Building an Unforgettable Bar Brand: Smart Strategies for Hospitality Owners

Want your bar to be the go-to spot in town? The secret isn’t just great drinks—it’s creating a brand people remember and want to return to.

In a competitive market, the most successful bars don’t just serve alcohol—they create experiences. From unique menu items to strong community connections, how do you craft a brand that keeps customers loyal?

Tune in today to:

• Discover the signature elements that make a bar unforgettable.
• Learn why emotional connections and storytelling are crucial for brand loyalty.
• Find out how social proof, feedback systems, and loyalty programs can drive repeat business.

Tune in now to uncover the strategies behind building a thriving bar brand that stands the test of time!

Learn More:
Email Chris
Schedule a Strategy Session
Bar Business Nation Facebook Group
The Bar Business Podcast Website
Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'

Thank you to our show sponsors, SpotOn and Starfish. SpotOn's modern, cloud-based POS system allows bars to increase team productivity and provides the reporting you need to make smart financial decisions. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software using AI to help you make data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.
**We are a SpotOn affiliate and earn commissions from the link above.

A podcast for bar, pub, tavern, nightclub, and restaurant owners, managers, and hospitality professionals, covering essential topics like bar inventory, marketing strategies, restaurant financials, and hospitality profits to help increase b...

Transcript

Chris Schneider (00:01.656)
Today, master the art of brand storytelling that keeps guests coming back, learn how to create memorable experiences that set your bar apart, and discover how to align your team with your brand vision for consistent delivery.

Chris Schneider (00:16.706)
So for today's episode of the bar business podcast, we are exploring how to build a stronger, more memorable brand that resonates with your target market. One of the things I see a lot of bar owners struggle with is brand identity. And a lot of that comes from the fact that when I say brand, what most of you on the other side of the speaker, I was going to say radio, but I'm not actually on a radio, am I? What you guys are listening to on the other side of the speaker, whether that's your phone or a smart speaker, however you're listening.

When I say brand, most of you hear logo. You hear aesthetics. You hear design. And let's be honest, a brand packet, when you talk about a brand packet for a business, that's what that is. It's colors and logos and designs and all of that good stuff. But really, when we think about brand in the bar business, we need to think a lot more expansively than just logos and aesthetics.

Chris Schneider (01:15.18)
And beyond that, not only do we have to create this brand that is the way that the bar speaks, the way that it acts in every way, we have to do that consistently across all touch points. Now, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've definitely heard me talk about a cohesive concept. If you listen to the episode where we had Dave Nitzelin from Dave and Dave Hospitality that wrote Hospitality DNA,

They talk about inception archetype. And at the end of the day, the Daves and I were talking about the same thing. And that is the idea that every touch point is part of your customer experience.

And the Daves actually took it a step further. They said, you know, they were talking with, I want to say it was Dave Kaplan at Death & Co. I want to say that's who it was. I might be wrong on this, but I think they were talking with Dave Kaplan. one of the things Dave told them that stuck with them that became their inception archetype in part for their book was that a guest experience doesn't start when a guest walks into your door. A guest experience starts

when the guest thinks they might go to your bar in a few days. If it's Monday and your guests are thinking about where they're going out on Friday, their guest experience started on Monday, not Friday when they walked in the door, Monday.

And so when you have a good brand, when you have a cohesive concept, when you're showing that everything that you do is structured, that everything that you do is coming with the same voice, the same energy, the same colors, the same fonts, it makes that for a cohesive experience. It makes that guest not confused.

Chris Schneider (03:06.54)
Because what I see way too often is people have a Facebook page that has nothing to do with their TikTok, that has nothing to do with their Instagram, that is completely unlike what they post on Twitter. And none of that matches in voice or style to the website or the menu or anything else. And when different touch points have different experiences, when it's not a cohesive concept altogether, you get confused guests. You confuse your own messaging and you miss opportunities to build customer loyalty.

So what we're going to talk about today is how do you get those core elements right to build a brand which is authentic and can create a memorable experience that attracts and retains not just any customer, but the right customer for you.

So the first thing I wanna talk about is defining your brand foundation.

And if we're going to talk about building a brand, have to start with what is the foundation of our building?

Now for brand, there's some things that you would probably assume are there and some things that you don't.

Chris Schneider (04:19.436)
Now the main thing that's going to define your brand foundation is what is your USP? What is your unique selling point? Why are you different than the bar half a mile down the road?

Now if we get in the neighborhood bar market, the main differentiator could be, well, I'm a half mile down the road. That is a plausible answer, but it's not a very good one.

And so if you're going to set yourself apart, if you're going to pull business from your competitors, you have to be different. So you must understand what is my unique selling proposition? Where in this market can I differentiate myself? Because unless you have that, you're not really building a brand. You're just copying other people's brands and it gets messy.

Now the second part of defining your brand foundation.

And this is one that most people don't include, but if you've listened to podcast, you know I always do. You need a clear mission and vision statement that guides decisions.

Chris Schneider (05:24.216)
And the third point, I'll go ahead and give it to you, is core values, right? So we need a mission vision and core values.

Now obviously those need to resonate with the staff, those need to resonate with you as an owner, that needs to resonate with your team and your guests. But the bigger thing here is when you put in place a mission, a vision and core values, you have established the framework by which everything that happens in your establishment is judged. If I have a value of hospitality and people are rude to each other, I say, well, that violates this value.

If I have a value of responsibility and you show up late to work, I'm going go, you know, it's not very responsible to show up late to work. You're not living by our core values. We have a problem here.

Chris Schneider (06:09.006)
And the reason why these are so important to your brand is because values are what someone is. Now think about that for a second. Not in the context of a bar. But you can judge a person based on their values. Right? Most things in the world would say, don't judge people based on X, Y, and Z. Okay, don't. Most of that's not more than skin deep how we judge people.

But you can judge people on a deep level based on their values. And if you think about people you like and respect, those are probably the people that exemplify great values.

Their brand is their values. Your bar's brand needs to be your bar's values. And if you don't define those values and that mission and that vision, you're going to have a lot of trouble getting everybody on the same page on your team, but also in actually achieving anything long term, because you won't have a single unified basis for understanding what the brand is and what it should do.

Chris Schneider (07:17.56)
Now the fourth thing to consider while we're laying this foundation is who's your target audience? What do they need?

And I know people that have bars in college towns, right? Well, what's your target audience? Well, people that go to college. All right, great. Well, the ones that are, you know, at least here in the United States, can't drink until you're 21. So most of the undergrads, the 18 to 21 crowd, or 18 to 20 crowd, they ain't drinking. So that's not a target market. And then you say, well, I'll get the seniors and the older juniors. That's my target market. Okay, great.

But that's not everybody that goes to college. That's not the professors. That's not the grad students. That's not the PhD candidates.

Chris Schneider (08:04.214)
And quite frankly, in that same college town, let's say there was a med school there. You could make a bar specifically designed to appeal to just the med school students or just law school students. You can define that target audience way down. Now, in most cases, a bar made for medical students, unless you're right next to a major university medical campus, ain't going to work very well, right? There's not a lot of profit in that, per se.

But the thing is, and if you really think about this, if you had enough people, it would work. And so never stop yourself when you're defining your target audience and you're thinking about their needs and preferences. Don't stop yourself at some base level. what's my target audience? Well, it's a neighborhood bar. So generally people that go to neighborhood bars live within two and a half miles, so it's everybody within two and a half miles. Bullshit. Because I promise you, some of those people don't frickin' drink. And if they don't drink, they're not a potential customer yours. Period. End of story.

if you're a bar, right? If you're restaurant, you say a lot of food and some booze. Okay, maybe. But the closer you get to strictly bar, the less somebody that doesn't drink is coming in the door.

So you need to understand your audience, their needs and preferences, but you need to understand it specifically. Now obviously the amount of data you have, the data you can get is going to greatly dictate what that looks like. But the more specific you can be on your audience, the better. Don't tell me it's men between 25 and 50. Tell me it's men between 25 and 50.

that are in a long-term relationship or married earning over $75,000 a year whose kids are involved in after school activities. Now, why would that be a demographic for a bar? I don't know, but it could be. And that's how closely you can define things, especially when you get into the good data that's out there nowadays. You can get very, very detailed on who your audience is and what it takes to meet their needs. Now the final piece of Brown Foundation, and this is

Chris Schneider (10:14.68)
This is the part of brand foundation that everyone thinks about, right? That logo, those aesthetics, your brand package. And so, like I said earlier, brand package is essentially just a thing that designers make that shows, here are the colors, here's some logos, here's some alternate logos, here's the fonts you can use, here's your header font, here's your body font, they do the whole thing. Do you need a brand package like that for most bars?

No. If you work for a Fortune 500 company, do they have a brand package like that that's only a lot more detailed than what I just said? Absolutely. So you don't need to go all the way, but you probably want to get kind of close. You probably want to use consistent colors in what you do. You probably want to use consistent fonts in what you do. You probably want to use consistent aesthetics in everything you do to maintain that cohesive concept. And that's true, again, from the website, through your social media.

to side-edit and stuff inside to your menus. Everything should fit in that brand package. So even though the brand package is just one of five pieces for your brand foundation, and it's the only piece that people normally think about, it is important and you do need to make sure you have that brand package ready to go with everything you need in order to properly implement a brand or in order to update your brand.

Chris Schneider (11:44.482)
Now the second thing I want to talk about when it comes to branding overall and how to make an unforgettable brand is creating consistent brand experiences. So think about this. We are not in the business of selling menus. No one comes to your bar and gets the menu and takes it home. Well, they might steal it. like. People are definitely stealing your menus, but most people are not taking your menu home.

That's not the product they came in for. They came in for food. They came in for drinks.

And so your experience is not a website, right? If I'm just an online retailer, let's say, and I'm selling, don't know, tchotchkes online.

The only interaction my customers have with me is that website. Their experience, their brand experience is that website. The design and the brand are integral to that experience.

But that's not the case in our industry. In our industry, we have touch points with guests in person, all sorts of different touch points through one experience. And we need to make sure that entire experience fits the brand. That the experience, not just what they see, not just what they read, not just what they hear coming in over the speakers, what they experience needs to be cohesively within that brand.

Chris Schneider (13:14.808)
So how do you do this? Well, one thing you can do and something I like to do, define your steps of service, right? Define your touch points that happen when someone comes in the door, right? Someone comes in the door.

Are they waiting to be seated or are they seating themselves? If so, is there a sign? If there's not a sign, how do they know? Who tells them to sit down? When are they greeted? Do they get to get 20 steps in the door before you greet them? should they be greeted within three steps in the door? When they sit down at a table, should it take five minutes to get them a water or two minutes to get them a water and greet them? I don't know. Obviously for every bar, this is a little bit different.

But the bottom line is you need to understand how to create a consistent brand experience and you need to train your team to deliver that consistent brand experience. Otherwise, you'll have different experiences based upon who's working and how a guest feels and all this other crap. And there's no way to leverage that long term into actually building a brand.

Chris Schneider (14:21.838)
So the second part about creating a consistent brand experience, so we got our touch points, you have to design those touch points and you have to understand them and them out well and train them well. And that's the second point, is train staff to embody your brand personality in guest interactions. So in the first step, in the foundation, we talked about mission and vision and values. Your staff needs to know your mission and vision and values. Your team should all be able to recite mission, vision, values.

Chris Schneider (14:52.366)
And they should be embodying, particularly the values, in every guest interaction they have. Like I said, this is why the values and the mission and vision are such foundational brand pieces. Because this is how you train your staff. This is how you teach your staff what's expected of them. And that is the scorecard they're up against.

Now, the third thing you want to do to create a consistent brand experience.

Chris Schneider (15:28.094)
is to develop signature elements that make your bar memorable. There needs to be something your brand does that other people don't. It can be a low cost food special one night a week during the week. It could be, you know, what do they call those? The big beers they pour in like the three foot tall, the yard glasses? Yards. That's what I'm looking for. Yards. It could be yard size glasses, which for those of you that are not in the United States, it's a glass that's a meter tall.

You could do those. You could do a special type of food. You could say you sell barbecue. Maybe that's your stick. That's your signature element is your barbecue. Maybe you have a whole bunch of tap lines. Your signature element is your tap lines. Maybe you just have a cool, eclectic spot that's in the middle of somewhere crazy and off the beaten path. That could be your signature elements. But you need something that's a signature element.

And nowadays, that's always been true. But today I would take that one step further and say you also need shit that's Instagramable.

You can post pictures of your food all day long on the internet. No one really gives a shit. But a guest posting pictures of your food and talking about how much they like it is worth a lot to you as a business. Now, they're not going to take those pictures and post things unless what you're serving them is Instagrammable. Your cocktails need to be Instagrammable. Your food needs to be Instagrammable. So yes, develop signature elements that make your bar memorable, but also develop food

and drink items that are Instagramable.

Chris Schneider (17:11.566)
Now the fourth thing about creating consistent brand experiences I want to talk about is aligning menu offerings with brand positioning. And this is something that a lot of people fuck up on. And I couldn't tell you why, because it's always kind of confused me. But you see it all the time if you watch like Bar Rescue or Kitchen Nightmares, right? Gordon Ramsay goes into the fish and chip shop and asks why they sell Chinese food. Right? Why does the Italian place sell burritos?

Chris Schneider (17:42.05)
Now obviously that's a very bad example, or I guess a great example of doing it terribly, of menu offerings not matching brand positioning.

But in general, if you are a barbecue bar, you should only sell barbecue and barbecue related food. If you are a Mexican themed bar, you should sell Mexican food. Probably shouldn't sell pasta at a Mexican themed bar. It just is not going to work in people's heads. So always make sure your menu offerings and what you're actually selling aligns with what you're telling everybody.

Cause short of being some, you know, Greek diner in New York or Chicago.

You can't have a menu that has 70 things on it from all over the world and call it OK. A, your costs will be way out of whack, but B, no one's going to know what the hell you are. Of course, unless you're a Greek diner. Fifth thing for creating consistent brand experiences, implement quality standards that protect brand reputation. So all of this sounds great, right? Train your staff to design these touch points. Figure out exactly what that guest experience should be.

Create signature elements, cool cocktails, things that are Instagrammable. Make sure everything you sell is aligned.

Chris Schneider (19:08.25)
None of that matters. None of that matters. Not even in the least little bit. Unless you implement quality standards that protect brand reputation. You have to have quality standards throughout everything always. And when things don't meet quality, you need to address it. And quite frankly, I hate it, but a lot of times on food, that means you just throw the plate in the trash and have them remake it. It sucks. It's terrible.

Chris Schneider (19:36.408)
But you have to have quality standards that are maintained across every item, every day, that provide a consistent experience. Otherwise, your guests will not become regulars.

Now let's talk about the third part of building a...

unforgettable bar brand. And that's building brand loyalty. So we started out, we laid the foundation. Then we created a consistent brand experience that keeps these folks coming back in and make sure that everyone's on the same page about what should be going on. Now we need to build the loyalty.

Chris Schneider (20:17.366)
And loyalty comes in a lot of different ways, and it's not just a loyalty program. That is number five on the list. We will get there. But too often people hear loyalty, they think loyalty program, and they move on.

And it's not just that simple. So the first thing I want you to think about with building brand loyalty is emotional connection.

You need an actual, real, personal, emotional connection with your guests. Your bartenders and servers should have that with every one of their regulars. You as the owner should have it with your top.

three, four, 500 people.

Chris Schneider (21:02.104)
There is an old saying that if you have 500 regulars, you're good to go. You're not going to lose money. And if you actually have 500 regulars, you should know every one of them. Now, you can survive on a lot less than 500 regulars. This is actually true. I have done it in multiple parts. But if you are not getting to know your regulars, establishing emotional connections with them, and building that loyalty, not just between them and the brand,

or them and your team, but between you as the owner and your best customers, you're not going to survive long in the bar business. The bar business is cutthroat. The bar business is one where people value connection. Restaurants people just want to go eat. Bars, especially when we talk neighborhood bars, especially when we talk small town bars. It is about connection more than anything.

And so if you cannot create an emotional connection, you're kind of shit out a lot. Now, how do you create that emotional connection? Well, A, generally give a shit about your guys, care about them, ask them real questions about their life. But B, learn how to tell a good story. Stories create connection among humans. It's one of the oldest things we do as a species, right? Sit around a fire and tell a story about a hunt.

Obviously that's not what we're doing today, but stories build connection.

And if you want to build connections with your guests, you have to tell them engaging stories. And that story is about potentially your personal life. If you want to go there, I normally didn't, but you can. But also stories about the products you have and the suppliers you use and where things in the bar come from. Stories that give them not just a connection with you personally, but a connection with the space, a connection with the gestalt of what's going on in that space.

Chris Schneider (23:04.034)
Now once you have that connection, I want you to leverage that connection to build community around your brand. I love to talk about community. And the reason why I love to talk about community is, in my mind, a bar is the quintessential gathering place in almost every town in the world. There's a bar where people hang out and most of the business in that town happens at that bar.

not always true, but I've never known a bar that didn't have business deals and politician back rooming and all of that going on and at some point.

Chris Schneider (23:42.574)
So when you develop a community around your brand, you now have regulars that are engaged, because you've told them stories, that know each other. And they all come in and talk to each other. They do business together. They hang out together. They go to each other's houses for parties.

Bars are still, I mean, even with the internet, even with the terrible dating swiping crap that we do nowadays, bars are still the way people meet each other and make friends as adults.

Yes, people do it through social organizations and clubs and all that as well. But bars are a key functioning spot of human interaction all over the world. So not only build the connection with the individual guest, but build the guest together as a community. Introduce them. Give them ways to do business together. Give them ways to amplify what they're doing for personal political gain or financial gain.

Give them spaces to have meetings in. But develop a community around your brand. Now, the third thing to build brand loyalty is to use social proof to strengthen brand credibility. One of the amazing things about the Internet today is that the world, there's no gatekeepers here, right? You post something on YouTube, everybody in the world gets to vote on YouTube about whether or not they liked it. Now, there are some games with can they find it?

Did I get my SEO right? All of that's true.

Chris Schneider (25:25.502)
If people.

Chris Schneider (25:29.966)
can't find your brand online. You don't seem credible. And who seems most credible in today's world? The people that have the most crap about them on the internet.

Now we all know some people pay for it. There are games all over the place here. But social proof, other people posting about you, other people leaving your reviews, is the key to brand credibility today. It's getting other folks to say things about your brand. So make sure that you're not only engaged on social media for your bar itself, that you're not only

working to constantly build a strong brand that's consistent across social media, but that you're collecting that social proof. You're interacting in comments. Something that gets said way too much because it's freaking cheesy. Social media is social. If you're not social, you're not playing the game right.

Again, cheesy, annoying. I hate it when people say that shit to me, but also true.

Chris Schneider (26:38.968)
Now here's the fourth thing that we need to do to build brand loyalty. We need to implement feedback systems to maintain brand standards.

Now that sounds like some fancy shit that I would have written in a book. Implement feedback systems to maintain brand standards. But essentially what I'm saying there is you need to ask people what the heck they thought about their experience and if it was bad you need to fix it and if it was good you need to figure out what they really liked and double down on

Chris Schneider (27:07.722)
Implementing feedback systems to maintain brand standards just means collect data, analyze data, use data to make good choices. And when it comes to collecting guest data, guest feedback, the thing that I will always point to is an MPS score, Net Promoter Score.

And the question, you can look up the math on it. There's complex ways to do the math. There's simple ways to do the math. But the one question that you have to ask, or two questions that you have to ask on a survey to have a scientifically relatable survey.

Chris Schneider (27:42.146)
Based on your experience today, how likely are you to recommend whatever bar to your friends and family? And then the follow up question that is why? So give me a 1 to 10. Write a couple words why I'm good. I got all the data I need.

But unless you have a feedback system in place, unless you're gathering that data, you have no clue what your guests actually think. And when you use something scientific like an MPS score and that whole structure, you end up with scores that are meaningful, that actually generate good data that you can use to improve your business, strengthen your brand, and maintain those brand standards. And our final point for building brand loyalty, do loyalty programs.

Chances are, if you've got Spot On, TOS, any of those POS systems, they have built-in loyalty programs. Some of them, have to have a gift card loyalty card. Some of them, they're just going to run off credit cards. They're available to you. You're probably already paying for one and not using it because it's included in your POS. So start freaking using it because you want ways to encourage those folks to come in again and again. The other thing that brand loyalty programs give you

is mailing lists, contacts, a direct mail list for your emails, a targeted list to shoot things to people.

So make sure not only that you have a brand loyalty program, but that you're doing more than just giving people points and giving them shit for free. You have to use it for ongoing marketing efforts. You have to use that as a captive list to market your bar to if you want to be successful.

Chris Schneider (29:32.716)
So overall today, we've talked about what it takes to build a strong brand. And that is way more than just a logo or decor. It's the complete experience you deliver to your guests from the time they log into your website thinking they might come to your bar later in the week to the time they leave your parking lot and go home.

If you focus on the foundational elements, add in consistent delivery, and then build brand loyalty through emotional connections and community, you can build a brand that stands out in the market and creates lasting loyalty among your guests.