University of Montana business class pairs data analytics with beer

MISSOULA — In an effort to make data analytics less dry, a University of Montana business course introduced beer. Beer sales data, that is.

Dr. John Chandler, a clinical professor of marketing in the College of Business, wanted to give students in his Telling Stories with Big Data class a real-life data set to analyze.

So seven years ago Chandler partnered with the Dram Shop, a taproom and growler fill station in Missoula with 40 taps of draught beer, wine, cider and soda.

The local business is owned by UM alumni Zachary and Sarah Millar, who gave Chandler full access to hundreds of megabytes of data in their point-of-sales system. The raw data includes sales by day, hour and type of beverages sold.

The partnership allows UM students to use the data to answer important questions and solve real-world problems for the local business.

“The College of Business is where academia meets the real world,” Chandler said. “The students can meet with Zachary and Sarah and try to help them, which I think is something you don’t always get in analytics programs.”

Each fall semester, Chandler breaks his class into groups who work to answer different questions using the sales data. The analysis helped the Dram Shop track their business through the COVID-19 pandemic, develop the Dram Fam customer club and make price changes.

Zachary Millar visits the class each year to hear from the students and get their data-driven insights. The results help Millar decide where to put his energy and resources, he said.

“The neat thing about doing it year over year is it gives us an opportunity to compile historical data and see how things change over time,” Millar said. “We can make conjectures about what we think is going on and then we can check the data to see if that is actually true or not.”

Millar graduated from UM in 1999 with a creative writing degree. He spent 11 years working for Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, including six years as the distribution coordinator. He and his wife opened the Dram Shop on Front St. in 2015 and opened a second location off Paxson St. in 2019.

Millar said he’s always felt supported by UM. His original business plan for the Dram Shop was developed with the help from UM’s Blackstone LaunchPad, a nonprofit organization supported by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation that helps students and alumni build entrepreneurial skills.

When he was approached by Chandler about helping with the data class, Millar didn’t hesitate. He sees the partnership as a win-win for his business and the students’ experience.

“I think it has more impact for the students when they can look at us and we are real. We are not some data model somebody built,” Millar said. “It gives them more ownership over the work they are doing and it makes them feel like they can have a real impact, which is inspiring as a student.”

Chandler’s class draws interest from a variety of graduate and undergraduate students who are studying journalism, math, computer science or earning an MBA or master’s in analytics.

“I’m trying to get a diverse group in there,” Chandler said. “The more viewpoints you have, the more you have different ways of understanding information.”

UM student Kapono Mossman, a senior marketing major from Pukalani, Hawai’i, enrolled in Chandler’s class this past semester. He was interested in learning how to use data in a marketing plan and also had an interest as a math minor.

For the Dram Shop project, Mossman worked in a group focused on marketing and growth. The group analyzed the Dram Shop’s social media and looked to see if there was a correlation with sales.

Mossman’s group studied an Instagram post from May 22 that advertised a new beer from Seattle-based Fremont Brewing that was newly available at the Dram Shop. The students looked at the sales data from that week and discovered sales for the beer grew by 20%, showing the impact of social media.

Mossman shared his findings with the Dram Shop and encouraged them to keep posting regularly on their social media channels since it leads to higher sales.

“To put in this work and an actual business in the city is taking your feedback, it’s pretty cool,” Mossman said.

Mossman said he’s never had a class that offered so much real-world experience from working with a local business to actually providing the business beneficial feedback. Getting hands-on experiences like that is a big reason Mossman decided to become a marketing major.

“I chose to change my major and go to the College of Business because they pride themselves on their partnerships with businesses and giving you real-world experience through the classroom,” he said.