Bring back happy hour after 10 pm. please!!!!

Dear Mr. Platt,

The other day you wrote me:
Hi Alicia,

I am trying to understand your comments about the Belgium beers that we serve at the Yard House.

Can you expand your explanation for me?

You are a very good writer by the way and enjoyed reading about your experiences. I have also been to Holland and agree with you 100% on the beer qualtiy and flavor. What we have here in the US is really the best we can get especially in the draft state.

Thanks,

Steele Platt
Founder & CEO
Yard House USA, LLC

steele@yardhouse.com

February 25, 2007 10:15 PM

Dear Mr. Platt,

Thank you so much for your kind comment on my writing. I thought nobody besides a few close friends even read my blogs if I am lucky so I am a little curious as to how you found my page unless you have some kind of a trigger that informs you when people are talking about your company. May I start by clarifying that I actually am a huge and loyal regular of Yard House and if you haven’t noticed, I tend to write with a huge amount of sarcasm. Erica my travel partner and I actually refused to have our going away party anywhere else besides the Irvine Spectrum Yard house because the food and martinis are seriously killer. You think I am possibly joking? Let me tell you my favorites, chicken or shrimp lettuce wraps in a crispy wonton, steak sandwich, barbeque chicken pizza, and lets see what else, recently discontinued items, Mojitos and Crystal Cosmo martinis. My friends and I seriously make it a priority when we go on little vacations like to Palm Springs to have a night at Yard house because the food quality and service is always consistently good. Now with that being said, yes the beer just isn’t the same quality as Europe. I have been told the biggest problem is that America pasteurizes the imported beer and by bringing the beer to a boil, it kills the rich flavor. If that is indeed the truth, I think this is your number one problem. In order to keep the true flavor after all the work that was put into making the beer with the right amount of wheat, fruit additions, aging etc. the beer should not be boiled because it will completely dilute it. Now my gibberish of being a beer scientist is just hocus pocus make believe garble but I don’t think it even takes a beer scientist to recognize if the beer has to be regulated this way, there are going to be major flaws in its authenticity consistency and flavor. On the other hand, I believe Yard house only serves beer in Kegs so as far as heat being infiltrated through cheap glass which would have a negative effect on the freshness of the beer shouldn’t be a problem. However, since Yard house has 150 beers on tap, I am assuming it must be difficult to keep them fresh unless they are going through all 150 kegs rather quickly, which would be difficult to do since I am sure some beers are in much higher demand than others. Nevertheless, I think if Yard house could go to it’s sources of where they purchase the beer and find out the difference of how its manufactured and transported over to local Belgium breweries vs. American Yard houses and force the manufacturer not to make alterations, than maybe this alone would solve the problem. Then again I don’t know what kind of FDA regulations Yard house must go through once bringing the beer into the US. At the same time at a domestic brewery known as New Belgium Brewery that I went to in Colorado in which makes Fat Tire, I was surprised of how delicious it was when served directly in the brewery but when it finally made it out to California years later it tasted one hundred percent more bitter. In addition, although quality is of the essence in my own individual opinion, would Americans really appreciate Yard house bending over backwards to improve the quality of the beer resulting in higher profitability for the company? I mean I know I would like it but I also am aware of supply and demand and that a business is a business, meaning its main motivation is how to increase the greens and not waste funds on non profitable projects. If its sole purpose was to only make the customers happy Yard house would still host happy hours after 10 pm. with half off appetizers like it used to for many years. Hint hint. In other words, going the extra mile to improve the flavor could backfire if the American consumers don’t appreciate the change resulting in much higher costs for the company. That being said, I do think Americans are becoming more and more savvy about food and alcohol like the Europeans and maybe it is only a matter of time that they will demand that the quality of the beer be the same as in Europe. If that becomes the case, maybe you can market advertisements on the dinner tables or window banners that state the difference on how you guys import and regulate your beers and don’t allow it to be pasteurized vs. other U.S. breweries or restaurants that don’t care. I wish you the best of luck and on a side note maybe you can have a trade off in which you teach the Europeans how to make proper martinis since yours are the best at that and they teach you guys how to keep the Europeans beer flavor true.
Warm Regards,
Alicia