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We went on Jeffrey T. Meyer’s Good Beer Show podcast a month or so ago to talk about women and beer. My contention is that women DO drink craft beer, although my friend and Freetail Brewing Co. owner Scott Metzger said the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Boston had a panel on women and craft beer that addressed the great gender divide. While women represent 51 percent of the population, Metzger capitulated, they’re only 25 percent of craft beer drinkers.

This show is my representing for that 25 percent! We’re only going to grow. I think there’s a marketing and awareness gap here that can be easily remedied with some evangelism, starting here. (I was introduced to craft beer by women, BTW, in the Midwest. And they know more about it than any guy I’ve ever met.)

We drank Founders Cerise, Kentucky Breakfast Stout and Three Floyds Dark Lord (‘08). God Bless The Fickle Peach in Muncie, where we taped the show–and The Heorot, Founders and Three Floyds for that matter. And Belgian yeast. And enterprising craft brewers. And the Dark Lord. And …

We target specific businesses who are already on an upward trajectory. We just help them reach critical mass and go viral.

“But who in the world is growing these days?” you ask. Simple: craft breweries. Inexpensive gourmet eateries. (I love it! I’m a food writer!)

Don’t believe me? Articles abound on the craft beer growth phenomenon. This AP report references Mount Carmel Brewing Company in Cincinnati, who just starting selling 6-packs in January 2009. When it was time to restock their stores, they were shocked to find that their brews had all been bought up. They project 3,000 barrels in 2010, up from 1,000 last year.

Andy Crouch’s popular Beerscribe blog summarized a 5 percent increase in craft beer sales and a general downtrending for macrobrewers in 2008.

As for food—if it wasn’t wildly apparent from Top Chef’s ratings, America is taking comfort in gourmet during this time of economic hardship. But they’re making it as frugal as possible, cooking at home and indulging in small, inexpensive treats like Whoopie or Moon Pies and, yes, craft beer.

Who is poised for growth locally? My bet is places like Gourmet Frank’s, an upscale Chicago-style hot dog hawker set to open in Indianapolis’ Broad Ripple in about two weeks (the original location is in Palo Alto, CA, but I’ve intercepted a manager who said this one won’t be quite the same). And, of course, Brugge Brasserie, which gets so packed on weekends (even at 10 p.m.!) they’ve started sending downstairs diners to the newly built upstairs bar to dine.

The biggest problem for businesses like these right now are not necessarily attracting local customers (although social media will certainly speed that up for Frank’s) but raising awareness in ways other than regular marketing and advertising campaigns. Print media are losing market share and readers by the boatload as consumers flock to the Web to research and find goods and services.

If Brugge Brasserie wants to penetrate the national market—raise awareness and distribution—a space-spanning, SEO-amping, connection-making campaign involving a blog integrated with meaningful updates, Twitter, and Facebook is the way to do it. That goes for any of the small businesses on this page.