A mug with your name on it.
A year of being a regular.
Ninety-nine dollars a year. A numbered ceramic mug, hand-marked with your name. A dollar off every draft at four Stage Stops and three brewery partners. A free side with every entrée. A free birthday meal. Why we built it, who the founding members are, and exactly how to join.
The Stage Stop Mug Club is $99 a year. You get a numbered ceramic mug, $1 off every draft at all four Stage Stops and at our three brewery partners, a free side with every entrée, a free birthday meal, and a seat at the first-Tuesday Pit Master Tasting at the Cantina. For most members, the membership pays itself back inside fourteen weeks. The first hundred members keep their perks for as long as the doors stay open.
— Written by Chef Eve Natasha, Stage Stop BBQ
The brewery model works because the regulars hold it up.
Chef Eve Natasha grew up on a family ranch outside Colorado Springs. The ranch has been in the family since 1993. The first Stage Stop trailer rolled out in 2017, parked at Mash Mechanix downtown, three sandwiches and a side. The model that worked then is the model that works now — we park where the beer is good and we feed the people the brewery already gathered.
That model lives or dies on the regulars. Not the Saturday tourist on a Pikes Peak weekend. The Tuesday five-thirty guest who is going to the brewery anyway and would like a brisket sandwich with that pint. The four-times-a-month eater who already knows the sauces by name. Those are the guests every brewery cart, every Cantina table, every dinner-peak ticket lean on.
A Mug Club is the cheapest, oldest, most honest way to give the regulars something for being regular. It doesn’t dilute the menu. It doesn’t require an app you have to remember to open. It puts a real, heavy ceramic mug on the wall with a number and a name. It says: we know who you are, we’re grateful you keep showing up, here is a dollar off your next pint and a free side with your next entrée.
The brewery alignment is the second reason. Mash Mechanix has had a mug club for years. Old Colorado City and Urban Animal at Star Ranch run their own loyalty programs. Our Mug Club isn’t a competitor — it’s the food side of the same regular’s ritual. Bring our mug to their bar; their bartender pours into it; the dollar off honors at both counters. We coordinate.
The first hundred mugs are the ones that paid for the kiln.
Mug #1 through Mug #100 are the founding members. They were the first hundred guests who signed up — some in person at the Cantina counter on the night we announced it, some online the morning after. They paid for the first run of ceramic mugs, the kiln time, the numbering, the boxes, and the shipping. The mug came out of that batch with their number etched on it and a card signed by Eve in the box.
Founding members keep their founding perks for as long as the doors stay open. That is the deal. Dollar off draft, free side with entrée, double points, free birthday meal, first-Tuesday Pit Master Tasting — locked in. If we ever raise the annual price, the founding hundred renew at ninety-nine. If we add a perk, founding members get it first. If we ever have to cap a perk, founding members are the last to feel the cap.
A planned addition: a Wall of Mugs at the Cantina. A real shelved wall behind the bar, one mug per founding member, numbered, names burned into a strip of oak under each one. The wall isn’t up yet — carpenter is on it, install is later this summer. Founding members will be notified by email when it goes up and invited to a closed evening before it opens to the room.
We are past one hundred founding members now. Memberships sold after Mug #100 are still part of the Mug Club — same perks, same mug program — but the lifetime price lock and the wall slot are reserved for the founding hundred. The honest version: this is the only thing we don’t bend on.
Your mug stays on the wall. The bartender pulls it without asking.
The Cantina at 6620 Old Stage Rd. is the flagship. Sit-down dining room, full bar, live music Saturdays, the full menu plus three Cantina-only specials. The Mug Club operates at every Stage Stop, but the Cantina is where the mug itself lives.
On signup, your numbered ceramic mug ships within seven days — or you can pick it up at the Cantina counter and skip shipping. Once you have it, you have a choice: take it home and bring it back when you want it filled, or leave it on the wall behind the bar at the Cantina. Most members leave it on the wall. The bartender knows the regulars by their mug number before she knows them by name. You walk in, she pulls your mug, you sit down.
The perks at the Cantina are the same as every Stage Stop: one dollar off every draft pour with your mug, free side with every entrée (counts as your second side on plates, so you get a third for three instead of five), double points always, free birthday meal up to twenty-two dollars. The POS recognizes you by phone number at checkout — you don’t have to remember to ask.
Member-only events live at the Cantina. The Pit Master Tasting runs the first Tuesday of every month — five courses, Eve hosts, three hours, free for Mug Club ($25 otherwise). Thirty seats only. Mug Club members get the booking email forty-eight hours before the seats open to the public, and most months the public window never opens because the members fill it. Beer-pairing dinners, ticketed live-music nights, and the quarterly sauce drop all run early access through the Mug Club.
The mug travels with you. Their bartender knows the deal.
The three brewery partners are Mash Mechanix downtown, Urban Animal at Star Ranch on the southside, and Old Colorado City on the westside. At each one, our Stage Stop cart serves the food window and the brewery’s own bar pours the beer. Two counters, one room.
At the brewery, the mug travels with you. You bring it in, the brewery bartender pours their draft into it, the dollar-off-draft Mug Club discount honors at their bar. That is the partnership: their beer, your mug, our food counter, one shared regular. The bartenders at all three partners have been briefed. If anyone gives you trouble, the right answer is to ask the manager and mention Stage Stop — the comp is in the agreement and they sort it out.
The free side with entrée works at every brewery cart the same way it works at the Cantina. Phone number at the food counter, the side comes off the price. Double points accrue the same way. Birthday month, triple points. Free birthday meal honors at any of the four stops — the brewery carts run a slightly shorter menu, but the brisket sandwich, pulled pork sandwich, turkey sandwich, and burnt-end mac bowl are all eligible.
One nuance: each brewery partner runs its own mug club too, and ours stacks with theirs, not against it. If you carry the Mash Mechanix mug and the Stage Stop mug both, you get dollar-off draft from Mash (their mug, their pour) and dollar-off from us at every other stop, plus the food perks. We’ve done the math with regulars carrying both — the membership stack pays for itself by week ten.
$99 a year. Auto-renew. We email thirty days before. Cancel anytime.
Membership is ninety-nine dollars a year or nine dollars a month. Annual is the better deal — you save fifteen and the mug ships on signup either way. Payment runs through Stripe, every common card and Apple Pay and Google Pay accepted. We don’t process membership at the register — sign up online or on a member’s phone at the bar and bring the confirmation in for the first visit.
Auto-renew is the default. We send a reminder email thirty days before the renewal charge. The email is one page, plain text, no marketing fluff — it tells you the date, the amount, your member number, and a one-click link to turn off auto-renew if you want to skip. If you do nothing, the card on file gets charged the morning of your anniversary, the mug stays on the wall, the perks keep working.
Cancel anytime. Annual plans don’t refund mid-year, but the benefits run through your renewal date no matter when you turn off auto-renew. Monthly plans cancel at the end of the current month, no questions, no clever retention sequence. The mug is yours either way — it’s a brand object, not collateral. First fourteen days, full refund minus mug shipping if the mug already went out. After fourteen, no refund, but every perk runs through the date you paid for.
Renewal rate, year one to year two, has been ninety-one percent. That is the honest number from the April 2026 data pull. The eight or nine percent who don’t renew mostly moved out of the Springs — we know because they tell us in the cancel-email reply box. The Mug Club is built to be canceled, which is why almost nobody does.
Two doors in. Both end at the same numbered mug.
In person, walk into any of the four Stage Stops — the Cantina on Old Stage Rd., Mash Mechanix downtown, Old Colorado City, or Urban Animal Star Ranch — and tell the bartender or the counter you want a Mug Club membership. They take a name, a phone, and a card. The confirmation hits your email inside two minutes. The mug ships from the Cantina within seven days, or you can pick it up at the Cantina counter on your next visit.
Online, the front door is /mug-club. The full perks list, the ROI math, the testimonials, and the FAQ live there. The signup checkout is in soft launch — the page is live but the “Join now” button currently routes to a short waitlist form. We’re flipping on full self-serve Stripe checkout the moment the last QA pass clears, which is expected inside the month. The waitlist gets a personal email when it opens, and waitlist signups get first crack at the next batch of mug numbers.
In the meantime, in-person signup at the Cantina is the fastest path. Walk in, fifteen minutes, you’re a member, the mug is on its way. The Cantina bartenders are the only people who can put your number on the founding- member wall by hand.
If you want to read the whole perk roster first, the long version lives at /mug-club/perks — nine perks, the year-one ROI breakdown, and the edge cases (what happens if your mug breaks, how transfers work, what carries over to the locations that haven’t opened yet).
Founding members eat first.
The next thing on the Mug Club roadmap is the limited brisket drop. A handful of times a year, we cook a small run — a Wagyu packer, a Snake River, a wood we don’t normally use, sometimes a whole-hog southern variation that doesn’t live on the daily menu. Twenty plates, sometimes thirty, sold one Saturday at the Cantina and gone by 1pm. Founding members get the email twenty-four hours before everyone else and a reservation hold instead of the regular line. Past founding members, the rest of Mug Club gets the email twelve hours before the public.
The quarterly sauce drop continues on the same cadence — a new sauce every three months, members only, shipped to your door or pick up at your home location. The last one was a smoked-coffee bourbon BBQ; it sold out the public release in two weeks. The next one is in the test kitchen now and the early notes mention pecan and tamarind.
Beyond that, the Wall of Mugs install happens this summer, the online signup flips on, and the Mug Club program extends to the next Stage Stop the day the doors open. When Manitou or Pueblo or Denver come online, the existing mug and the existing membership work there day one — that is part of the founding deal.
A Mug Club is a small commitment in both directions. Ninety- nine dollars a year from you. A real ceramic mug, a real name on a real wall, a free side with every entrée, a free birthday meal, and a seat at the Pit Master Tasting from us. The math works because the regulars hold it up, and the regulars hold it up because the math works. Family ranch since 1993. Four stops now. Sauce on the side. See you at the bar.
$99 a year. Mug ships in seven days.
One dollar off every draft. Free side with every entrée. Free birthday meal. First-Tuesday Pit Master Tasting at the Cantina. Cancel anytime. The mug is yours either way.