Roses, tulips or beer?

If you are done with knocking back hard drinks or drinking your beer straight from the can, then there is an interesting option emerging—a beer garden. This is essentially a micro-brewery with a pub that allows one to get one’s beer brewed to the specific taste one likes in terms of bitterness, viscosity and other variables. Interested? Well, then the place to head to is Gurgaon district of Haryana, which adjoins Delhi. Here the Delhi-based Rockman Group is planning to set two beer gardens.

Group company Rockman Breweries TNK Ltd, in a joint venture with the German company Lowenbrau Buttenheim, is planning to invest Rs 100 crore in setting up these two beer houses. Haryana is the first state to have granted approval to Rockman, though the company along with its joint venture partner is tapping other states for setting up microbreweries. These include Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal, Goa and Delhi.

The raw materials such as hops, malt and yeast are being sourced from Bavarian suppliers Weyermann Bamberg, while the brewhouse, the design and the interiors will be provided by German service provider, Kasper Shulz. “The beer gardens will be launched in Gurgaon in the next four to six months. We have the government approvals and we have the land also,” says C. S. Agarwal, Managing Director of the Rockman Group of Companies. “We are also looking to set up similar gardens in Singapore and South Africa,” he adds. Since the beers will be customised and not mass-produced, the pricing will be towards the upper end. Unlike typical drinking joints, these beer gardens will try to attract the family audience, mainly for the ambience that they will seek to provide. Hence, the beer gardens will be set up in two formats—one in a mall over 8,000 square feet and the other in an open, forest like ambience with a lot of greenery. Initially the foreign partners will bring in the back-end support, technology and design while the Indian partners will be responsible for the land approvals.

“Besides the ambience, it will be about the palate,” says Agarwal. The unique selling proposition here is beer as a fresh product, produced without preservation and stabilisation or pasteurisation, and in many cases even without filtration. Targeting the younger generation and women with the low alcohol drink that beer is, these gardens will also have typical Bavarian style restaurants. In fact, the concept of these microbreweries comes from Bavaria, where they have a long history.

Agarwal believes that the younger set looks for individuality and emotional connect, and hence likes differentiation. “Local or regional specialities develop comparatively small but interesting market segments. This trend is supported by a growing health consciousness among consumers,” he says. So now you know what to do when you feel like having a beer with sauerkraut.

— Shalini S. Dagar