Fullsteam

As many of you know, “86″ is code for “out of” in the restaurant world, communicated from the back of the house (the line) to the front (servers). As in “86 Osso Bucco! Push the hell out of the grouper!”

There are a lot of things out there that we should 86, even if they’re not running low. 86 frosted pint glasses! 86 “domestic and imported!” 86 the customer is always right (oooh, that ought to be fun to address)!

The “86″ category is an occassional rant on the way things are…and how they shouldn’t be. And maybe how we can, collectively, change the status quo. 

The content below is now a page on Fullsteam. Since many of you access Fullsteam via RSS and Facebook, I wanted to be sure you saw it. Comments welcome on this post, the page itself, on Facebook, or as a personal email to me or 32. I thought our decision against a tagline would make for a good first entry in the 86 series.

86 this stupid cold rain!

Our Tagline

We don’t have one. We don’t plan to have one. And hopefully we won’t ever need one.

Corporate beer is all about condensing sales value into less than three words — many of them pure nonsense, focused-grouped to the point of complete and utter blandness. I don’t know if I’m “allowed” to quote other breweries, but for now…think of the millions Bud spends on the current tagline “Drinkability.” Can you imagine the hours of training Bud’s sales guys have to sit through, as some mid-level marketer with an approved corporate notebook walks through the board-approved Drinkability talking points? And for what? A dull tagline that fails to resonate with Bud’s core (and stagnant) audience. Talk about sucking the energy out of something that’s fun (beer, that is).

Slogans are everywhere, and they’re generally lame. We’re a nation of Trying-Too-Hard.

Realistically, Fullsteam can’t condense steampunk-influenced-Southern-agricultural-experimental-brewery-that-also-serves-handmade-savory-pies into a few jazzy words. It just doesn’t work.

So instead, let’s have a conversation. A narrative that takes place on this blog…in 140 or less characters on Twitter…through Facebook…and (most importantly), in face-to-face conversations with you, our future customer, champion, and/or critic.

Many of you don’t have time for this conversation, especially on esoteric topics like an “analog craft for a digital age,” or “Neinheitsgebot” or what music we should play in the tavern. That’s okay. No worries. We’re not asking everyone to join in the conversation. The beauty of the web, mobile, and on-demand technologies is that you can choose when to listen…and when to shut off the correspondence.

For those of you participating in the Fullsteam conversation — whether on a regular basis or just once in a while — thank you for shaping the story. I’d like to think the narrative is off to a fascinating start, in this, the first few pages of our first chapter.

(insert snappy closing phrase here),

Sean Lilly Wilson
11-27-2008

p.s. don’t believe me about slogans? Name a dozen current taglines in under a minute. There’s a ton of them out there…hardly any of them memorable.