Founded in 2015, Foam Brewers is an eclectic group of industry professionals with a shared appreciation for brewing, science, art, music, and culture dedicated to creating craft beer in Burlington, Vermont.
Tools Used:
Webflow
Shopify
Google Analytics
Services Rendered:
Website Design
Website Development
Full Stack Development
CMS Architecture Design
API Integrations
Interaction Design
E-Commerce
Client Categories:
Food & Beverage
Create a lane for a new craft brewery in an ultra competitive market.
Formed by a collective of beer industry professionals, the team behind Foam Brewers knew that branding is everything in the hyper competitive craft beer industry. As such, finding a creative team to handle their branding, merchandising, and web design needs was not just a priority, but could literally mean the difference between success and failure. With these things in mind, Foam came to us asking if we could handle the task of taking their brand from a name, to a full visual identity, complete with all of their in person and online needs.
Use strong branding and web design to instantly convey a unique, high end image to customers.
Look, we're not going to sit here and lie to you. When a brand new, unestablished business comes to you asking you to create a brand and web presence that'll help establish their presence in a competitive market, it's a little scary. Creating a brand that resonates with not just the team behind it, but also their customer base, is always a challenge, let alone in a market that's ultra competitive and quality branding is often a direct factor in the volume of sales. That said, once we accepted the challenge, we went about it the same way we always do.
A strong visual identity is the basis for a strong brand, so we started there.
To kick this project off the right way, and to ensure cohesion throughout our efforts, we started by focusing on establishing a strong brand. Taking some initial concepts that were presented to us by Foam, we went through a rapid ideation phase consisting of numerous sketches before ultimately settling on a unique script style word mark for the brand, as well as an icon that borrows the word mark's capital “F” to create the illusion of beer within a tulip glass. Utilizing this unique icon, we took it a step further by using the shape of the tulip glass to create unique die cut labels for the brewery’s cans, immediately giving them an eye-catching edge on grocery store shelves.
Branding: ✅. Next up, an easy to use, feature packed website.
With strong branding established, our next step was to build an online home for the new brewery. Rather than create a simplistic site that provided only the essential information, we knew from the start that we wanted to take advantage of Webflow’s CMS to create a number of features that would enable the team at Foam to easily update content. As a brewery that's keen on experimentation, we knew that Foam would need a way to consistently add new beers to their catalog. With that in mind, we utilized the CMS to create a system that enables the team to create a new page for each new beer by uploading key information and images into a preset template. Then, by simply flipping a switch, Foam can also indicate whether or not a specific beer is currently available, as well as which locations have it in stock. Utilizing this system, updating and maintaining their beer catalog and availability is incredibly easy
CMS Menus, Event Calendars, Blogs, and More
While we think the beer catalog is pretty damn cool, it's not the only use we found for Webflow's CMS with this project. In fact, the Foam site is one of our more involved builds. In addition to the beer catalog, we also leveraged Webflow's CMS to create collections for an Event Calendar, Beer Release Schedule, Menu, and Blog. All of these features are extremely easy for the team at Foam to use and enable them to have a powerful website with an extremely simple interface for keeping it up to date.
To help maintain a record of previous and current beer offerings, we created a CMS collection for each beer that Foam releases. Using this collection, Foam is able to provide information about each beer, including key information such as type, ABV, cost, image, and more. Most powerfully, the CMS structure also enables the team at Foam to tag each beer based on its current availability by location, enabling an easy way to inform potential customers about where each beer is available. This tagging system allows the Releases page to be dynamically driven, ensuring timely relevance.
Using Webflow’s CMS cross referencing capabilities, we created a second CMS collection for upcoming can releases. Using this collection, the team at Foam can share upcoming release information, dynamically tagging and including relevant cans.
Perhaps the coolest feature we developed for Foam using Webflow’s CMS are their digital menus. With each item on the menu being generated by an associated CMS item, Foam is able to easily add, remove, or create new menu items. While this is convenient online, the real power of this system shows up in person as QR codes at each table direct customers to an online version of the menu, while those ordering at the bar see their options displayed on screens showing menus driven by the website. In other words, with one flip of the switch, Foam can change menu displays in multiple locations.
In addition to a release calendar, Foam also required an events calendar to share information relevant to all upcoming events. Built off Webflow’s CMS, the Events feature provides a quick and easy way for the team at Foam to keep their customers informed about which live acts and other activities are coming up next.
These days, content is everything, so adding a blog to the Foam site was a no brainer. Here, the team at Foam can quickly and easily write new content sharing a variety of stories with their audience, from updates at the bar to behind the scenes looks into their latest creations.
Integrating Shopify for Smooth Inventory Management
Now, Webflow does have an E-commerce system built into it, and it's pretty good. That said, there are times when making use of Shopify's powerful platform makes more sense. In this case, Foam wanted to use Shopify for multiple reasons, chief amongst which is it's centralized inventory management which helps avoid overselling. As such, we integrated the Webflow site with a Shopify cart, creating a seamless experience that utilizes the strengths of both the Webflow and Shopify backends.
Due to their mixed E-commerce/Brick and Mortar sales channels, Foam required a powerful sales tool to accommodate both in person and online sales. While Webflow offers strong E-commerce capabilities, the reality is that Shopify is still the leader when it comes to managing inventory for multiple sales locations. As such, we worked with Foam to create a seamless shopping experience that allows them to host all of their inventory and transactions on Shopify, while integrating the shopping cart on their Webflow site to create a more unified experience.
Ongoing Artist Collaboration + Merchandising
Finally, the cherry on top of this project is the ongoing merchandising effort as we work with Foam and their artists to create packaging for their beers, as well as merchandise for their physical and online stores. This final step of involvement ensures that the brand's aesthetic stays consistent from logo to website to product.
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While we can’t take credit for their delicious, high quality beers, we like to think that our involvement with Foam’s branding, merchandising, and website are at least a part of the reason why their brewery has become one of the most popular in Vermont, and has been successful enough that they’ve been able to create a sister restaurant next door (Deep City), while reactivating one of the most sought after buildings in downtown Burlington.
"The Team at Stage helped us identify our needs and efficiently built a responsive site to meet them.
Our new site saves countless hours of website management, allows any member of our team to make edits (regardless of experience), and provides more features for our customers than ever before!”
- Jon Farmer, Creative Director of Foam Brewers
