Henderson Brewing Co.

The Situation

Henderson Brewing Co. is the first commercial brewery Henderson has seen in 80 years, runs a thriving taproom with live events and food truck rotations, and won a GABF Silver Medal. Their website still says “© 2018” and the Snapchat icon links to Untappd.

The Problem

Henderson Brewing Co. opened in 2018 as something genuinely historic: the first commercial brewery in Henderson, Kentucky in over 80 years. Doug Laramie and four other founding families backed it. They built a taproom in the Gateway District at 737 2nd Street, brought craft beer to a city that hadn't had its own brewery in nearly a century, and earned a Great American Beer Festival Silver Medal along the way. That's a real story with real credentials.

The website doesn't tell any of it.

hendersonbrewco.com is a single-page static site that launched in 2018 and hasn't been meaningfully updated since. The footer reads “© 2018 Henderson Brewing Company” — frozen at launch. The social media icons in the footer include a Snapchat icon that actually links to the brewery's Untappd page. Someone copy-pasted the wrong URL when the site was built, labeled it Snapchat, and it's been pointing to Untappd ever since.

Those are the visible symptoms. The underlying problem runs deeper: there is no events calendar, no food truck schedule, no tap list, no seasonal beer information, and no current information of any kind on the website. Henderson Brewing runs live music nights, trivia events, themed releases, and a regular food truck rotation. None of this is findable on the website.

What It Costs

Every event Henderson Brewing runs that doesn't appear on the website is an event that only the already-loyal can find. The taproom's most powerful growth mechanism — word of mouth from first-time visitors — requires that first-time visitor to actually show up. If someone who heard about the brewery searches for “what's on this weekend at Henderson Brewing,” the website gives them nothing.

The cross-bridge audience from Evansville — a much larger city just across the Ohio River — represents a significant opportunity for a Henderson taproom with an award and a good story. But “let me check the website before we make the drive” is a real pre-visit behavior, and the website currently gives that prospective visitor no reason to commit. No events. No tap list. No food trucks. No story about why Henderson Brewing is worth the drive.

The GABF Silver Medal is buried entirely. Henderson won a national award from the most prestigious craft beer competition in the United States. It's not on the homepage, not in the hero, not in the about section. A first-time visitor to the website would have no idea it exists.

What a Redesign Would Unlock

A rebuilt site for Henderson Brewing does what the taproom already does: gives people reasons to show up.

What Pitchcraft Did

Pitchcraft built a full spec redesign concept for Henderson Brewing Co. before any contact was made. The spec includes:

• →Updated copyright year — “© 2018” corrected immediately; no site should signal abandonment from the footer
• →Fixed social links — Snapchat/Untappd mislabel corrected; social icons properly labeled with correct destinations
• →Live events calendar — full calendar of taproom events filterable by type, with email signup for event notifications
• →Food truck schedule — weekly rotation with truck names, cuisine types, and links to their pages
• →Tap list page — current beers on draft with names, styles, ABVs, and descriptions; option to integrate Untappd API for live updates
• →Homepage redesign — GABF Silver Medal featured above the fold, founding story callout, taproom photography, upcoming events teaser, food truck teaser, hours and address visible on mobile
• →Our Story page — the full Henderson Brewing founding narrative: five families, 80 years without a local brewery, the Gateway District, Doug Laramie's craft philosophy, the Silver Medal
• →Visit / Plan Your Trip page — working Google Maps embed, current hours, taproom policies, “easy drive from Evansville” callout
• →Mobile optimization — full responsive redesign for the taproom customer checking what's on from their phone
• →SEO foundations — BreweryOrWinery schema, Event schema for calendar events, local keyword targeting for “craft brewery Henderson KY,” “taproom Henderson,” and Evansville cross-bridge search terms

The spec was built to show Doug and the founding team exactly what Henderson Brewing's website could be — a living taproom presence that earns the brewery's reputation instead of a static 2018 timestamp.