Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A beer festival every day of the year
Entrepreneur aims to provide the best combination of local brews and food
IT ALL started during a trip to Germany. On April 2, 2012, Randolf Jorberg, Beerhouse founder and head dreamer, was sitting with his thengirlfriend in a bar in Heidelberg, Germany, discussing the available beers and their stories and wondering why no similar places existed in Cape Town.
They realised that there might have been a gap in the South African market. That is when the idea of Beerhouse was conceived.
That night, upon returning to their hotel, Randolf reserved the domain name beerhouse. co.za, redirected it to a new Facebook page, invited his Cape Town friends and posted some beer-related content.
Even with no industry experience, Randolf knew a successful bar business starts with a good location and Long Street was the answer.
A few days after signing the lease for 223 Long Street they still had no real plan for how to open a bar, but were ready, able and willing to spread the word.
They printed blue Beerbar T-shirts and visited the Cape Town Festival of Beer, where they met all the brewers, who subsequently became Beerhouse partners, sharing in the Beerhouse vision: “Give our guests at Beerhouse a 365-daya-year beer festival experience and be the number one tast- ing-room destination for the local craft beer industry.”
“The rest, as they say, is history,” said Jorberg.
He explains that the Beerhouse “approach to running an organisation is to support the concept of continuous improvement”.
“It is an ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes, which require ‘ incremental’ improvement in order to increase efficiency and quality.
“We understand the importance of customer value. As such we have implemented pro- cesses that allow us to continuously increase customer value. Our ‘house’ is built on the pillars of continuous improvement, communication, work organisation, strategic objectives and respect for people.
“We use beer to connect people. We give beer enthusi- asts an all-year-round beer festival by providing a large and inclusive variety of beer and brew food, events, social activities in an atmosphere that simply cannot be duplicated anywhere else, high standard of service, beer culture and education.”
Jorberg said they planned to be South Africa’s go-to venue for beer choice – “which we believe we have already accomplished” – where people can get knowledge and experience at more than 20 Beerhouse outlets nationwide by 2020. “Beyond that we hope to grow into the Hard Rock Café of craft beer.”
In August Beerhouse pioneered the #BrewFood Revolution, launching its Brew Food menu nationwide.
“The # BrewFood Revolution is a new era of exploration that brings in a fusion of food and beer. We teamed up with Ultimate Braai Master winner Piet Marais and his team to create a food menu that combines the best of both worlds.
“The # BrewFood menu integrates smoking techniques from in- house custom- made natural hard wood smokers. The awesome flavours of smoked meat are punctuated by # BrewFood elements, including beer- fermented sriracha, beer cheese emulsions, brew pickles, beer-fermented batter, fermented cabbage slaw, beer brine and amasi ranch sauce.
“All these elements either use beer in the ingredients or use fermentation and pickling to create flavours that compliment smoked meats.”
Jorberg said the reason behind this was to get the best of the worlds of beer and food.
“Since day one we have been a 365-days-a-year beer festival for our beer lovers, but our food had no identity. Brew Food was the result of our desire to create a food identity for Beerhouse combining beer and food in a way never done before while at the same time celebrating our shared South African heritage.”