From Platform to Partner: How My Pub Marketing Started — and Why It Changed

In 2021, the craft beer market was still riding a decade-long wave. New breweries and taprooms were opening across the country, many of them run by small teams who were passionate about their product but stretched thin on everything else — especially their digital presence.

I noticed the same pattern over and over. A taproom owner would have a Facebook page, maybe an Instagram account, and a website that was either built five years ago by a friend or assembled in a weekend on a generic site builder. The hours were wrong. The menu was out of date. The “About” page was a placeholder. And every time a guest searched for the business online, what they found didn’t match the experience waiting for them at the bar.

That gap — between the quality of the hospitality and the quality of the digital presence — is what My Pub Marketing was built to close.

The original product

I founded My Pub Marketing in 2021 as a hosted website platform designed specifically for breweries, taprooms, pubs, and bars. The idea was simple: give venue operators a professional, branded website that worked out of the box for their specific needs, without requiring them to learn web development or manage hosting.

The platform handled the things that matter to a taproom but don’t exist in a generic site builder: hours and location front and center, tap list integrations with services like Untappd and BeerMenus, social media galleries, map and directions, age verification, and a simple editing interface so a busy owner could update their site between pours.

Behind the scenes, the platform ran on Microsoft Azure — the same cloud infrastructure used by large enterprises. Every subscriber would get a branded website powered by a shared, multi-tenant system I built and maintained, managed through an admin console I called “Barback” that let operators update their content through straightforward forms rather than code. When an operator was ready to go live, I’d handle the domain setup, hosting, and security.

The pricing was subscription-based: a Standard plan at $39.99 per month and a Premium plan at $79.99 per month, each with a small setup fee. Premium operators got access to custom modules and more consulting hours. Every plan included hosting, security, and support — the kind of things that would normally require a separate vendor or a technical hire.

It was, in essence, a vertical SaaS product with a managed-service layer. Not a generic website builder. Not a full-service agency. Something in between that was designed to be practical and affordable for small operators.

It didn’t sell

I pitched the platform to breweries and taprooms across Ohio. The concept addressed real friction — operators didn’t have time to evaluate hosting providers, compare CMS options, or troubleshoot SSL certificates. A site built specifically for a taproom’s needs — hours display, tap list integrations, social feeds — was a genuine improvement over a generic template.

Not one operator signed up. I was a solo founder pitching a subscription product into a market that was used to paying nothing for a Facebook page and a folding sandwich board out front. Right idea, wrong distribution, wrong moment. The platform sat dormant for the next several years.

What the dormant years taught me anyway

Building and pitching the platform taught me something I hadn’t expected, even without a single signed customer to prove it. The website itself was rarely the core problem. It was a symptom.

The operators I talked to didn’t just need a better website. They needed someone who could look at the whole picture — their CRM, their email, their payment processing, their member data, their social presence — and help them build systems that actually drove revenue. A beautiful website with no email capture, no club signup flow, and no way to bring guests back was still leaving money on the table.

I also noticed the craft beverage market was shifting. The brewery boom was maturing. Competition was intensifying. And a growing number of wineries, distilleries, and tasting rooms were facing the same challenges that breweries had faced years earlier: how to turn one-time visitors into repeat guests and club members.

The operators who were winning weren’t just making great product. They were running disciplined direct-to-consumer operations — email campaigns, membership programs, loyalty systems, and data-driven decisions about how to keep guests coming back.

I didn’t act on any of that for years. The platform sat unused while other work took over.

The 2025 reinvention

In 2025, I picked the business back up — same instinct, different market. Instead of selling a subscription product and handing over the keys, I now work alongside operators as an ongoing partner: managing website operations, email and SMS automation, CRM and member data, social content planning, and club administration. The engagement model is a monthly retainer, and every partnership starts with a fixed-price DTC audit so both sides understand the starting point before any work begins.

The platform didn’t disappear. It became the foundation for something more useful: a custom-built member experience system — a branded mobile app, member web portal, and admin console that I build and maintain for each operator, so tasting rooms can offer a full club member experience without hiring a development team. The Uncorked Wine Tastings membership platform, built for a wine venue in Dublin, Ohio, is the clearest example of what that system looks like in practice — its companion app is live on the App Store today.

The target market shifted too. The business started with craft breweries; the focus today is independent tasting rooms, wineries, distilleries, wine bars, and small multi-venue operators — businesses with existing DTC sales or membership programs that need enterprise-grade digital systems without the enterprise price tag.

Why it matters for your business

This history isn’t just background. It’s relevant because it means My Pub Marketing didn’t arrive at hospitality from the outside. The business was born in it.

The platform era taught me what small operators actually need from technology — and more importantly, what they don’t. They don’t need a 60-page strategy deck. They don’t need a redesign every quarter. They need systems that work reliably, data they can act on, and a partner who understands that the real business happens at the counter, not on a screen.

Nearly 30 years of enterprise digital work at firms like Intel, Accenture, EY, and Sitecore gave me the technical foundation. Building — and eventually relaunching — My Pub Marketing since 2021 gave me the context to apply it where it actually helps.

If you run a tasting room, a wine bar, or a small DTC operation and you’re wondering whether your digital systems are pulling their weight, that’s the conversation I’m built for. No sales script — just a 5-minute look at one real breakdown in your guest journey.

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