, different and exciting.
WOWing craft beer pairings can separate your restaurant from the pack and give your customers a new taste experience that keeps them coming back for more.
For those who would like to read more about beer-food pairings, three of the best resources are:
The Brewmaster’s Table by Garrett Oliver
He Said Beer; She Said Wine by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old
The Best of American Beer & Food by Lucy Saunders