As I keep building out features and pushing BS toward feature completeness to say, “Hey, this is a good v1,” one thing I keep putting off is tackling the concept of chain breweries.
Specifically, a couple of prominent names come to mind: BJ's Restaurants and the smaller but still sizable, especially to locals in the PNW, McMenamins.
I wanted to develop a solution that allowed me to identify them as chains (compared to single breweries or small joints with a couple of locations (i.e., a single brewery with two taprooms).
What I came up with exists primarily on the backend but has a few subtle quirks on the front end that you, the visitor, will see.
Specifically:
- I've reworked and made the ability to relate breweries to each other without defining a primary location a bit more versatile.
- I can also relate locations with similar names in a single pass when updating a brewery.
- If I declare a location a “chain,” all related locations will be declared chains.
- Being a chain means every location will have the same menu and meta details (website, menu, social media, press)
This allows me to ensure these large establishments are included but simplify things. BJ's has many locations; updating each manually would be challenging on a good day. Plus, some of them are Independent Craft Breweries, so, in service of the purpose of this site, I feel obligated to feature them.
The next phase, then, will be to find a way to organize them visually and make them browsable naturally without a lot of forced effort and presentation. I'm not sure how I'll tackle this exactly, but if I want to mention a chain in future content, I'd like a way to link to it. My first thought is to handle it like I do other filters but not list it as a filter.
Time will tell if that's actually crahp or a good idea.