Best Practices for Offering Beer in Bottles and on Tap

Do you live in a Bud Light town or a Coors Light town? If your pizzeria has a beer program, it’s important to know the difference, according to Melissa Rickman, co-founder of Wholly Stromboli in Fort Lupton, Colorado.

Speaking at Pizza Expo 2025, Rickman says Fort Lupton started as a Bud Light town but flipped to Coors Light in recent years. Keeping her finger on the pulse of those preferences has been key to serving customers and ensuring profitability.

Before making any decisions about beer service, Rickman emphasizes the importance of understanding your customer base and local preferences. She recommends the following research methods:

• Asking servers and counter staff what they hear from customers about existing beer offerings.
• Building relationships with local liquor store owners and querying them about popular brands.

“Develop a good relationship with your neighbors, and it pays off tenfold,” Rickman says. “Is there a specific brand that you sell a lot of? … That can really open your eyes to what the demand is in your community.”

Storage Space and Staffing

Physical limitations often determine the best approach to deciding between beer bottles and kegs, according to Rickman. Considerations include storage for kegs at proper temperatures, secure storage for empty kegs (which thieves can turn in for deposits) and the logistics of running beer lines and glycol systems.

“A poorly designed bar will be a nightmare for you and for your team,” Rickman warns. “If you can’t move around, if you can’t open the cooler door and have somebody walk past, or you can’t open the cooler door and get out of your own way to get in there, that’s a problem.”

Staffing presents another major consideration. Rickman notes that draft systems require more skilled handling.

“If you don’t have a dedicated bartender, I would lean less toward draft beer and more toward bottled beer,” she says. “Maybe they don’t know how to pour, or they don’t have time to do it right because they’re rushed … because they’re multitasking.”

Economics of Bottles and Kegs

Rickman shares specific cost data from her operation to illustrate the financial differences between bottled and draft beer:

• Cost of goods for draft beer typically runs 17%-19%.
• Cost of goods for bottled beer ranges from 22% to 33%.

“For me right now, I think my best-selling beer goods is 17% and my best bottled beer is 28%,” Rickman says. “But if you’re wasting a bunch of beer, if people don’t know how to pour it, if you’re not getting adequate service from your line cleaners … cost of goods doesn’t matter at that point because you’re wasting all of that beer.”

She emphasizes that pizzeria operators need accurate inventory systems to make informed pricing decisions: “Unless we’re doing those procedures, we really don’t have a good basis for what things are costing, right? And if we don’t know how much something costs, how can we determine how much to sell it for?”

Managing Draft Beer Challenges

For operators considering draft systems, Rickman details the importance of temperature management. She explains that beer stored above 40 F becomes foamy and affects taste, while beer below 36 degrees becomes overly carbonated. That said, proper storage for beers varies by style.

She also shares a practical method for tracking keg inventory using weight: “Your average full keg weight is 330 pounds. Empty keg weight is 30, so liquid weight equals 300 pounds. So, you’re going to weigh your keg full, weigh your keg empty. That gives you the empty keg weight.”

Local Beer Strategy

Rickman dedicates her five tap handles exclusively to local breweries while keeping major brands in bottles.

“My approach is that I only carry local brewers or local breweries on tap. I dedicate them to the small guys, because for me, it is immensely important to partner with peoples that have people that have the same values that I do,” she explains.

This decision came with consequences. The major distributors weren’t pleased: “They were like, you know, we’re gonna take your bi-weekly to a once a month delivery schedule.” Rickman stood firm, however, arguing: “You’re not going to strong arm me, because I’m a little guy.” And eventually her bi-monthly service was restored.

Inventory Control is Critical

Given alcohol’s susceptibility to theft, Rickman says inventory management is of utmost importance.

“It certainly isn’t hard to slide a beer across the counter to your favorite customer as a bartender,” she notes. “It’s even more important to have stock counts when we’re talking about beer and alcohol.”

She recommends weekly inventory counts and maintaining waste logs, but cautions that these systems only work if management actually reviews them: “The key to a waste log is to have one, right? The other key to a waste log is pay attention to it.”

Making the Decision

For operators trying to decide between bottles and draft, Rickman suggests considering sales volume as a key factor: “I would say, if you’re not doing a lot of volume, if your alcohol sales are not greater than 15%-17%, I don’t know that. I would go with a draft system, because you do run into those freshness issues.”

She also emphasizes the importance of trusting business instincts despite outside advice: “At the end of the day, if that doesn’t fit your business, if it doesn’t set well with your gut … then it’s not right.”

Building a Sustainable Program

Successful beer programs require careful planning, accurate financial tracking and alignment with both customer preferences and operational capabilities. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to beer service. Success depends on understanding your specific market, operational constraints, and financial goals, then building a program that serves all three effectively.