Name: Brewery Critique and Evaluation

Potential Sponsor’s Name, Organization, and Contact Information

Name: Christina N. Outlay, Ph.D., Colorcoded, Maydm

Title: Associate Professor of Information Technology (IT)

Organization: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Contact Information

Office Phone - (262) 472-7034

Email - outlayc@uww.edu

Office Location - Hyland Hall 3408

Team Roles

• Product Owner: Colin Ropiak
• Development Team: Taylor Goeben, Conner Hackett, Garett Kuchenbecker, Jarrid Wagner
• ScrumMaster: Henry Lopez

Established Need

Businesses everywhere, especially restaurants and breweries have seen a decline in customers since the start of COVID-19. An increase in commerce to breweries local to Whitewater is the goal of this project. Not only would local businesses benefit from these reviews, but it will also serve UWW students by giving them quality places to experience while they get their degrees.

Justification

Local breweries' main mission is to show that there is more to breweries than just craft beer. We will show that there is much more to it than just a place to get a drink. They have a variety of categories that make it an overall experience. By focusing on these locations and specialties, we can help these local businesses increase traffic and income. Below we have a graph of how many of our classmates have heard about some of the breweries we plan on going to. The breweries in the city of Whitewater have the most exposure, but the few outside of the city have significantly less exposure.

Possible Approaches

• An approach that stood out to us was how bar specials are not fully taken advantage of by Whitewater students. To solve this they created a  single website that posted all the specials offered by local bars. Additionally they made a student forum, so students are able to collaborate to choose the best bar to go to that night.

• Our final product may resemble something like the one just mentioned. We may create a website of our findings and allow students to contribute their experiences at some of the  local breweries in hopes to raise awareness for the local businesses. WIX, Google Sites, etc.
• Potentially a news article for the school newspaper, with ways to contact us and let us know if the people who read the story might now be interested in experiencing one of the local breweries.
• Can use data visualization tools like MS Excel, MS Access, PowerBI, and Pictograph.

Solution Measurement

One way that we could measure the completion of this project would be through speaking to the students of UWW. Ask if before our project they were aware of all of the local breweries that had been reviewed and if they would be interested in trying some of them out in the future. Additionally, we can attempt to contact the breweries after the project has been completed and see whether or not their foot traffic has increased, or if people have referenced our project for the reason they decided to try it. We can also measure the traffic that the website or final product receives to get quantitative data on how much exposure our project has provided.

• In addition to that, embedded google forms on the presentation website and references to a tinyurl google form might be an excellent way to encourage responses by keeping things straight forward for the end user.

Determination of Solution Implementation - We will review and visit the following breweries:

• Second Salem
• 841 Brewhouse
• Duesterbeck’s Brewing Company
• Gray Brewing Company in Janesville
• East Troy Brewery
• The Hive Taproom in East Troy

At each of these breweries we plan to talk to at least one employee. Preferably a manager or a long term full-time employee.

Our reviews will be based off the following Criteria:

• Atmosphere of the Brewery
• Quality of the food
• Quality of the service staff
• Quality of the homemade craft beer (21+ only)

Project Constraints

Project-Team Constraints:

• Website hosting as we want this to be accessible by future students and oftentimes website hosting has a limited timeframe.  
• A geographical constraint would be reviewing every brewery within the city of Whitewater.  
• Cost is going to be a constraint that has to be considered as the project will have costs related to the purchasing of meals and beverages.
•  Finding a time where team members are all available or mostly available to gather to complete project tasks.

Course Constraints:

• As for a timeline the project is due to be completed by May 2.

Organizational Constraints:

• Limited connections with UWW departments such as social media and the school newspaper.

Required Team Skills

Liabilities:

• If our final project involves a website we must consider who on our team may need to do some background learning on general html/website knowledge. A remedy for this may involve working on a practice website one week on any particular topic in order to force ourselves to get familiar with website design.
•  Another skill we may need to work on is knowing how to effectively evaluate and critique the local breweries that would be visited throughout this project. This could be improved on by setting aside time and/or resources to learn from other critiquing services how they go about doing it. Research and team discussions will help with this liability.
• We all will have to brush up on our public speaking skills as we will be regularly speaking to staff and likely management. We need to be confident doing so. Those who need to especially work on this can work with the team to prepare notes and other tools so that they feel prepared to speak with employees and strangers alike.
• We need to get in contact with people that have news/social media exposure so that we can help to increase how much impact his project has.

Assets:

• A marketing background would also be important as the goal of this evaluation project is to generate exposure for the local breweries in an effective manner. Many of us have already taken the introductory marketing course required for business majors, so we will have a notable background when considering marketing practices.
• Adequate and timely communication (electronic included) will also be required but this should also be one of our assets as our team shares effective communication skills.
• We have multiple people within our group that have access to transportation that we might require when evaluating
• Many of us have tech experience albeit in different avenues. Some of us have coding experience and others have experience with written communication.
• Many team members have solid experience with different types of craft beer. So when evaluating some of the main products within the local breweries we have a solid pool of experience to pull from.
• Ability to share ideas with team members with confidence. As evident through the immediate contributions given through discord shortly after the team’s founding.