20 | JULY 2 - 8, 2021 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
THE NEXT DRAFT
Informational Facebook group helps beat lines at Tree House Brewing Co. Matthew Tota Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
To the uninitiated, a weekend trip to Tree House Brewing Co. in Charlton can seem overwhelming. The swelling crowds, myriad beer options and long lines — if you don’t know what to expect or don’t know the ordering process, you might feel confused or anxious upon arrival. Take heart though, you’ll nearly always fi nd someone to point you in the right direction. Eric Clark is one such Tree House tour guide. Once a newbie himself, Clark called a friend before his fi rst trip to Tree House in 2016 for a tutorial on how to secure your place in line and order growlers. He later paid that knowledge forward in a big way: taking on the role as one of fi ve administrators for Tree House Brew Co: Line Updates, a private Facebook group that provides information for visiting Tree House — to more than 43,000 people (and growing) every day. “Tree House is a destination: People make it part of their trips, and they want to know that information,” Clark said. With Tree House now selling beer at four diff erent locations and having recently reopened for draft service in Charlton, the group has never been more relevant or necessary: It has not taken long for the weekend masses to return. The group formed in 2015 as a small gathering space for Tree House enthusiasts to chat about their beloved brewery. Soon questions about the daily wait times dominated discussions, with the group morphing into more of an information
The patio view of Tree House Brewing in Charlton. T&G FILE PHOTO/CHRISTINE PETERSON
hub for line updates and beer releases. Clark likens the group to Waze, the crowd-sourced maps app, but for navigating all things Tree House. The page relies on real-time updates from people at Tree House — often accompanied by pictures — who describe how much time you can expect to wait for your beer, whether picking up cans or staying for pours. Sometimes the reports give time estimates or approximate the number of people waiting.
Common updates pinpoint where the lines end, such as “to the top of the parking lot.” Each morning, one of the admins has a post packed with information to help you better plan your Tree House visit. They include basic details about each location, such as the hours of operation or availability of pours, links to the brewery’s own FAQs and wayfi nding pages — which inevitably people fail to read — and brief summaries of the order procedure for each site.
“Each location has diff erent formats for how you get your beer: Charlton you get in line again, Deerfi eld and the Cape, you stay in your car,” Clark said. You’ll fi nd the most valuable insight in the comments under each post, where people fi le mini-dispatches from one of Tree House’s four locations. The admins also have a reliable team of moderators to delete misinformation from the comments and answer questions, like what the minimum purchase per order is ($65) or
whether there will be a food truck. “We rely heavily on the commenters — the customers,” said David Ryan, one of the group’s admins. “They will engage with the Tree House staff , and they can ask questions and get concrete answers. We’ll go through that and try our best to summarize what’s currently happening at each location.” Last month, Tree House resumed draft pours in Charlton, See DRAFT, Page 21
