If a brewery offers a taproom that is open to the public, they likely have two entries on Untappd; one will be their brewery page, and one will be their venue page. These two pages represent separate functions on the platform and cannot be merged.
Why Are They Separate?
A brewery may or may not be a place where customers can come and enjoy beers on site. Many breweries are production only, or for some other reason do not have an on-site taproom open to the public. These breweries therefore would not need a venue page as they only distribute beer to wholesalers or retailers who will then get it into their customers’ hands.
Breweries that DO have a taproom onsite have the option to also be venue on Untappd just as any other bar, restaurant, bottle shop, etc would. Venue pages provide users with a way to track the location of where they drank beers via checking in.
For example, notice that the brewery, New Anthem, is listed under both “Breweries” and under “Venues.” Clicking the listing under “Breweries” will take a user to the New Anthem brewery database page, and clicking either of their listings under “Venues” will take the user to the specific menu pages for each of their taproom locations.
How Does This All Work?
The information from brewery pages forms Untappd’s beer database. Beers can be input either by breweries themselves or by users attempting to check in a beer and finding it doesn’t yet exist in our system. This is how brewery pages get started; either the brewery, or more frequently, a user, adds a beer from a brewery that has never been on Untappd before, and in the process, the brewery page is automatically created as the place in our database where all beers created by that brewery going forward will be housed. The brewery page then becomes a page where users can view historical data for every beer that brewery has ever produced.
If the brewery registers, or “claims” their brewery, they will be able to log into it via the untappd.com website login screen, and control their beers' data. Breweries who claim their pages can upload their brewery and beer logos, add their social media information, edit, merge, and update beers, as well as see every check in for their beers no matter where they have been purchased or consumed. Brewery pages are free to claim and manage, and this should be done as soon as possible by the brewery to be able to keep information about its beers correct and up-to-date.
Whereas brewery pages track check-ins for every one of their beers across multiple venues (whether their own or not), venue pages only track check-in activity for a specific location, which for a brewery would be their taproom. Checking into a venue also allows users to earn badges based on location or other venue attributes.