How Online Sales Helped Cabarrus Brewing Company

Ever since COVID-19 entered the picture, small business owners in the food and beverage industries have been forced to reimagine the way they can bring community-based experiences to consumers while embracing technology. 

One of those ways is with Arryved Online.

A large majority of breweries in the U.S. are small businesses that focus on providing a great experience and product for local customers in their taprooms. As the onset of the pandemic rattled customer confidence and closed the doors on indoor dining experiences, many breweries—that had never sold their beer online—were forced to open online storefronts that allowed for contactless payment and delivery for consumers. 

Cabarrus Brewing Sells Out New Release in 18 Minutes Using Arryved Online

“The only retail growth we saw during the pandemic in 2020 was with our can releases and retail sales,” says Corey Sloop, chief financial officer at Cabarrus Brewing Company. “In March 2020, our point-of-service provider Arryved launched the ability for us to open an online store, and we thought, ‘Why not give our specialty beers a pre-order release online and see how it goes?”

Cabarrus Brewing’s first product on the online store sold out in two days, where previous specialty releases were on the shelf for anywhere between two weeks and a month.

“Our second release took 2 hours to sell out, and our latest (and largest specialty release ever) sold out within 18 minutes,” says Sloop. 

The online store, which made it possible for beer lovers to order early and prevented lines from forming during the day of the release, was a success for Cabarrus and for its fans. Cabarrus’ online store is now a staple sales channel for all their specialty and newly released items. 

Cabarrus Brewing Company showcasing their online store success on Instagram. 

A Growing Trend  

Cabarrus’ POS provider, Arryved, is the leading platform serving the craft beverage industry. When the pandemic hit and affected breweries nationwide, the POS provider quickly worked to launch Arryved Online, an ecommerce solution that allows craft beverage and experience-based venues to create custom branded online stores and sell their products online.

Since March 2020, as much as 40% of monthly revenue generated through Arryved has been attributed to online orders and to-go or curbside pickup sales, marking a huge change year-over-year, as pre-orders from manufacturing taprooms were negligible prior to COVID. Arryved’s data, pulled from more than 800 craft breweries nationwide, shows that its consumer app downloads have doubled month-over-month in 2020 and that more than 100,000 unique customers have paid for their craft beverages using the app on their phones. 

“The revenue we projected to do in a month, we did in the first two days of lockdown,” says Sloop.

“During our 2020 lockdown, we utilized the Arryved store and app was our only way of providing revenue. Arryved made it possible for us to sell just about as much product as we possibly could during this time and make it safe for both our staff and our customers.” 

Arryved continues to evolve its solutions to reflect the needs of the craft beverage and experience-based industries. The new Arryved Online solution is available now and features elevated design elements, improved stability, and the ability to support high-traffic orders. 

Arryved’s point-of-service solution focuses on mobility, simplifying solutions for customer-focused services like splitting and merging checks, customizable digital menus, seamless management of network outages, loyalty programs, a consumer facing touch-free payment app, QR code menus, ordering, and payment, and best-in-class data insights—all of which, together, create the best guest experience possible.

If you’re looking for a POS partner to help you grow your business, reach out!