Firestone Walker Brewing drives club engagement and cuts operational costs in half with Awtomic

Firestone Walker Brewing Company has been an iconic Brewery and Merchandise brand on the Central Coast of California for almost 30 years, but it wasn’t until the global pandemic hit that they started exploring direct-to-consumer sales online for their beer products. It’s not surprising given how many hurdles and regulations there are around selling and shipping beer that honing their ecommerce strategy was a journey.

Today they have an incredibly engaged beer club that enables members to get beer and merchandise shipped to them directly in addition to access to special brews and onsite events. As fans of a legacy brand that played a big part in the early days of craft beer, Firestone members appreciate the brand’s persistent pursuit of the perfect beer and are enthusiastic and engaged in their club. Amazingly, over 60% of their club members have been customers of Firestone Walker for over 10 years. Most of their members attended their big beer festival this year in June.  

With Awtomic they’ve been able to strike a great balance between operational efficiency and personal club benefits that make their club scalable but still reflective of the uniqueness of their beer and culture.

“We're not just there to sell large volumes of beer to the everyday consumer. We're really focusing on what we're doing - doing it right and continuously trying to improve upon that. I think that's really the key thing both in our beer and our culture both internally and externally - our customers are a part of that.” - Micaela Yeo

From Recharge to a custom build with no luck 

When Firestone Walker launched the beer club online in February 2021, the team had recently decided to make the club a more curated selection and add in member exclusive products - like a special glassware that paired with those beers specifically. They used Recharge initially and felt like it didn’t meet their customization needs and ended up having a lot of issues with the automated charging itself with orders coming through with incorrect charges. It resulted in having to manually check and correct every order that was placed. “It always felt like it was a square peg going into a round hole,” Micaela remembers. 

From there, the team decided their needs were so unique that they created a custom app so they could design everything from the ground up based on their requirements. That turned out to cause even more headaches as they learned over time how things needed to be different and many years of patching and adjusting made the system so fragile it required a lot of manual work as well. “It kind of just got to the point where it kept tripping over itself and it was causing more problems than it was solving. It was sucking up an insane amount of time of manual work to keep things going,” Micaela says. 

Automating and Optimizing with Awtomic

The Firestone team was initially surprised to find that Awtomic supported all the needs they previously thought required a custom build, but enjoyed even more benefits after joining the platform, including a huge reduction in operation costs, time savings and great support and partnership. 

A Round Peg for a Round Hole

Knowing they had complicated needs, it initially seemed too good to be true that an app could support them all out of the box. “The fact that Awtomic has everything in the platform to answer our personalized needs and complicated program was a revelation for me.” Micaela remarks. In addition to the complexities of managing the club and automatic billing, Awtomic integrates with all of the functionality Firestone already had in place to impose volume limits and other important requirements seamlessly. 

Reducing Operational Costs

Along with moving their club over, the Firestone team also launched build-a-boxes both for members with exclusive beers, and non members for one-time purchases. Where they previously had to support multiple box sizes and packing requirements for any number of beers, they were able to greatly simplify their processes and packing materials because of the build-a-boxes. It’s a very significant reduction in costs and labor - just the other day, our leadership team was talking about how positive this transformation has been.” Micaela noted. 

Loyalty engagement with Moments

After years of giving special gifts with each club shipment, the Firestone team tried Awtomic’s new feature that allows you to give subscribers the option between multiple gift choices as a reward with the Moments feature. Micaela set up a moment that lets each member pick between a trucker hat and a bucket hat. Within a few hours, more than 70% of the members had jumped in and chosen their gifts. “Adding in that layer of customization for the customer is such a huge win and it’s amazing to do it without complicating operations,” Micaela says. “You don't find that balance very often - usually you’re sacrificing one or the other.” 

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Stellar Support

The support and partnership from the Awtomic team is something that Micaela called out multiple times as a night and day difference in her experience. “The customer service that we get from you guys is unmatched,” she says. “I ask about something that feels like a crazy idea, thinking you would just laugh me off but you guys have had answers for everything. Even just the small day-to-day stuff - the fact that you guys are so responsive. It is an absolute game changer. It is amazing.” 

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Conclusion

Firestone has done an incredible job of cultivating a meaningful relationship with its members and building community around their products. We’re thrilled that their beer club has found a technology solution in Awtomic that not only fits the bill but can help it scale and continue to delight members for years to come.  

“Seeing the community that has come out of our Beer Club is absolutely astounding to me. it's one of those things that almost gets me teary-eyed. There are relationships between these people that have been formed throughout the last couple of years and formed new friendships. I have members who literally travel together now. At the end of the day, that's really what beer has always been about - bringing people together through experiences and bonding with others. I think that speaks more to who the customer is. The fact that they're doing this with us - that journey together - which I think is one of my favorite parts.” - Micaela Yeo

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