Sometimes the difference between a guest buying a cider they already know and discovering something new can come down to a conversation. But that conversation does not necessarily need to be a detailed explanation of fermentation, production methods or tasting notes.
In fact, several cidery owners and managers approach the interaction from the opposite direction: Instead of starting with what the cidery wants to tell the guest, they start by finding out what the guest already likes.
Jeremy Quaglia, founder and cidermaker at High Limb Cider in Plymouth, Massachusetts, has found that a simple question can be more effective than a carefully rehearsed product description.
“‘What are you usually drinking?’ gets you further in four seconds than a minute of me talking about fermentation,” Quaglia said.
That approach reframes the interaction. The employee is not trying to deliver a cider education lesson. The employee is trying to translate an unfamiliar product into something the customer already understands.
Benny Boy Brewing co-founders Chelsey Rosetter and Benny Farber take a similar approach, particularly because cider can attract customers coming from very different beverage backgrounds.
“Since cider appeals to such a range of different guests – from wine to seltzer to cocktail to beer folks – we like to first ask the guests what they normally like to drink,” they said.
From there, the recommendation becomes more specific. A natural wine drinker might be directed toward Benny Boy’s barrel-aged Spanish sidra, while someone who prefers dry white wine could be offered a zero-sugar, apple-only single-variety cider. A cocktail drinker might be pointed toward a botanical elderflower cider, while a hazy IPA fan could get a tropical guava or mango option.
It shows that product knowledge becomes more valuable when employees know how to apply it to the person standing in front of them.
“The great place to start is the simple question, ‘Do you prefer something sweet, dry or funky?’” Rosetter and Farber said.
That question also gives a team a repeatable framework. Rather than asking employees to memorize dozens of tasting descriptors and improvise recommendations, management can give them a small number of conversational entry points and teach them how the products fit into each category.
Jon Hoag, sales and distribution director at Ponderosa Cider, sees a similar need for clarity, with customers often focused on three practical questions: where the apples come from, what flavors they can expect and how sweet the cider is. That may sound less romantic than talking about terroir or fermentation, but it addresses the information customers are actually using to make a purchase.
Good cider selling is often less about adding information and more about making information useful. At High Limb, Quaglia has also found that the actual ingredients can provide better storytelling material than traditional tasting language. His team deliberately avoids what he describes as corporate language and traditional cider clichés.
“‘Crisp and refreshing’ describes about 400 products on that shelf and sells none of them,” Quaglia said.
Instead, employees are encouraged to identify something tangible and specific about the cider. A product fermented on local oyster shells can be explained through the resulting minerality. The cidery’s Goldie brand can be connected to its use of local honey and saison yeast. Other ciders contain roasted squash or actual pie crust.
“Those are real, recognizable ingredients and they do the storytelling on their own,” Quaglia said. “Nobody needs to dress them up.”
That is an important distinction for cideries developing staff training. Employees do not necessarily need to become professional sommeliers to sell cider effectively. They need to understand which details make a particular product distinctive and how to explain those details in language a customer can understand.
Benny Boy similarly uses the ingredients and production process as opportunities to create a conversation. The cidery talks about heritage apple varieties and explains that cider apples can be smaller, more tannic and less appealing to eat than grocery-store culinary apples while still producing complex cider.
“A great cider is a delicate balance of tannins, acidity, and sugar,” Rosetter and Farber said.
They also point out that their apples come from California and that the ciders are not filtered, giving employees additional pieces of information they can use when a customer wants to know what makes the product different.
But there is a potential trap in all of this: Giving employees more information can easily turn into giving customers too much information. Quaglia’s team has established a deliberately short approach.
“Keep it short and then get out of the way,” he said. “Three sentences, then hand over the glass and stop talking.”
That is not just a sales technique. It is a recognition that the product ultimately has to make the sale.
“The cider is more persuasive than the person pouring it,” Quaglia said.
Tools can help reinforce that philosophy. High Limb prints a sweetness scale directly on its cans, giving employees and customers a shared reference point instead of requiring the employee to rely on subjective tasting language.
“Point at it. Now you and the guest share a vocabulary, instead of you performing tasting notes in their direction,” Quaglia said.
The concept of creating a shared vocabulary can be particularly useful for cideries trying to make their tasting-room experience more consistent. If every employee describes sweetness differently, customers may receive conflicting information. A simple scale or standardized set of descriptors can give staff a common foundation without turning the interaction into a script.
Other cideries take the starting point even further back.
At Talbott’s Cider, co-founder Charles Talbott said the company does not begin employee training with tasting notes or production specifications. It begins with the story behind the business.
“At Talbott’s, we’ve always believed we’re not just selling cider; we’re sharing a way of life,” Talbott said.
For the sixth-generation Colorado farming family, that means employees first learn the family’s history, its farming heritage and the role agriculture has played in Western Colorado.
“When our team genuinely understands that story, they can speak with authenticity instead of memorizing a sales pitch,” Talbott said.
Only after employees understand why the cidery exists does the company move into what it makes. That approach offers another useful lesson in that product knowledge and brand knowledge are not necessarily the same thing.
An employee who can recite an apple variety, alcohol percentage and residual sugar level may know the product. An employee who understands why the cidery sources a particular apple, why the business operates where it does and what the producers are trying to accomplish has a better chance of communicating the reason a customer should care.
Ilwaco Cider owner, Vinessa Karnofski, takes an authenticity-first approach as well.
READ MORE: Creating Customer Relationships That Last
“Authenticity. They talk about our processes and work culture openly,” she said. “We create a product they can easily get behind.”
That suggests the strongest staff storytelling may not be something management has to manufacture. It can come from giving employees enough access to the actual business that they understand it themselves.
None of these approaches rely on a single perfect sales pitch. Instead, they give employees tools: Ask what the customer drinks. Identify whether they prefer sweet, dry or funky. Explain an ingredient that actually matters. Talk about the apples. Explain the farm. Use a sweetness scale. Give the customer a tasting flight when they don’t know where to start. Then stop talking long enough to let the cider do its job.
That changes the training question from “How do we teach employees to describe our cider?” to something more useful: “How do we teach employees to figure out what this customer needs to know?”
The distinction matters because guests do not arrive with the same knowledge, preferences or reasons for buying cider. A longtime cider enthusiast may want to talk about heritage varieties and tannin structure. A beer drinker may simply want to know whether there is something hop-forward, tropical or dry. Someone who had one overly sweet cider years ago may need a recommendation that challenges their thoughts about the category and product.
The best staff training accounts for all three.
And ultimately, that means teaching employees enough about the cider and the business to have a genuine conversation without teaching them so much that the conversation becomes a lecture.
