Posted on Oct 31, 2022

On September 12th we celebrate our 1-year birthday. That’s a big deal. We are celebrating by hosting a joint event with Perkatory next door to us on 9/12. They are celebrating their 3-year birthday as well. This is going to be a big day please come celebrate with us!One More Dog Rescue will be joining us with info on dog adoptions and fosters (any excuse we have, to get pooches in Bergen House right!?) and then Ragnarok Rings is celebrating their birthday with a pop-up shop inside Bergen House too! Jon is a friend of mine and a fellow veteran if you are in the market for a ring come check him out. We will also have Heavenly Smoked slow cooked BBQ with us. No joke, Jeff is making the best BBQ I have ever had. We will also have raffles, and my girls are going to have a lemonade stand to earn college money.

We will be open on Thursdays moving forward. This is the first step in our growth strategy. Once we have a customer base on that day, we will be able to higher more bar tenders and open more days. In 2022 our appreciation nights will shift to Thursdays, and we have open mic nights on the fourth Thursday of each month starting September 23rd.

One thing we set out to do with the mug club was to raise money for a new AC unit. Unfortunately, costs doubled during the pandemic! We went through a milder Summer so we kind of got away with it. We directed the Beat the Heat – that’s what we called the mug club this year – capital into new patio furniture. This helps the atheistic of the building and makes for a much more comfortable outdoor space. I am going to try and solicit to have AC installed in January when they don’t have so much business. Hopefully we can have AC in the building next season.

Our next mug club will be focused around #INFB (it’s not fucking beer) the whole idea is that our mug club members are already brand ambassadors for us. I want to first, provide undeniable value to our mug club members. And second provide a platform for brand ambassadors to share our content both in person and on the web that will get people’s attention and highlight the fact that we are a beer alternative. More to come, we will launch sign-ups in May for a June first start-up.

I was talking to some of my regulars last week. It seems I have done a poor job explaining how tips work at Bergen House. Shame on me because this is a big part of what and who we are. Our vision statement is: "We exist to enrich our community. We happen to make great mead." The way we do tips is a big part of how we enrich our community.

We pay a living wage to all of our employees. All positions are not allowed to accept tips. Generous patrons who want to honor good service are encouraged to donate to a charity that is chosen by Bergen House staff. Bergen House donates an additional 1% of our gross sales regardless of net profit to the same charity that the staff chooses. We have done this since day 1. Most of the time we collect donations for two months before donating. I owe you two things right now: it should be known before you are cashing out that we donate tips; and the exact charity should be known. I will have a poster up before the end of the month that makes both of those facts plainly clear. This month we are donating to Love4Luke, a Glastonbury-based organization that helps ease the financial burden for families undergoing cancer treatments.

We look forward to seeing you next time you’re in! Please leave a 5 star review on Google, Yelp!, or Facebook to help us get the word out!

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