HT Talks Tech: Lori Bolin, President of BrewLogix
For Lori Bolin, you could say it runs in the family.
Her grandmother and father were both entrepreneurs. A passion for beverages runs in her family too. Her grandfather was a Hamms beer rep, and grandmother was a soda shop entrepreneur.
“At the age of 14, I had 12 piano students, and I had a house cleaning business at the same time,” she explains. “…By the time I graduated from Indiana University, the idea of business ownership and supporting people in business ownership was already deeply rooted in who I was and still am today.”
Bolin is a self-described “lifelong entrepreneur.” In recent years, Bolin has established her own ties to the beverage industry. She is co-owner of Crossroads Kombucha, a craft kombucha brewery. Bolin earned her status as a Certified Beer Server from the Cicerone Certification Program.
“It is such a wonderful category to be in,” she says about the craft brewing industry. “You get the chance to create something special then move it out into a community of people. They give you immediate feedback as to how it is working for them and what they would like you to do differently.”
What Is BrewLogix
BrewLogix provides four unified digital platforms aimed at driving on-premise profitability for creators and sellers of craft beverages.
The company’s technology platforms operate as an interconnected ecosystem and include:
· MarketMyBrewery: a craft brewery marketing portal.
· BreweryDB : a consumer app that helps craft adventurers find their favorite brewery experiences.
· PerformancePlatform: a draft inventory management system that helps increase on-premise profitability.
· BrewMenu : a cloud-based menu building platform that helps automate and customize on-premise menus.
“Our focus is always customer-centric, developing our technology to provide more efficiencies and insights to positively impact the profitability of local bars, restaurants and taprooms,” said Bolin.
It is evident that Bolin, in addition to a passion for craft beverages, has empathy and understanding of the owner/operator mindset and the challenges small-to-middle market business owners face. And the opportunities. “A small- to middle-market business (SMB) that’s independently owned can adapt quickly based on market feedback,” she stresses.
Through her private consulting firm, Bolin shares her business acumen with small-to-mid-market businesses, helping them create competitive advantages through strategic innovation. Shortly before the pandemic, a company that had been developing proof-of-concept technology for draft programs found itself in need of rescue. An Indianapolis-based entrepreneur and good friend of Bolin’s purchased the assets of the struggling company and sought out her experience to help re-envision a modern and scalable approach to draft program management. Initially, Bolin’s role was focused on strategic research and product development. But quickly, as Bolin began interacting directly with the entrepreneurs and owners in hospitality and craft brewing, she was passionately hooked on bringing profitable advantages to the people in the trenches taking risks to bring gathering places and craft experiences to their communities. Soon thereafter, Bolin became BrewLogix’s founding President & Chief Strategy Officer.
Insight Instead of Instinct
“Data-driven decisions” may be common in large enterprise organizations, but for bar managers at an independently owned restaurant or bar, decisions are usually made on instinct, she explains. “The whole idea of making database-driven decisions sounds good,” she says. “Everybody wants to do it, but how accessible is that (data) to someone who manages a tap room, who has a draft beer program in a full-service restaurant? How do they get access to that meaningful data that can help them make decisions on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis versus waiting for a prepared report that's reflective and historical.”
BrewLogix’s Performance Platform, launched in 2023, uses proprietary IoT sensors to monitor kegged inventory in real-time.
This technology predicts when kegs will kick, calculates real-time keg inventory values, tracks keg freshness, helps operators access their actionable data to design draft programs for maximum throughput, and has an easy-to-use database of product knowledge for front-line staff training, and more.
“For these operators their draft program is a profit center,” Bolin explains. “In today's environment, you've got crushed margins in so many places.” For operators, it distills down to optimizing kegged beers, wines, etc. to be as profitable as possible.
It’s a big promise -- but one with measurable results.
According to the company, users:
Reduce time taking draft beer inventory 99% with +99% accuracy
Cut draft waste by up to 20%
Increase ticket sales by up to 15%
BrewLogix was named to Fast Company’s The World's Most Innovative Companies of 2024, alongside OpenAI, Microsoft, Taco Bell, Chipotle, Taylor Swift Enterprises, to name a few.
How it Works
It all starts with BrewLogix’s database of brewer-based product knowledge that lets bars and restaurants quickly and accurately receive inventory. Integrated location, product, cost and depleting data automatically travels with each keg throughout its life cycle and illuminates inventory statuses at all times, thanks to the patented sensor.
This helps bar managers with real-time management and tracking of kegged inventory.
Armed with real-time insights, the Performance Platform helps with on-deck keg planning and workflow automation, on-tap product performance metrics.
For example, “If you're going into a weekend and you have five kegs on tap which are low demand, but they're at 90% filled, you might have five taps that are going to sit unproductive over the weekend.
“Now (with the Performance Platform data) you can make a choice. Am I consciously making the choice that that's OK with me or do I want to make a different choice with those taps and create more productivity?
Here’s another scenario: On a Saturday afternoon at 3 pm, is it operationally and profitably better for me to switch those kegs if there’s 4% and $5.25 of cost left in it? That's the level of decision making that we now bring to the local operator.”
Wait, There’s More
For brewers, the BrewLogix ecosystem also includes MarketMyBrewery, and for consumers there’s the BreweryDB, a mobile app with brewer-provided information about their tap rooms and craft beers. (That database is also leveraged by the Performance Platform.) More than 9,500 craft breweries with more than 132,5000 craft beer products are listed on the Performance Platform and the BreweryDB.
Striving for Continuous Improvement
The craft brewery industry continues to evolve with new products (Hello, Hop Water and Non-Alcoholic Beers!) At the same time, Bolin works closely with all departments to continuously improve a frictionless customer journey while advancing BrewLogix products.
“The opportunity to add technology into small- to middle-market businesses, especially independently owned, is really exciting to me,” she explains. “When your concept can work effectively in those small- to middle-market, independently run businesses, that is where real commerce happens.
“I love seeing the software solutions that we're deploying have a direct business impact on someone who probably took out a second mortgage to help fund that business. That's why I get up every day, to make sure that they're the ones who are benefiting. If we can add value and a competitive advantage to their business, they have a longer runway; they have greater profitability because of what we're doing. That's a really good day for me.”