Irie Jungle and Free the Whales at Tripping Animals, Brownie Bash at Pontoon Brewing, Munchie Madness at Branch and Blade, and Above the Clouds at Bhramari Brewing Co. These are just a few of the big-time, exclusive craft beer festivals that Kris Marino has had a hand in executing at Brewed Events.
Dedicated to bringing the best in curated craft beer events across the country, Brewed Events has worked with some of the nation’s top craft breweries, as you can see just from the short list above. Prior to 2021, Kris and the Brewed Events team used the ubiquitous ticketing platform Eventbrite to handle all of its ticket sales and check-ins. But after an extremely successful test run with Oznr’s new ticketing system for the Free the Whales festival back in late June 2021, Marino says he’ll be sticking with Oznr for the foreseeable future.
We sat down with Kris to chat about running some of the top craft beer events in the country, the importance of operating a fast check-in line, and how Oznr has helped Brewed Events run silky-smooth festivals in 2021.
Grace Weitz: How did you first hear about Oznr’s ticketing platform?
Kris Marino: Oznr has signed up a bunch of Florida breweries. Since I’m in Miami, I first found out about Oznr because 3 Sons Brewing and Tripping Animals Brewing started using them. I also work for Sunshine State Distribution and we distribute Tripping Animals, so I’m pretty on top of what they’re doing. When I saw Tripping Animals doing bottle releases on Oznr, I downloaded the app and purchased the bottles.
After watching Tripping Animals do their event Irie Jungle with the Oznr ticketing platform and seeing how easy it was for them as far as managing and check-ins, I was intrigued.
GW: What intrigued you about Oznr?
KM: In the past I’ve always used Eventbrite for my events. I do several beer events a year. One thing that has been cool about Eventbrite is that you used to get payments weekly through their system, meaning by the time the event starts, if it’s sold out, you already have all the money for the event. Getting those weekly wires from them helped you throw the event, so you’re not coming out of pocket for everything.
When COVID hit, Eventbrite stopped doing that. For good reason because events were getting postponed. Instead, they put all the money into escrow and waited five business days until after the event was over to pay out. For smaller events, that works, but when you’re doing a festival that costs around $60,000 dollars, you need some cash flow to throw that event without coming out of your credit cards or cash out of pocket.
I was trying to figure out a solution: What could I do that would put money in the bank weekly from sales and what would be easy to use?
I noticed Tripping Animals using Oznr [for their Irie Jungle event]. Plus, Oznr came down for the festival, so I met Jon [Childress] at the beach on Friday to talk about the product. I test drove it the following week.
GW: What were your initial thoughts?
KM: I liked what I saw for the most part. When I first met Jon, I had some concerns, especially since Eventbrite has all these things on the backend such as built-in email marketing and event-specific things. Since Oznr was originally built just for bottle sales and not events, I had some doubts, but Jon and I talked and he figured out how to do those things I worried about and helped me through everything. Just the first week alone I felt pretty good about using the product, especially after seeing Tripping Animals have success with it. The app actually works really well for events.
GW: How has the Oznr ticketing platform helped your events?
KM: The sign-up for Free the Whales went really well. We went on sale on a Friday at noon, and I want to say by Monday morning we had made $31,000 to $32,000 in sales over the weekend. We were practically halfway sold out using the platform. Granted the event was in its fifth year, so there was a lot of hype behind it. Additionally, the event is very loved in Florida. We get a lot of support for it, and since it was hosted at Tripping Animals this year, that was a double whammy.
[Regardless], that was definitely my most successful opening weekend of the event. On Eventbrite the year before, we did about $12,000 to $15,000 in sales during the grand opening weekend. We expected growth with the event growth, so I don’t want to put that all on Oznr, but what did happen went through seamlessly.
And from there it just got easier as we went along.
GW: What else about the Oznr app worked well for you?
KM: On the day of the event, Jon was there with his team and coached people we had working the door on how to use the software and what to expect. My team was ready the day of to check in everybody. And that went absolutely flawlessly, about as good as you can get a festival check-in to be.
My whole theory with festivals is you work the line, don’t let it work you. We started checking people in 10 to 20 minutes before the festival started.
I always tell people it’s really important to make sure people walk into your festival with a good attitude and good experience, because if someone walks into your event and had to wait 20 minutes sitting in the sun and went through a rigamarole just to get in, you’ve already lost. At that point you have to go out of your way to cheer them up and get them into a good place. It's like getting into a fight on the way to a restaurant with your girlfriend. You know the dinner isn’t going to be great, and for the rest of the night there’s nothing you can do to make it better even if the meal is awesome. That’s just how it goes. The minute you defeat yourself in your own mind it's over.
Smooth check-in lines are always really, really important, and with Oznr [at Free the Whales] it went flawlessly.
GW: Why was the check-in process so flawless with Oznr?
KM: It’s so simple with the Oznr app. When someone buys an item there is a window [of] pick-up. Let's say they buy an item and the window of pick-up is Friday from noon to 5:00 (you can set that to open whenever you want). You have the [Oznr] app, purchase a ticket, and Friday [you] can go to claim it. A half an hour before the window opens, your app opens up and the item is there waiting to be claimed. So literally when you walk in [to the event], you just show this button that says claim item, and all the people checking you in have to do is hit the button.
If someone doesn’t have the [Oznr] app, the admin person checking them in can look up the person and find them. But if everybody has their phone out and the [Oznr] app open [and] ready to go, it's absolutely flawless.
Overall, it just speeds up everything. With Eventbrite, let’s say you have 400 people checking in. Even if everyone has their tickets ready or app open and the scanners out, you’re still looking at a 15 to 20 minute check-in to get everyone in, even if it’s going smoothly. With the Oznr app, you’re talking about under two minutes to get everyone in. It's just crazy.
I’m stoked! I'll be using Oznr for all my events moving forward. Next year I’ll probably have between eight to ten events attached to my name one way or another, and if I have control over it, Oznr will be my platform….It will be great to have the dedication and support Jon has shown to help build this brand and product and take it to more festivals.
GW: Nice! For what other events are you planning to use Oznr?
KM: In the next couple months, I’m doing, in order: Munchie Madness 2021 at Branch and Blade Brewing Co. in Keene, NH, on August 28th. They weren’t on the platform before, but they are now. Sales so far have gone really well for a first-year festival. The lineup is insane, so it will be a lot of fun.
After that, Above the Clouds hosted by Bhramari Brewing Co. at Franny’s Farm in Asheville, NC, on September 18th. It’s actually a hemp farm about 10 minutes outside of Asheville. The lady owns it, runs the farm, and does all her own CBD products. It’s an incredible space for an event. We’re doing the event there and brewers are camping out in the space for the weekend. We have eight cabins on the property we rented out, so we’re doing this whole glamping thing for them. It's going to be like Bonnaroo with a lot more beer. I’m stoked about that.
Both Bhramari and Branch and Blade were not on [the] platform at all before, so this is like their christening. I imagine we’re going to start seeing bottle and can releases [from] both in the future.
Right after Above the Clouds is Brownie Bash at Pontoon Brewing on September 24th. Pontoon was one of the first adopters of Oznr. They were the second or third account on the platform, so they’ve been a believer since day one. Sales have been going great for that as well. Nappy Roots is actually playing at the event. There is an after party everyone [who] has a ticket can go to and Nappy Roots is doing a full show for us, which will be insane.
Basically, that'll be the four events [including Free the Whales] I’ve done personally under the Oznr app.
It’s been really great so far. Jon is really available and has done whatever we’ve asked of him. It’s just been great. I would definitely recommend anybody who [isn’t] already on the platform. I don’t see why you would bring in another platform to handle your tickets. If not on Oznr, get it;, if already selling bottles through Oznr, might as well be doing tickets through them too because the platform is great and check-in is really carefree, which is usually [a] bottle neck you have at events.
GW: Anything else about using the Oznr app for events that you enjoyed?
KM: What’s great about Oznr is that they use Stripe as their processing partner, and that's a great processing company. I had zero chargebacks or fraud issues with this event. We processed close to $60,000 worth of charges and we had zero issues with any of them.
Another thing that’s really cool about Oznr is when you’re on the backend of the app, there is a heat map for your sales. You get to see very clearly where your sales are coming from across the country. [For example, with Free the Whales], there was huge concentration [of ticket sales] from New York. We had this South Carolina and North Carolina red spot that was really big that I didn’t expect. And we didn't have a lot of action on the West Coast. It’s cool to visualize that information and not have to go through 500 orders to try to figure out where everyone is coming from. It’s also broken down by types, so you can look at a heat map for VIP vs. GA tickets.
The subscription part is cool because once people subscribe, you can send push notifications out to your subscribers to let them know things going on. When new items are added, they get dinged on their phone as well. For Free the Whales, once the event got going we ended up doing glassware and shirts. We thought we might as well throw the merch on the app as well and pre-sell it as opposed to someone hawking them at the festival. People who bought tickets were alerted to the fact that new inventory was available. The app helped us do a little bit of easy upselling.
