Starting on May 1, 10,000 Shore Craft Beer brewery guides will stock display racks all over Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.
Thanks to support from the Tri-County Council for the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland (TCC) and a Rural Business Development Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Shore Craft Beer has been able to partner with Manheim, PA-based company Getaways on Display, a distributor of travel brochures throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.
Shore Craft Beer brewery guides, which were totally redesigned and reprinted in January 2019, provide information about every craft brewery on the Eastern Shore of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The 32-page brochure features descriptions of local breweries in addition to their addresses and their draft/growler/dining/tour options, plus information about local beer festivals, all the different styles of craft beer and featured craft beer destinations on the Eastern Shore.
Featured destinations in the guide include Ocean City and Berlin, Snow Hill and Pocomoke, Salisbury, Worcester County, Wicomico County and downtown Cambridge and Dorchester County. The last three pages of the brochure open up to a map of all the breweries on the Eastern Shore, from Brick Works Brewing and Eats in Smyrna, DE, all the way down to Cape Charles Brewing Co. in Cape Charles, VA.
By featuring these Shore destinations, along with their World Class Beer and World Class Beauty, the 2019 Shore Craft Beer brewery guide promotes tourism to the Eastern Shore and encourages visitors to stop at every craft brewery along the coast. Now that 10,000 brewery guides will soon be on rack displays through Pennsylvania and the northern regions of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, the effort to spotlight the Shore and its breweries reaches further than ever before.
“Craft beer and breweries are obviously important, and they’re becoming more and more important as we have a much wider demographic drinking craft beer,” said Director of Worcester County Tourism Lisa Challenger. “Millennials specifically are traveling for craft beer.”
The numbers don’t lie: In a Travelocity survey of 1,003 people, more than three-quarters said they would like to go on a trip where they visited craft breweries and sampled the region’s local beer. Additionally, when the Brewers Association commissioned a Nielsen Omnibus panel in June 2016 and asked, “How many, if any, craft breweries have you visited at their site in the past 12 months while traveling?”, the average answer they received was 2.1.
TCC, whose mission in part is to foster regional economic development on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, has partnered with Shore Craft Beer, USDA and various county and municipal tourism offices to help make the Shore a Top 10 Craft Beer Destination.
TCC Executive Director Gregory Padgham said that TCC looks forward to seeing continued growth in the local craft beer industry as more and more visitors discover what the Eastern Shore has to offer.
“Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland have great craft beer, interesting culture and a diverse natural beauty that perfectly complement one another,” Padgham said. “Craft beer-focused travel stimulates tourism in general while at the same time further diversifying the attractions that constitute the tourism base in a region.”
The Shore Craft Beer brewery guide can be picked up in breweries, tourism offices and other locations all over the Eastern Shore. As of May 1, you can find it throughout the rest of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, and in Pennsylvania. You can also find it online here. Contact Ann McGinnis Hillyer at amh@maryland.com if you would like a box of brewery guides in your business.
