From Brisket to Brats: How Meat Raffles Became a Brewery Taproom Draw

Most Tuesday mornings, Utepils Brewing president Daniel Justesen runs a rather carnivorous errand at Kramarczuk’s, a venerable Ukrainian deli and butcher shop in Minneapolis. He buys bacon, assorted sausages, and smoked pork chops, then brings them to his Twin Cities brewery.

Kielbasa isn’t a weekly employee perk. Instead, the Kramarczuk’s bounty is reserved for that evening’s customers who fill the spacious taproom for pilsners, hefeweizens, and free tickets for the weekly meat raffle.

During the eight rounds of drawing, which takes two hours, an emcee invites each winner to the stage to select two items, including Redhead Creamery cheese. The meats and cheeses might cost Utepils around $200 per week, but the edible entertainment “is just like paying a band,” Justesen says. “It’s a win-win in terms of us getting more customers.”

To boost taproom attendance and bring home the bacon, breweries countrywide are embracing meat raffles, a longstanding tradition at bars and social clubs of the Midwest and Great Lakes region. The rollicking raffles are both low stakes (tickets are typically free or just $1) and high in steaks, briskets, and regional specialties bought from local butchers and farmers.

Each week, Heavy Rotation Brewing in Brooklyn Park, Minn., buys as much as $400 worth of maple bacon, bratwursts, ground beef, and more from the nearby Osseo Meat Market for its free Wednesday meat raffle.

“It’s become a community meet-up — no pun intended — every week,” says Ken Smith, a Heavy Rotation co-owner and taproom manager. “When people know they can come here every Wednesday, have a good beer, and potentially walk away with some meat, it just feels right.”

An Irresistible Taproom Lure

Prior to the pandemic, breweries needed no bait to attract customers hankering for fresh hazy IPAs sipped alongside beer-loving friends and strangers. Covid turned taprooms into no-go zones, forcing breweries to create irresistible events once states loosened restrictions.

“We lost 80 percent of our revenue overnight, so we had to figure out how to survive,” says Brad Mall, the co-owner of Oak Highlands Brewery, then located in a Dallas industrial park. (This year, the brewery relocated to Richardson, a suburb just north of Dallas.) “We shifted our focus from being a production brewery to focusing on getting butts in seats in the taproom.”

The brewery held church services, hosted Friday fish fries, and began a meat raffle that turned into a monthly tradition. It might attract more than 150 people who buy plenty of lagers and $1 raffle tickets, hoping for one of the more than 40 frozen, vacuum-sealed prizes that might include pork chops, sausages, and assorted steak cuts.

“People get so excited about winning a sirloin steak,” says Ryan Childers, the marketing and events director. “It’s really bizarre, innocent fun.”

“Most people here didn’t know what a meat raffle is. In our messaging we’ll constantly be like, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, free meat. Just show up.’”

Part of the appeal is winning meats that cities and regions hold dear. At Oak Highlands, one regular grand prize is a whole cooked brisket that winners can take home and reheat for dinner.

In Cincinnati and its surroundings, a popular local delicacy is goetta, a mix of beef, pork, oats, and spices prepared by German immigrants seeking to cost-effectively stretch out servings of meat. (Goetta is traditionally fried and served for breakfast.) Cincinnati brewery Urban Artifact, which has hosted a monthly meat raffle for nearly two years, “always has a goetta round,” says Scott Hand, the chief brand officer.

The brewery is located a few blocks from the weekly Northside Farmers Market, and a few days before the 18-round raffle an Urban Artifact employee will wheel a wagon to the market and buy $300 to $400 worth of meat from Hilltop Family Farm. “They’ve supported us, and we can support them right back,” Hand says.

Like many breweries, Little House Brewing in Chester, Conn., donates its spent grain to a local farmer, Sycamore Farm Meats, located about 10 miles northwest in Higganum, Conn. “In return, they would often give us whatever meat we wanted at a discount,” says Sam Wagner, a co-founder, who grew up with meat raffles in Minnesota.

Several years ago, he decided to bring the tradition to Little House and raffle off meat from animals raised on the brewery’s spent grains. Explaining the concept required extra effort. “Most people here didn’t know what a meat raffle is,” Wagner says. “In our messaging we’ll constantly be like, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, free meat. Just show up.’”

“The cheese raffle has been, without question, the most popular of all. We were slammed.”

The raffle doubles as a charity drive. Everyone receives one free ticket, and attendees who donate a nonperishable food or toiletry item earn an additional ticket for each item. Some rafflegoers bring upward of “150 cans of nonperishable items because they wanted to win so badly,” Wagner says.

Utepils also provides extra tickets for guests who bring food. One time, someone brought a crate of ramen noodles and requested tickets for each packet. Justesen considered intervening, but the rafflegoer wasn’t looking to up his odds. Like Santa Claus, he “went around and handed tickets out to other people,” Justesen says. “He feels like it’s a good thing to do.”

Keeping Raffles Entertaining Is Essential

A meat raffle typically doubles as taproom entertainment, requiring breweries to keep energy high and prizes flowing. Little House’s raffles, which might last three hours, are soundtracked by a musician who doubles as the day’s emcee. “He’ll stop playing every 15 minutes, and people will stand up and go absolutely nuts,” Wagner says. “If people are sitting outside, they’ll lean into the taproom and hold out their tickets.”

To keep customers engaged, many meat raffles culminate in high-value prizes such as a tomahawk steak. Every Father’s Day, Elm Creek Brewing in Champlin, Minn., a northern suburb of Minneapolis, hosts a blowout meat raffle. Customers receive one ticket with each beer purchase, giving them the chance to win massive grill packs, which feature assorted meats and steaks, surf-and-turf boxes, and, for the grand prize, “hog in a box,” says Mitch Carlson, a co-founder. “It’s 30 pounds of pork.”

The meat costs upward of $1,400, but the payoff is in taproom attendance. “It’s one of our busiest days of the year,” Carlson says.

Not everyone is high on the hog, much less meat. In coastal Salem, Mass., Notch Brewing hosts a monthly raffle that regularly rotates its edible prizes. The lager-focused brewery partners with both local butcher shops, such as the Modern Butcher, and fishmongers selling New England’s aquatic bounty. “We do seafood raffles as well,” says Chris Lohring, Notch’s founder.

August’s pescatarian-friendly raffle with Patriot Seafoods featured a lobster-bake grand prize, and a future seafood raffle will highlight oysters from the Great Marsh Shellfish Company. Notch’s most popular raffle, though, featured neither meat nor seafood.

“The cheese raffle has been, without question, the most popular of all,” Lohring says of the event with the Cheese Shop of Salem. “We were slammed.”

No matter the protein, these raffles are writing a winning recipe for all parties. Farmers and butchers earn sales and free advertising, while breweries pack their taprooms with thirsty patrons hungry for victory, community, and tipping back pints while ticking items off their to-do lists.

Says Urban Artifact’s Hand, “It’s nice to win something and not have to worry about getting groceries over the weekend.”

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