Listing Guidelines & Things to Know

DrinkBay.Beer (DBB) is a curated listing service provided by the Bay Area Brewers Guild (BABG) with the intent of promoting its member breweries, their products, and the many activities they offer or participate in throughout the year, in order to assist craft beer fans and the curious in discovering these activities and exploring the Bay Area's vibrant craft beer scenes. Alongside year-round listings, from time to time, DBB may offer promotions and co-marketing initiatives around themes, special occasions, even celebrations of individual beer scenes across the Bay, like these:

2022 Brewer Weekends - Save the Dates
March 18-20 - North Bay
April 22-24 - Coast
June 10-12 - East Bay
Aug.12-14 - Silicon Valley
Oct. 14-16 - San Francisco

DBB strives to provide useful, easy-to-consume information and quality content. Product releases and pairings, festivals and celebrations, entertainment and live performances, education and well being, and activities that directly benefit and improve local communities, such as cause and community fundraisers, are examples of activities held by Bay Area breweries, bars, restaurants, retailers and others throughout the year that may qualify. While the BABG reserves the right to reject any Listing for any reason at any time, these guidelines set forth requirements and recommendations that underpin eligibility or ineligibility for inclusion in DBB.

that help craft beer fans and the curious discover such activities. As a listing service, and unless noted otherwise, DBB does not directly produce or control the activities listed here. It's only function is t disseminating

In compliance with Dept. of ABC laws, listings must be purchased by retail.

What you need to know to submit a listing, and have your product, activity and/or venue promoted by, and as part of, DrinkBay.Beer.

WHY LIST?

  • Engage craft beer enthusiasts and reach new customers.
  • Your products and participation in the craft community means you benefit by 'being part of the family' -- DBB is the place to discover all things craft beer in the Bay Area.
  • Get access to social features and co-promotional opportunities unavailable anywhere else. Let people favorite your business and add your events to personal, sharable itineraries.
  • Your participation both supports and helps spotlight local businesses and buying local at a time when communities need such help the most.

REQUIREMENTS

  • A DBB Listing must have BABG member breweries and/or their products as the primary focus. Click here to see the current list of acceptable Bay Area-based breweries.
  • Listings should include something special and/or exceptional, favoring QUALITY over quantity, and ideally involve fun events or offerings that inspire, surprise and excite consumers.
  • Listings centered on discounts or giveaways that are not compliant with ABC laws, promote binge drinking or that are too basic to qualify as an actual activity/happening will NOT get approved. (NO happy hours, beer pong, $1 off at certain times, etc.)
  • Tap Takeover- or Style Showcase-type events must offer special, new or rare releases as part of the craft beer selection.
  • A submitted Event Listing that is actually an "all day" activity or promotion may be reclassified as a Promotion Listing and displayed in an "Any Time Activity" section.
  • Listings must be submitted in standard sentence formatting. Listings submitted using ALL CAPS, only lower case, or odd or unusual formatting will not be approved.
  • No one likes reading spammy listings. Keep yours straight forward and the copy clean, meaning NO repeated or excessive exclamation points or highlighting with ALL CAPS, or odd punctuation. Listings will be edited to remove spammy qualities and may be rejected if considered to be over the top.
  • Titles should not repeat the venue/participant name unless use of the venue/participant name is pertinent to the title (so, please, no "XXXX EVENT at VENUE" in the title, or similar -- in general, the listing is already showcasing the host, main participant and location information.
  • All listings are edited to maintain a consistent copy style and readability across the site. Once a listing is approved, the only allowable edits are material changes, such as a link, date, time or place. Note: Certain fields, including the listing title, are locked down once published and can only be changed by contacting us directly with a request; when doing so, make sure to include the title, location and day of the event you want changed.
  • Hosts may resubmit a rejected listing for approval if the issue with the listing has been rectified.
  • ABC REQUIREMENTS: The CA Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) dictates that alcoholic beverage manufacturers (breweries), importers, suppliers, wholesalers or distributors cannot submit or pay for listings being held at, or sold by, a retail license holder. Only a retail alcohol license holder or a third-party nonprofit with a special event permit can submit and pay for listings it is hosting.
  • Lastly, DBB is a curated list. We reserve the right to reject or remove submissions at our discretion, including but not limited to postings that don't meet these guidelines, contain language or images that may be deemed offensive, discriminatory, inappropriate or violate laws, or that use an image, name or mark without proper authorization.

LISTING TYPES & FEES

There are three listing types - Activities (think events), offerings (think products for shipping or take out) and promotions (think multi-day special):

EVENTS -- gatherings around a specific activity or happening at a specific place and time

OFFERINGS -- product bundles, tasting boxes, take-home meals, gifts and similar packages, available for pickup, local delivery or shipped.

GET STARTED

The first time you purchase a Listing, a host account will be created for you. After your account is created and your Listing approved, a Profile for your business will be created and attached to your account, which you can then modify.

SF BEER WEEK HOSTS: If you participated in SF Beer Week, you may use the same email address to register and have your Profile brought into DBB -- go to Sign Up and use Forgot Password, entering that same address, and an activation email will be sent to you, then purchase Listings as you need them.

  1. Go here to create an account and purchase a listing.
  2. Add basic account information and select Purchase Listing.
  3. Once payment is submitted, you can access your account dashboard.
  4. Click on the Open Listing, select the Listing type, fill in activity information, then Submit for approval.
  5. Upon submitted, a Listing is "pending" until review and approval. ** Listings are typically reviewed within 48 hours, however, this process can take up to five business days. Please submit with maximum lead time. **
  6. Once your listing is approved, it will be posted.
  7. A Profile will be generated and attached to your account, which you can then submit change for approval.

If you wish to list for an additional venue under the same business name, you will need to purchase a Listing for that location, then indicate the different address in the Note field. You will only need to do this once; after that, an additional location Profile will be added and available for you to select for future Listings. If you own different businesses and would like these businesses under one account, please contact us before signing up.

If you are doing a complex marketing roll-out that involves two or more Listing types, you may purchase additional Listings to support each component (eg. a box offering being sold in advance in connection with an upcoming event). NOTE: Listings that cram too many promotional items, dates, times, links, etc. will be rejected.

LISTING TIPS

  • BE SPECIFIC. List participating breweries and the special beers you’ll be serving (HUGE impact on engagement!). Specify the culinary theme or menu items. Provide the brewer’s name if he or she will be present (only if 100% confirmed, please). These details will draw people to your event and increases sharing among fans and promotion by influencers.
  • Don’t forget to add a logo to your Profile and photos to your listings. Do not submit a "billboard" or ad graphic that simply repeats a listing's details; data-heavy graphics will be rejected (every Listing will already be showcasing host, venue, date & time). Instead, submit a compelling PHOTO -- people engage with photos much more frequently, especially those showing content people in your environment, or artistic shots of your venue or the product being offered (take care, though; you'll want to avoid products in a photo that are identifiable but will be unavailable or misaligned with the activity).
  • 16:9 landscape images work best, where the focal point is central for DBB's mobile responsive webapp interface. Images have movement and will scale to look great on any device regardless of screen dimensions. Keep the main content of your images centered and use compositions that are more eye candy than ads (no billboards!).
  • You may update or edit most Listing fields after approval. Just sign back, open the Listing, and resubmit. NOTE: Once approved, please limit changes to only _essential and material_ information. All listings are edited for consistent copy and presentation across the site, and these style edits must be maintained. Listing changes go through the same review-and-approve process, and reversing edits made by our staff once a Listing is published will result in it being taken down WITHOUT a refund. If an event gets canceled, and you need a Listing taken down quickly, resubmit the Listing with details in the Curator Note field _and_ contact us through the site's Contact form.

PROMOTE & ENGAGE

DBB and DBB Listings are actively promoted on social, to media, to subscriber lists, in materials distributed at tasting rooms and host venues and more. The site itself supports extensive cross linking between businesses via Profile & Relation tagging (thereby extending reach and exposure across the platform); is filterable by region, venue, listing type, listing attributes and more; and supports user accounts and features designed to increase engagement and usefulness (favoriting, following, personal & publishable itineraries, extensive social sharing, etc.).

DBB offers exceptional opportunities to promote all kinds of kindred and craft-centric businesses, events and activities. Such opportunities -- which may encompass the DBB site, social outreach, newsletters, DTC channels, product collaborations, event & content marketing, taproom activations, contests, and, a speciality, occasion- and theme-based co-marketing campaigns, not to mention access to the Guild's robust network of breweries, community contacts and trade partners -- may be readily available in pre-packaged forms for interested parties, or tailored to accommodate custom needs. If you'd like to learn more, contact us.