I am probably beating a dead horse at this point. But fall is my favorite season. The fall seasonal beers are some of my favorites.
What do you do when you are at a place where you are less likely to find a good variety of beers? Sometimes you are stuck with the lesser of evils. This is where I found myself recently when I spent a few minutes at a TGI Fridays.
I know what your thinking, a chain, seriously? How can you spend time inside a chain? Sometimes you end up where you end up. You just have to make the best of the situation. The situation that I found myself in was the lack of craft beers on their limited beer menu. Oh sure, there were some of the bigger names but it will be sometime before we see the lesser known breweries in a chain restaurant.
I realized something while spending the 10 seconds looking at their menu. Having fewer choices can sometimes make life so much easier. Instead of spending the 15 minutes going over a huge tap list and hoping for the right choice, I was able to pick what I wanted in no time at all.
Lucky for me, it is time for Oktoberfest beers, one of my favorite seasonal styles. Mind you they only had one on tap, the Sam Adam’s Oktoberfest. Normally I find their beers a bit too sweet, but that sweetness is a great characteristic of this style. The choice was made for me based on that alone.
Now, I did find it a bit sad that I am in a restaurant in Michigan and they only had 1 Michigan brewery on tap and then only a couple beers from Michigan on their bottle list. Maybe in the future that will change. Of course this may take changing the way companies like this are run at their home office. Or maybe the consumers should make a point to write it all in on their comment cards.
Of course, this was still a chain so you never know what might happen in the future.
time for a pint…
Times are changing, if McDonald’s can become a cafe, then we know that chains can learn and change. Writing about it in your blog certainly won’t hurt your cause. :)
Things change. For a chain there are not a lot of choices if they are going to protect their bottom line. Cheap and cheerful or more selection.
The world around them is changing. Soon they will follow suit or fall. It isn’t unheard of for a chain to fail when they don’t keep up.
Most chains have a limited supplies of options. Hopefully they will jump on the band wagon and offer more choices. :-)
It will happen. Or they will fail. Good beer and wine isn’t going away. Consumers want the choices.
It’s been ages since I set foot in a TGI Friday’s ;) It is interesting to note how more places are making an effort to include local items. It always gets me when I go to restaurants in the Boise areas and they don’t even feature one or two Idaho wines. Ugh. The vintners in the Snake River Valley are making some mighty fine wines these days…
I can’t even remember the last time I had been in a Fridays. I haven’t heard much about anything coming out of Idaho. Could be interesting to find out what is out there.