Consuming local: product, place, and experience in visitor reviews of urban Texas craft breweries

ABSTRACT

As the craft beer industry has experienced significant growth around the world and particularly in the U.S., research into various aspects of the topic has grown as well. Significant attention has been given to the relationship between craft beer and neolocalism, resulting in three key themes: neolocalism as a driver of demand for the craft beer product, the use of place-based themes by craft brewers to engender neolocalism, and neolocalism as a driver of demand for the craft brewery experience. This paper seeks to examine the extent to which brewery visitors are consuming the local through the themes of product, place, and experience as discussed in the literature. It uses directed content analysis to examine online visitor reviews posted on TripAdvisor and RateBeer for microbreweries in the five largest urban areas in the U.S. state of Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth). Findings show that both the craft beer product and craft brewery experience are significant to brewery visitors. In particular, the opportunity for meaningful social interaction in the brewery experience offers a means of fulfiling neolocal desires for establishing local connections.

KEYWORDS:

• Craft beer
• microbreweries
• visitor reviews
• TripAdvisor
• RateBeer
• Texas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Reviewer, brewery, and beer names have been omitted. Excerpts include breweries coded with the first letter of the city and a number and the year of the review. Excerpts are from TripAdvisor unless denoted with RB.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Velvet Nelson

Dr. Velvet Nelson is a Professor in the Department of Environmental  and Geosciences at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, USA. She is a human geographer with a specialisation in the geography of tourism.