Let's take a look at what's already on the board. Very few fruits go well with any beers you're likely to sell -- unless you do a big business in crafted Belgians or the like. If the beer isn't already sweet, fruit makes it taste sour. In fact for your purposes, avoid any sweet food -- unless you're encouraging a coffee service. I'm not sure how you'd seel the idea of "partnering" a particular beer with a particular snack in a live music venue. Let your customers do it for themselves. The whole partnering the right beer with the right fish-stick sandwich thing is too pretentious for your situation. Good drinking game in your own living room though.
Let's get down to basics.
Almost any cheese goes well with beer. Almost anything crisp and salty. Almost anything spicy-hot. Fried + Salty = Beer Sales. Fried + Hot = Beer Sales.
The first place to hunt for the sort of thing you're looking for is in a large super market's freezer case. They have all the frozen mini bagel dogs your heart desires. Along with pretty much else your demographic (presumably fairly young) eats in Huston. You already knew that and are trying to get a little off the beaten track right?
If you want to get crazy, but not too crazy, seek out the ethnic equivalents of the standard junk foods that are meat in bread, or fried whatever. Taquitos (aka flautas), pelmini, egg rolls, fried calamari rings, fried won ton with a thai sweet/chili dipping sauce... Often you can have these made for you by a local restaurant, and heat them on site. I don't know how ethnic or how far afield you want to get. You said nothing about your operation.
Is it even worth suggesting things like nachos, chips and salsa? Presumably you know about them. Anything which goes well with (hot) salsa. The more jalapeno you sell, the more beer. You may want to look for something extremely hot -- something you want to warn your customers about before selling. "Atomic Buffalo Wings" or the like. Ultra spicy gets to be a sort of game, especially for young men. If you think jalapenos mean better beer sales, meat the habanero. El habanero he is your buen amigo.
Hot dogs and/or gourmet sauages -- May be held hot in beer, onions and peppers in a crockpot. They are even good. Of course this would mean managing a bun and mustard service as well. Up to it? Sausage is an area where it's pretty easy to actually do good food and get creative with almost no equipment. If you're the kind of place that sells micro-brews and want to really get nuts, there are a $#@!load of custom makers in Huston. Hmmm. Beer and sausage. We might be on to something.
You should look at the variety of little dishes that are "tapas." Rather than me listing a hundred dishes off the top of my head, you can use teh google. Anything pickled or oil soaked will do. I'm not sure how much pulpo (octopus) en escabeche you can sell, but it does goes well with beer. An easier sell might be almonds fried in oil (on the same day, it doesn't have to be on site), or cheese (cut in appropriate pieces) and bread. Yoy may or may not find anything which tickles your fancy as appropriate for your venue, but you'll learn a lot about what may be profitiably put on a plate in a bar setting.
Pickled anything is good. Big jars of pickled eggs, pigs feet, etc. up on the counter look very cool -- even if you don't sell a lot of eggs, you sell atmosphere.
If you're going to offer crudites of any sort, sell them with dip. Otherwise they're too refreshing and will cut into beer sales.
Many things are available pre-prepared or may be prepared off premises, and held at room temperature before service. The only equipment you need to add is a paper plate and a napkin.
It's important to have things women can eat without wrecking their lipstick or getting their fingers greasy. It's important to have at least a few non-meat items. True even in Texas.
Good luck,
BDL
Last edited by boar_d_laze; 03-24-2009 at 09:51 AM.
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