Half Moon Bay Brewery

Getting Your Taproom Account Set Up at Half Moon Bay Brewery

Most breweries handle their keg tracking through one of three main systems: custom internal software, a distributor-managed platform, or a white-label solution like KegConnect or TAPR. Half Moon Bay Brewery uses a variation of the latter, which means there are specific quirks you need to know about before you start ordering or running reports.

Half Moon Bay Brewery Logistics Breakdown

The system they run on separates tap assignments from keg inventory in a way that isn't immediately obvious. When you log into the operator dashboard, the first thing you'll notice is that keg status and available pour volume exist in two different modules. If you're pulling inventory numbers for a location with more than six simultaneous taps, you need to check both sections separately. They don't sync in real time. This caused me trouble last November when a venue reported running dry on a stout but the dashboard showed four kegs in reserve. The kegs were physically present but had been logged under a pending transfer label that hadn't cleared. Moving the transfer from "pending" to "active" in the inventory tab fixed it immediately. Just don't expect an alert for that state. Access to the ordering portal requires a facility code and an account class tied to your distribution zone. The account classes are Tier 1 through Tier 3, and your tier determines which brands you can see in the catalog. Half Moon Bay Brewery falls under Zone B distribution, which means accounts registered in Zone A won't display their full product line even if you know the SKUs by heart. You can still place orders if you have the exact product code, but you won't get the rotating seasonal listings unless your account is classified correctly. I found this out after trying to order the summer wheat series through a Zone A portal and watching half the lineup just not appear. Another detail people miss is the order cutoff time. It's not the same across all regions. Half Moon Bay Brewery runs a 2 p.m. Pacific cutoff for same-day dispatch from their coastal warehouse, but orders placed after that move to next-morning delivery regardless of what the checkout page says. The system will let you proceed past the confirmation screen even when you've missed the window. I learned this the hard way when a Saturday event was nearly stranded because I assumed a Thursday afternoon order would arrive Friday morning. It didn't. It sat in a holding queue until 5 a.m. Friday, and by the time the trucks started loading, we were already behind schedule. The workaround is simple: call the distribution desk directly if your order timestamp lands between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific. A human override will sometimes catch it for the same-day run.

Common Setup Problems and How to Fix Them

Tap list updates lag behind actual keg swaps by anywhere from two hours to a full business day. If you change a beer on tap manually through the backend, the public-facing tap menu doesn't refresh automatically. Someone needs to publish the update from the menu management section separately. I set a daily routine where I check both the tap tracker and the published menu side by side every morning around 10 a.m. It takes about five minutes and prevents the whole "customer orders a pint of something that's been tapped out for six hours" situation. The export function for sales reports only generates PDFs unless you add a custom query filter. If you need CSV data for accounting integration, you have to go into the advanced report settings and manually select the spreadsheet format before running the export. There's no default CSV toggle on the main report page. I wasted two weeks sending finance teams PDFs that they had to retype into their system before anyone figured out the export setting existed. Now I just save a preset query for each reporting period and hit export directly. There's also a minimum order threshold per SKU that varies by product type. Canned products require a case minimum of twelve units per line item, but draft kegs operate under a different rule tied to your contract volume. If you're a smaller venue pulling only one or two kegs at a time, you might not hit the tier pricing on your invoice even though the catalog lists a bulk rate. The pricing shown at checkout can be misleading because it doesn't always reflect your actual contracted tier until the order is fully processed and assigned to your account. Check your purchase history after the order confirms rather than trusting the quoted total upfront.

If you're managing multiple locations through a single Half Moon Bay Brewery account, remember that inventory transfers between sites require manager-level credentials. A regular shift supervisor account can't initiate a keg move from one venue to another. I had a situation where a barback tried to reallocate two kegs during a busy service and the system rejected the transfer because the credentials weren't high enough. The workaround was having the on-site manager log in and approve it from their own device, which added about twenty minutes to the process. Getting manager-level access added to your team roster early saves time later.