Today’s most successful taprooms aren’t working harder. They’re working smarter. From data-informed staffing to flexible service models, it’s time to learn from 2025’s modern taproom playbook.
Check out five key shifts operators are making this year and hear from real-world folks revolutionizing taprooms their way.
#1: Shift from Staff Management to Staff Satisfaction
Staffing is one of the biggest challenges that operators face in 2025. Rising labor costs and evolving guest expectations require a sharp focus on staff retention.
Brewery managers need to streamline operations for both themselves and their staff. Put data and automation behind your staffing to save time and minimize manual errors. With the right technology, you can schedule, tip out, and pay your team accurately and on time. This leads to happier employees!
Integrations such as Arryved + 7shifts let you sync real-time POS sales data with labor schedules, providing accurate traffic forecasts and smarter shift assignments. Taproom management saves hours on admin work, too.
#2: Shift from Messy Paper Math to Taproom Insights in Your Pocket
Smart operators are digging deeper into their data to find inefficiencies. Simple daily sales reports don’t provide the data richness that taprooms need to maximize profit.
Tracking every pour with your POS reporting helps you spot trends fast. Maybe your new hire is too generous with tasters, or that cherry sour isn’t converting to pint sales the way you’d hoped. With detailed, customizable reports, you can make smarter decisions on staffing, training, and menus without ever touching a calculator. Solutions such as Arryved even offer to-the-ounce beverage reports.
Another time-saving set of POS insights comes from tip-pooling data. These are some reports that ensure fair payouts:
- Tips by Labor Hour: Use mini tip pools based on when staff are clocking in and out and divide tips among them. You can see the cumulative results from each tip pool.
- Employee Time Card: Pool tips over a whole day with the Employee Time Card report. This ensures all tipped employees receive the appropriate share and doesn’t factor in time of day or shift.
- Employee Performance: Look at employee performance to see who’s bringing in the most profitable tables.
Look for tools that allocate tips based on when an order was placed versus when the tab closed. That way, if someone serves a table but clocks out before the table leaves, they still get tipped.
#3: Shift from QR Code Skepticism to Optimizing Ordering Experiences
Remember when QR codes felt like a pandemic trend? Well, they’re sticking around because of their serious upgrade to the taproom experience.
QR code ordering lets guests browse the menu, start a tab, and order from their phones without waiting at the bar or flagging down a server. This ordering ease resulted in 37 percent higher tabs for Red Bear Brewing Co.
Here’s a hot tip: Don’t feel stuck in a single service model! Let guests order the first round from the bar and the next two from their table. Tools like tab claiming make dynamic ordering seamless by empowering guests to claim their bar tab from their phone, then continue adding to it!
Ordering flexibility creates an easy-going taproom where your team spends time engaging with guests instead of running cards.
#4: Shift from Manual Processes to Automated Brewery Operations
In an industry that respects the hardiness of blood, sweat, and tears, taprooms must embrace automation, too. Today’s tools make it easier to manage your brewery without drowning in spreadsheets.
With real-time inventory tracking, recipe costing, and production management, taprooms can
- know exactly how much each brew costs to make,
- plan menus based on margins and demand,
- track batch progress, and
- avoid the dreaded “Sorry, that keg is tapped.”
Some platforms, such as Arryved Brewery Management, offer full visibility into what’s happening in your tanks, trucks, and taproom in one dashboard.
Stay on top of production whether you’re in the brewhouse, at the bar, or offsite. Your brewery management system should make getting the data you need is as easy as pulling a tap.
#5: Shift from Maximizing Length of Stay to Maximizing Entertainment
Of course, you want people to stay in your taproom longer. But more importantly, you want guests to stay engaged. When guests are having a blast, they order more, stay longer, and tell their friends about their new favorite spot.
“When it comes to taproom entertainment, we’re not trying to rearrange human behavior. You want to maximize the length of stay when guests are most stimulated. Get people to stay double the time by creating an environment they never want to leave.” —Brandon Stirewalt, Director of Operations at Town Brewing Co.
Not sure where to start? Here are a couple of low-lift, high-reward taproom event ideas:
- Game Night: Hi-Wire Brewing swears by their Competitive Puzzle Nights. Think trivia, bingo, or BYO-board games for easy set-up and clean-up.
- Partner with a nonprofit: Invite a local humane society to host an adoption event in your taproom. They bring the dogs; you provide the drinks. Is there a better combination than puppies and beer?
With tools like venue management, you can customize menus for different spaces (such as a drinks-only QR code for the patio), monitor sales by event, and prepare accordingly for the next big night.
When you track event success in real time, you can fine-tune your programming for maximum ROI.
Modernize Your Taproom in 2025
One thing’s clear: The modern taproom requires more than great beer. As the brewery landscape continues to evolve, operators who adapt with purpose will see the most meaningful results.
These five shifts aren’t trends. They’re proven strategies to build a smarter, more sustainable future behind the bar. Whether it’s embracing new tech or rethinking your service model, small shifts lead to a taproom that’s lean, profitable, and downright fun to be in.
Check out Arryved for all your modern taproom tech needs.