Giving Back Is the House Specialty: How Tidal Creek Brewhouse in Myrtle Beach Built Community Donations Into Daily Operations With GoTab

At Tidal Creek Brewhouse, the house specialty is not limited to what is brewed, roasted or served. It is giving back. In Myrtle Beach’s Market Common district, the veteran-owned brewery has grown into a community gathering place where local nonprofits find support, veterans find connection and guests are invited to turn an everyday tab into meaningful help for their neighbors.

Adrian Sawczuk runs one of the busiest hospitality operations on the Grand Strand. A Bronze Star recipient and disabled combat veteran of Desert Storm, he co-owns Tidal Creek Brewhouse with Dara Liberatore-Sawczuk. Almost six years in, the place rarely slows down.

“We serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, seven days a week, 8 a.m. to close,” Adrian said with a smile. “So, we’re fairly busy.”

That reads like an understatement once you see the footprint. Tidal Creek sits on 1.1 acres, with a beer garden, off-leash dog park, tap room and brew house that can hold a couple hundred guests at once.

A team of roughly 40 covers the front of house, back of house and brew house. The kitchen makes nearly everything from scratch. The brewery roasts its own coffee from green beans and releases a new beer every week, with distribution extending across parts of South Carolina.

Then there is the calendar, which rarely has an open slot. The brewery hosts Crafts and Drafts on Tuesdays, trivia on Wednesdays and music bingo on Thursdays, then carries the momentum into live music on Fridays and Saturdays and cornhole and disc golf on Sundays. Layered on top of it all are loyalty programs built around its Tidewatchers mug club and Creek Coffee Club, as well as Barks & Brews for the furry friends – the kind of repeat-guest engine most operators spend years trying to build.

“I think our menu’s fairly complex,” Adrian said. “Between a full bar, lots of drinks, food, and then we do a lot of loyalty-related promotions.”

A complex operation needs a system that can carry the load, and GoTab supports it all.

The entertainment commerce platform handles the full-bar menu, online and tab ordering, and the comps and discounts that keep the loyalty programs running smoothly. It is the backbone that helps a large team move hundreds of guests through a seven-day operation without losing the thread.

Yet what makes Tidal Creek different from most hospitality operations is not its footprint or its kitchen. It is the heart behind it. Giving back is not a marketing line at this brewery. It is the foundation, written into the business plan before the doors ever opened.

“Giving back is a big part of who we are,” Dara said. “It’s not only who we are, myself and Adrian, but it’s who we wanted our business to be as well.”

THE CHALLENGE:

Tidal Creek came to GoTab after leaving its previous point of sale for a variety of reasons, including a dual-pricing model the brewery did not want. 

However, the transition also surfaced an important gap: the giving feature Tidal Creek relied on was not yet part of GoTab’s platform.

Rather than treating that as a dealbreaker, GoTab worked with Tidal Creek to find a path forward. The brewery became the catalyst for a new donation prompt feature within GoTab that brings charitable giving into the checkout flow and gives guests a simple way to support local nonprofits during everyday transactions.

While it’s not a feature-for-feature match for Tidal Creek’s previous functionality, GoTab delivered a solution that supports its giving model.

HOW GOTAB POWERS TIDAL CREEK BREWHOUSE

• Donation prompt at checkout that lets guests contribute to the brewery’s charity of the month directly through their tab, turning everyday transactions into community support. It’s a digital tip jar to empower local organizations. 
• A point of sale built for the brewery's counter-service model, where guests order and pay at the bar, take a number, and have their food run out to them by the team, with online food ordering supported alongside it.
• Back-end reporting and analytics give ownership a clear view of sales and month-over-month donation totals without pulling from multiple systems.
• One connected system that ties ordering and giving into a single back end, so the team can focus on the guest experience instead of focusing on software.

TURNING COMMUNITY GIVING INTO AN OPERATING MODEL

On a Monday night this spring, the driveway outside Tidal Creek Brewhouse filled with hula hoops and fishing rods as a group of veterans cast lines down the pavement, competing to reach the farthest ring. Inside, guests ordered pints, and at the register a prompt asked each of them to chip in a few dollars for the cause. That cause was Project Healing Waters, a local group that takes returning veterans out on the water to teach them to fish and give them somewhere to land.

This is what community giving looks like when an operator truly commits to it, and it is why GoTab chose to feature Tidal Creek. Plenty of businesses keep a donation jar by the register. Few turn giving into a monthly discipline, and fewer still run it well enough to be worth studying. Tidal Creek does, and its approach is a blueprint other operators can follow.

It starts with a simple model. Every month, the brewery adopts a single local charity and invites guests to donate at checkout, with the dollars routed to that month's organization. It is easy to run and easy for guests to grasp, which is exactly why it works.

The first lesson is in who gets chosen. Tidal Creek does not hand the spot to whoever asks first. Each fall, Dara and Adrian review every charity that reached out over the year and look for the partners who show up and do the work.

"Some really want to partner and make a go of it," Dara explained. "We look at who's been really dedicated to raising awareness and getting their name out there."

The second lesson is to make it a two-way street. The charities Tidal Creek picks do not just collect a check at month's end. They typically also host an event, such as board meetings, trivia nights, karaoke and fundraisers, usually on Monday evenings. They pull their own supporters through the doors while the brewery raises money in their name. The charity gets exposure, the brewery gets traffic on a slow night, and the guests get one more reason to come back.

Healing Waters turned its month into a run of Monday classes, one on tying bait by hand, another built around that driveway casting contest.

"Their objective is to give returning veterans an outlet, just to find some peace and friendship," Dara said. "We've worked with them now for three years, and they've been a fabulous local charity. We just love those guys."

The third lesson is to layer the giving instead of relying on a single ask. Tidal Creek runs a Pints for Purpose promotion that donates a dollar for every pint poured during a set evening window, releases a weekly Veteran Series beer that sends a quarter of its proceeds to a veteran cause, and names a veteran cause of the month on top of the headline charity. The veteran focus is personal for Adrian Sawczuk.

"That's part of the motivation on the veterans’ front," he said.

The proof shows up in the checks. Help 4 Kids, a volunteer-run group that has spent two decades collecting food and school supplies for local families, received $1,400 from Tidal Creek across January and February, the two slowest months on any hospitality calendar.

"There's a lot of children who, once they leave school, are going home to a house that isn't providing them with a nutritious meal," Dara shared. "That's what Help 4 Kids does. That's making a big difference."

In March, the Low Country Veterans Group walked out with a check north of $1,000. The local fire department, Foundation Fighting Blindness and a regional rape crisis center each landed near or above four figures.

All of it runs through one simple mechanism at the register. That is where the donation prompt comes in.

GIVING THAT SCALES: THE DONATION PROMPT

A donation jar tops out fast. To move real money at a high-volume venue, the ask has to live where the money already moves, and that place is the checkout. Tidal Creek was the impetus for the feature, and GoTab built it right into the tab. Here is how it works, and how any venue can run the same play:

• The operator sets a charity for the period and turns on the prompt with a few preset contribution amounts. At settlement, when the guest is already reviewing the check, the prompt appears and offers those amounts. The guest taps one, and the donation is added to the total and captured on the same tender, so it settles in a single transaction. There is no separate payment, no second register, and no cash to count.
  
  
• From there, the system handles the tracking automatically. Operators can assign donations to a designated accounting stream, making it easy to monitor contributions alongside other revenue categories. Many operators create a dedicated "Donations" account stream, then use reporting and deposit date ranges to determine how much should be distributed to each nonprofit partner.
  
  
• The donation product itself is highly flexible and can be updated at any time. Operators can change the title, description, image, donation amounts, accounting stream, and other settings to support new campaigns, seasonal initiatives, or different nonprofit organizations. The same platform that tracks food, beverage, and retail sales also tracks every donation, providing clear visibility and simple reporting without adding operational complexity.

STILL SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

Adrian traded the battlefield for the brewhouse, but the mission never changed. He just found a new way to serve.

This past Memorial Day, that mission was on full display. Tidal Creek set a fallen soldier table near the bar, an empty chair, an empty plate, and a glass turned upside down, a quiet tradition and tribute to the service members who never came home. Outside, guests took on the Murph Challenge, a punishing run-and-lift workout named for a Navy SEAL killed in combat. Adrian ran it himself.

"I'm going to participate myself, despite my better judgment, with a bad shoulder," he said with a laugh.

That is the spirit of the place. The beer is excellent and the kitchen never quits, but what defines Tidal Creek is what it gives away. The veterans group walks out with a check. Food insecure children get fed. A few dollars added at checkout, one tab at a time, add up to something a whole community can feel.

Dara says it's a privilege to pour back into those who bring them so much joy.

"We've been honored to be able to do it," she said.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Venue: Tidal Creek Brewhouse, Market Common district, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Owners: Adrian Sawczuk and Dara Liberatore-Sawczuk

In Operation: Nearly six years; opened during the pandemic. 

Concept: Veteran-owned brewery, coffee roaster and full-service kitchen set on 1.1 acres with a beer garden, off-leash dog park, tap room and brew house, built around a monthly community-giving program.

GoTab Feature Spotlight: The donation prompt, an in-checkout giving tool that lets guests contribute to the charity of the month directly on their tab. Tidal Creek was the impetus for the feature.

The Operator Playbook:

• Choose one charity partner at a time and favor the organizations that are genuinely committed. 
• Put the ask where the money already moves. A prompt at checkout clears what a donation jar can’t.
• Layer the giving. Pair the prompt with promotions like a Veteran Series beer and a dollar-per-pint window and let each charity bring its own crowd on a slow night.

Why It Works: The donation prompt routes guest generosity straight through the point of sale, so giving scales with volume instead of stalling at a jar. The funds track automatically in reporting, the team never breaks stride, and the community walks away with real money.

Ready to build giving into your operation? See how GoTab helps high-volume, community-driven venues turn everyday transactions into impact at GoTab.com. Request a demo or reach out to our team to get started.

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