Open Forum

Hello, I'm new to Museums and new to the forum so I hope I'm posting correctly.

At my Museum we are looking into holding a 'Historic Happy Hour', an event that we could serve some alcohol and hors d'oeuvres while drawing in crowds that wouldn't normally attend our events. Basically I ask;

-what kids of demographics did you advertise or market to? 

-How did you deal with underage guests and alcohol?

-Were there any hiccups that could have been a particular problem that were solved?

Any help thats offered is very appreciated! Thank you in advance!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY
------------------------------

Hi Morgana,

At my last museum, I started a program called the "History Pub Crawl" to fill a similar niche.  It started at our museum and ended in our partner organization's restored 1920's gas station- now venue.  We partnered with a local business association; I provided content and tour guides, they arranged marketing and other venues along the old downtown business corridor.  We split the proceeds after paying expenses and were able to cover all costs for both organizations.  It not only brought in new audiences in that oh-so-difficult 25-45 age range, it created a great partnership for us that helped both organizations increase visibility for their missions.  Consequently, my organization continued to be invited to the table as the business community expanded marketing and tourism efforts for the town.  We did it several times a year before I moved and I'm happy to report that it is still going strong.  The key was doing great research and training the right volunteers and staff.  Our research into the historic buildings, bars, and local prohibition history provided way more stories than needed, so different volunteers were able to really make it their own and had extra material to draw from if the crowd was tougher than usual.  We also recruited people who were boisterous, excited, and able to tell jokes.  There were some who had been tourists guides early in their lives, were performers, or otherwise had stage experience.  If your volunteers are having a good time, the tour will be good.    If you do this as a happy hour, maybe take a similar tack and bring in local brewers, mixologists, or companies with a "hip" product and somehow help them to bring the history theme to what they are doing.  Old-fashioned cocktails? The origin of the martini?  Pick something that's fun, then find a local piece that connects it where you are.  Was there someone, some place near you that had some notoriety about it?  Good fodder for happy hour.  Just keep it titillating!  And youth-drinking isn't really a problem for these venues, not likely that many will be present if you just card at the bar or the door.

------------------------------
Lissa Kramer
Museum Manager
Southwest Seattle Historical Society - Log House Museum
Seattle WA

Original Message:
Sent: 10-23-2015 03:08 PM
From: Morgana Goodwin
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Hello, I'm new to Museums and new to the forum so I hope I'm posting correctly.

At my Museum we are looking into holding a 'Historic Happy Hour', an event that we could serve some alcohol and hors d'oeuvres while drawing in crowds that wouldn't normally attend our events. Basically I ask;

-what kids of demographics did you advertise or market to? 

-How did you deal with underage guests and alcohol?

-Were there any hiccups that could have been a particular problem that were solved?

Any help thats offered is very appreciated! Thank you in advance!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY
------------------------------

Hi Lissa,

Having drinks and food that's relevant to our site is a very, very good idea! We have a lot of caterers, farms, restaurants, winerys and distillerys in the immediate area who are 'farm to table' which is a huge selling point for the millennials here. Mix that with period food and drink would be even better!

Youth drinking is something we would still probably want to safeguard against, but it seem from all these emails that it is a non-issue.

Tour guides would have to update their stories as well, but we have a lot of variation in history here, and I'm sure we could find some interesting things in particular. 

Thank you for all this info!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY

Original Message:
Sent: 10-24-2015 07:47 PM
From: Lissa Kramer
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Hi Morgana,

At my last museum, I started a program called the "History Pub Crawl" to fill a similar niche.  It started at our museum and ended in our partner organization's restored 1920's gas station- now venue.  We partnered with a local business association; I provided content and tour guides, they arranged marketing and other venues along the old downtown business corridor.  We split the proceeds after paying expenses and were able to cover all costs for both organizations.  It not only brought in new audiences in that oh-so-difficult 25-45 age range, it created a great partnership for us that helped both organizations increase visibility for their missions.  Consequently, my organization continued to be invited to the table as the business community expanded marketing and tourism efforts for the town.  We did it several times a year before I moved and I'm happy to report that it is still going strong.  The key was doing great research and training the right volunteers and staff.  Our research into the historic buildings, bars, and local prohibition history provided way more stories than needed, so different volunteers were able to really make it their own and had extra material to draw from if the crowd was tougher than usual.  We also recruited people who were boisterous, excited, and able to tell jokes.  There were some who had been tourists guides early in their lives, were performers, or otherwise had stage experience.  If your volunteers are having a good time, the tour will be good.    If you do this as a happy hour, maybe take a similar tack and bring in local brewers, mixologists, or companies with a "hip" product and somehow help them to bring the history theme to what they are doing.  Old-fashioned cocktails? The origin of the martini?  Pick something that's fun, then find a local piece that connects it where you are.  Was there someone, some place near you that had some notoriety about it?  Good fodder for happy hour.  Just keep it titillating!  And youth-drinking isn't really a problem for these venues, not likely that many will be present if you just card at the bar or the door.

------------------------------
Lissa Kramer
Museum Manager
Southwest Seattle Historical Society - Log House Museum
Seattle WA

Morgana,

We see many museums and cultural institutions doing this and draw lots of people that would not normally come.

If you are selling the alcoholic beverages then you may need 1-day alcoholic beverage license and need to check with your State Agency that oversees alcoholic beverage sales and licenses.

And, if the Museum is selling it you need to talk to your insurance broker/agent and be sure the Museum adds or has coverage for liquor liability. Do not think most policies cover this and may be added cost.

If you do not self-operate the alcoholic beverages and sub-contract to local caterer or restaurant operator who is licensed to do that, you will not make as much money from it but also have reduced liability and responsibility. If you sub contract, you still need to talk to the State agency and your insurance agent to be sure the Museum is covered and doing it legally.

What some Museums do is give wristbands that cannot come off when people come to the event. You did not say if you are charging admission (advance and/or at the door). You can check ID's at the door and give a certain color wristband who's underage for example. Do not rely and bartenders to do this.

Hope this is helpful.

Art Manask

artm@manask.com

------------------------------
Arthur Manask
President
Manask & Associates
Burbank CA

Original Message:
Sent: 10-23-2015 03:08 PM
From: Morgana Goodwin
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Hello, I'm new to Museums and new to the forum so I hope I'm posting correctly.

At my Museum we are looking into holding a 'Historic Happy Hour', an event that we could serve some alcohol and hors d'oeuvres while drawing in crowds that wouldn't normally attend our events. Basically I ask;

-what kids of demographics did you advertise or market to? 

-How did you deal with underage guests and alcohol?

-Were there any hiccups that could have been a particular problem that were solved?

Any help thats offered is very appreciated! Thank you in advance!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY
------------------------------

Dear Art,

We would probably bring in a caterer, we are also a wedding venue so we have a lot of local contacts, and 1 day insurance is simple to take care of, but I didn't think about how our own insurance might need more coverage. We will have to go into all the details of liquor and insurance before even getting the event off the ground!

We were thinking wristbands or even colored buttons pinned to shirts and jackets. Our site has a lot of open grounds that people can wander, so keeping track of our guests would be something to consider. 

Thanks for all the advice!!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY

Original Message:
Sent: 10-25-2015 11:37 AM
From: Arthur Manask
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Morgana,

We see many museums and cultural institutions doing this and draw lots of people that would not normally come.

If you are selling the alcoholic beverages then you may need 1-day alcoholic beverage license and need to check with your State Agency that oversees alcoholic beverage sales and licenses.

And, if the Museum is selling it you need to talk to your insurance broker/agent and be sure the Museum adds or has coverage for liquor liability. Do not think most policies cover this and may be added cost.

If you do not self-operate the alcoholic beverages and sub-contract to local caterer or restaurant operator who is licensed to do that, you will not make as much money from it but also have reduced liability and responsibility. If you sub contract, you still need to talk to the State agency and your insurance agent to be sure the Museum is covered and doing it legally.

What some Museums do is give wristbands that cannot come off when people come to the event. You did not say if you are charging admission (advance and/or at the door). You can check ID's at the door and give a certain color wristband who's underage for example. Do not rely and bartenders to do this.

Hope this is helpful.

Art Manask

artm@manask.com

------------------------------
Arthur Manask
President
Manask & Associates
Burbank CA

This may not apply to your situation, but in some cases a police officer must be present during an event with alcohol.  This would be required at our museum because it is owned by a city government. 

Alicia Clarke

Sanford Museum

Sanford Florida

------------------------------
Alicia Clarke
Curator
Sanford Museum
Sanford FL

Original Message:
Sent: 10-25-2015 01:41 PM
From: Morgana Goodwin
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Dear Art,

We would probably bring in a caterer, we are also a wedding venue so we have a lot of local contacts, and 1 day insurance is simple to take care of, but I didn't think about how our own insurance might need more coverage. We will have to go into all the details of liquor and insurance before even getting the event off the ground!

We were thinking wristbands or even colored buttons pinned to shirts and jackets. Our site has a lot of open grounds that people can wander, so keeping track of our guests would be something to consider. 

Thanks for all the advice!!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY

I developed a pretty successful Historical Happy Hour at the BHA in Brownsville.  We typically ran it in the winter months but the program, which has continued since I left, now goes year round.  Now we had an working bar in our museum as part of our exhibit on saloons, allowing the space to be an interpretive place as well as a functional space for us as we lost more and more open rooms to new exhibits.

My biggest rec is staff this all yourselves.  Farming it out to others will eat up more costs than you bring in and at the end of the day isn't worth it.  We used the event as a way for people to get to know our staff members and we rotated people out at each event.  It brings a very human face to your institution, especially if you're bigger and not everyone is a public face.

If you plan on charging any admission to attend these events, skip the one day license and just outright buy a liquor license.  It'll work for other events outside of this one and it will save you cash in the long run.  However, if you don't charge admission (making this essentially a free after hours event), then you don't need a license.  Insurance and police presence may depend on your city/county laws, but we didn't need to worry about it where we were at.

If you don't charge admission, keep a tip jar at the bar and either dump what you get in the donation box or count it in as part of your program intake.  We'd make quite a few bucks with a tip jar and we kept the cash because we staffed it.  Additionally, if you keep your donation box at the front, people will chuck in a few bucks as a thanks for a free event.  Otherwise, you make cash of gift shop sales because when people drink, they spend dough like its going out of style.

What we did to keep major costs down was develop a relationship with a local liquor store chain in our area and our beer guy was able to provide us with free donations from his vendors.  They were able to dump extra stock and it encouraged people to go buy the brewery's product at the store.  Their main location was more like a mini Wegmans where it was food, wine, and a small cafe.  In addition to the free beer, we got the food at cost, which allowed us to save considerable amounts of cash.

This relationship saved us in the long run and they were fantastic to work with.  We themed each Happy Hour either to coincide with a current exhibit (i.e. food and beer from big baseball cities during a baseball exhibit) or a chosen theme (a teacher night featured adult versions of school lunch favorites).  This helps with marketing as well and can help boost attendance to certain exhibits that may not be as popular.

Target young professionals with these events - this is a highly undertapped market that will support places they love.  Be that place.  Why should all the bars get the cash when you can get these guys in for free (or a small fee for a reasonable AYCD session) and open yourselves up to new memberships, volunteers, and even future board members.  Use social media to help you - including using hashtags and finding ways to get people to chat about it on social media like selfies with a photo op or have them check in to be registered to win a nice price (a membership or something sweet).  Our saloon had these two Dorfman mannequins.  Bless them, they scared the hell out of me but people just loved them.  They'd go drag clothes out of our dress up box (which I sized for teens and kids, who did NOT dress up as much as the adults, oops) and would pose with our vaquero Charlie.  If we had been bigger on Instagram, we would have made a ton of free advertising having people to hashtag it.

That's the jist of it, hope it helps!

------------------------------
Rhiannon Cizon
Graduate Student
MALS - Heritage Management
Valparaiso University

Original Message:
Sent: 10-23-2015 03:08 PM
From: Morgana Goodwin
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

Hello, I'm new to Museums and new to the forum so I hope I'm posting correctly.

At my Museum we are looking into holding a 'Historic Happy Hour', an event that we could serve some alcohol and hors d'oeuvres while drawing in crowds that wouldn't normally attend our events. Basically I ask;

-what kids of demographics did you advertise or market to? 

-How did you deal with underage guests and alcohol?

-Were there any hiccups that could have been a particular problem that were solved?

Any help thats offered is very appreciated! Thank you in advance!

------------------------------
Morgana Goodwin
Mount Gulian
Beacon NY
------------------------------

This is something we are considering as a way to attract more new - and younger - members.  As a way of testing the fire-waters, so to speak, we have begun serving specialty cocktails with our exhibit openings.  For an Atomic Age exhibit we served several Atomic Cocktails from the late 1950s.  During a current art exhibit on crocodilians, we served our Crocodile Tears Cocktail (just a Midori Sour).  And for our newest temporary exhibit about the US Life-Saving Service, we served two versions of a Shipwreck Cocktail.  These are all served in small portions of shot glass size.  Since we added the mini-cocktails to these events, our attendance has increased, which tells us we are on the right track.

Our next step is to try and have other themed events not tied to a specific exhibition.  For these, we will invite non-members, with the intent of cultivating them as potential new members.

------------------------------
David Beard
Director
Museum of the Gulf Coast
Port Arthur TX

Original Message:
Sent: 11-17-2015 01:56 AM
From: Rhiannon Cizon
Subject: Historic Happy Hour

I developed a pretty successful Historical Happy Hour at the BHA in Brownsville.  We typically ran it in the winter months but the program, which has continued since I left, now goes year round.  Now we had an working bar in our museum as part of our exhibit on saloons, allowing the space to be an interpretive place as well as a functional space for us as we lost more and more open rooms to new exhibits.

My biggest rec is staff this all yourselves.  Farming it out to others will eat up more costs than you bring in and at the end of the day isn't worth it.  We used the event as a way for people to get to know our staff members and we rotated people out at each event.  It brings a very human face to your institution, especially if you're bigger and not everyone is a public face.

If you plan on charging any admission to attend these events, skip the one day license and just outright buy a liquor license.  It'll work for other events outside of this one and it will save you cash in the long run.  However, if you don't charge admission (making this essentially a free after hours event), then you don't need a license.  Insurance and police presence may depend on your city/county laws, but we didn't need to worry about it where we were at.

If you don't charge admission, keep a tip jar at the bar and either dump what you get in the donation box or count it in as part of your program intake.  We'd make quite a few bucks with a tip jar and we kept the cash because we staffed it.  Additionally, if you keep your donation box at the front, people will chuck in a few bucks as a thanks for a free event.  Otherwise, you make cash of gift shop sales because when people drink, they spend dough like its going out of style.

What we did to keep major costs down was develop a relationship with a local liquor store chain in our area and our beer guy was able to provide us with free donations from his vendors.  They were able to dump extra stock and it encouraged people to go buy the brewery's product at the store.  Their main location was more like a mini Wegmans where it was food, wine, and a small cafe.  In addition to the free beer, we got the food at cost, which allowed us to save considerable amounts of cash.

This relationship saved us in the long run and they were fantastic to work with.  We themed each Happy Hour either to coincide with a current exhibit (i.e. food and beer from big baseball cities during a baseball exhibit) or a chosen theme (a teacher night featured adult versions of school lunch favorites).  This helps with marketing as well and can help boost attendance to certain exhibits that may not be as popular.

Target young professionals with these events - this is a highly undertapped market that will support places they love.  Be that place.  Why should all the bars get the cash when you can get these guys in for free (or a small fee for a reasonable AYCD session) and open yourselves up to new memberships, volunteers, and even future board members.  Use social media to help you - including using hashtags and finding ways to get people to chat about it on social media like selfies with a photo op or have them check in to be registered to win a nice price (a membership or something sweet).  Our saloon had these two Dorfman mannequins.  Bless them, they scared the hell out of me but people just loved them.  They'd go drag clothes out of our dress up box (which I sized for teens and kids, who did NOT dress up as much as the adults, oops) and would pose with our vaquero Charlie.  If we had been bigger on Instagram, we would have made a ton of free advertising having people to hashtag it.

That's the jist of it, hope it helps!

------------------------------
Rhiannon Cizon
Graduate Student
MALS - Heritage Management
Valparaiso University