the lifesource is human nature.
what makes folks regulars of places? well, humans crave familiarity. it's true and it's something we all know. seems hardly to require an explanation. you see it in the way notre dame grads so often snortle as they turn their back and close the circle to your boring big ten face. the clique is safe. and familiar. and you see it in so many unhappy jacks and jills. who've become jerrys and judiths. sitting in their work chairs. staring at a screen. collecting all their calories right in their mid-sections. unhappy, but safe.
anyway, why do we crave such? what is it about familiarity that compels us so?
a few things, it seems. the first is that change is scary! new faces are frightening! will he like me? what kind conversationalist will he be? the kind who lets the conversation die down and then when you think it's over and you start to make let's-move-on hints he says with much volume and gusto "ANOTHER THING IS..." and you gotta follow along for another 2.5 minutes and it's not really a big deal because the new topic is interesting enough but you're just sick of feeling funny for trying and failing to end the conversation? ugh. i'd rather just tell another story to my friend from the dorms.
and new jobs! don't eve get me started. what if the guy they sit me next to is EXACTLY THE SAME kind of conversationalist i just mentioned above? the girl i sit next to now is annoying. with her fucking kudos bars she keeps in her desk drawer. and always unwraps when i'm on an important phone call. and i can't hear the dude on the other end of our shitty corporate phone system. but she's mostly fine. and, even worse, what if i leave and fail? then i'm poor *and* i feel dumb.
so yeah. change is an absolute nightmare.
but probably even more explicative is our generally tendency to avoid decision-making wherever we can. we're busy all the time. and making decisions is tiring. seriously. decision fatigue is a real thing.
and add to that the mere exposure effect, whereby one's preference for a thing tends to increase the more one interacts with that thing, and you have yourself an explanation of the "regular" phenomenon.
so really the story goes sorta like this:
starts off you just go to a place. maybe because it's been written about a lot in the chicago reader. maybe because your gal hated it and never wanted to go there and then you broke up. maybe because this girl who also went to vasser emailed you and wanted to meet up to "pick your brain" and you said you'd meet her and didn't care where and then she suggested this place and it's a little far and now you regret not setting the meeting place but you don't want to seem difficult so you just go anyway. and then you walk in. and it just feels right. like it was designed just for you. and everything is novel. and feels like it's from some much cooler time or place or dimension. (stevo.) and humans love novelty! discovery and the pursuit of novelty are necessary to survival. i promise. despite what i said up above. because humans contain multitudes.
and the novel experience, precisely because it was novel, sticks out in your head. and the next week when your step-dad wants to take you out to dinner 'cuz you were just fired from your juicing job, you think "ooooh. let's go back to [xxxx]!" there. that was an easy decisions.
and then you get there. and whoa! that's the same host who sat me last time and told me about the pandan brioche! and thats the cute bartender who asked me if i liked his new necklace! and there's that woman. that one. no the one over there. against the half-partition. talking to that tragically hip couple. i think she's the owner. ... and as all these faces become more and more familiar, i tend to like them and crave them even more. and, guess what? they like and crave my boring big ten face even more too! and treat me well. and so i come back again and again and again!
well. a very similar collection of behavioral phenomena makes people regular consumers of beers: novelty + decision making fatigue + the mere exposure effect. look: regulars are the people who keep restaurants alive. who pay the bills. the people who go back again and again and again. not the one timer, destination folks.
the same holds for beers. regulars make breweries thrive. now, we make beers that we like. always. but we also aim for every beer to be someone's regular beer. the beer they go back to again and again. the ultimate goal is to make a super outwardly simple but secretly complex "regular" beer. for us at least. we hope one of our beers plays that role for you. and if it doesn't, keep trying our stuff. we know you'll eventually find it. maybe it'll even be the BRAND NEW CZECH PILS WE'RE ABOUT TO RELEASE?!?! but you didn't hear that here.
oh! and even if it means you're just following your brain around. we hope you'll be a regular at the brewpub that we're about to announce. this ain't the announcement though. nope. not ready for that just yet. when we are, you'll see a nice big headline up top. and you'll have this weird feeling, like, "wait a minute. didn't i already know this? didn't they already announce it?" because we've dropped about twenty hints in the last thirty letters and we're pretty much straight up telling you right here. but nope. not until it makes it into a headline. you won't actually know it until that there moment. you bizarre and beautiful and big human.
×