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