Nimbus Brewery - how to ruin a good thing

Dan here.  I've been a fan of Nimbus Brewery in Tucson for some time. There's a lot to like about the place - it is a short drive, it is in the middle of nowhere which cuts down on the # of people/keeps it to regulars, and the quality of beer and food has always been high while the costs are relatively low. I'm not aware of another place where a couple of big guys can go and have a nice dinner and stumble away a few hours later for less than 50 bucks.

Problem is that ever since the Nimbus Bistro on Tanque Verde opened, the Brewery location has been in a gradual decline. I think the problem lies solely at the feet of management for not noticing/doing anything about it. Was there this past Saturday, here are some faults right off the top of my head:

Still no mug club since 2009. Mug clubs encourage regulars and when you're in the middle of nowhere you need to foster those relationships.

They have no growlers (and apparently haven't for 3 or 4 months?!?) so we were unable to take some beer to a friend's place when we left. How can a brewery not have growlers for such an extended period of time?

They were out of onion rings. Pretty common food - not only is it an appetizer, it is a side for some meals, and the ingredient in some of the burgers - how can you be out of this early on a Saturday night?

Out of perhaps 12 tap handles, maybe 2 of them were pointing in the proper direction. One had a flaky piece of paper on it with handwriting detailing the newest beer (use a tap handle with blackboard/chalk made for that purpose!). It was impossible to see what beers they had available without looking at the menu, and since all ordering is done at the bar where the tap handles are, this is extremely inconvenient/frustrating.

Only one of the two urinal stalls had the newspaper tacked up and it was Friday's (not Saturday's) paper.

The paper dispensing machine to dry hands had been ripped off the wall and was missing altogether / only option was to use the blow-dryer (if that is by design/on purpose to save money on paper, at least clean the glue off the wall!).

Guest beer has been A-1 for the last 6 months or a year. When you have a guest beer for that long, the whole purpose behind having a guest beer to give regular customers variety is lost. A-1 is like any of their other beers to me now - and wasn't even that great to begin with. The fact they have a big A-1 neon sign hanging up does not give me a warm fuzzy that this will change any time soon.

This last grievance is more personal. The "special" beer Nimbus had made was a "Smoked Rye". Smoked beer and rye beer are my two least favorite types of beer. If they had brewed it with toilet water in an old septic tank they could really go for broke...

I shared some of these concerns with one of the Bartenders. She explained that the management is trying to get out of Nimbus Bistro partnership & their attention is focused there. That's the same thing I heard from a different bartender 3 or 4 months ago. Problem is if they let the Brewery go to hell while they're fooling around with the Bistro they will have a new headache when they return to the Brewery.... it is a lot easier to retain existing customers than acquire new ones... and as I said, with their isolated location they should be doing everything they can to keep existing customers.

Nimbus: Throw us a bone and bring back the @$^@$ing mug club! I can't believe they wouldn't be able to recoup the cost of the mugs in a short period of time. If they are really in such dire straits that they cannot afford the upfront cost associated with buying a few hundred mugs, they might be closer to going out of business than I think!