Poll: Would you open a brewery in 2016/17?

Can you make a good beer consistently batch to batch?

 

If you make good beer, people will come.

 

Thoughts have nothing to do with 2016-2017 but with starting up in general.

What do your Business Plan, Accountant, and Lawyer with expertise in alcoholic beverage law think?

How good is the Brewmaster you've been talking with? The most recent successful local startup near where I live the brewmaster had 10-12 years of pro experience and several national level beer competition medals to suggest that he knew what he was doing. (That's why the small restaurant chain known for fairly good food that was backing him made him a partial owner, helped finance the operation and were able to start serving his beers almost immediately.)

Do you have some investors lined up who are willing to put up the money for equipment, facilities, and operating expenses until your local audience become aware that you are out there? (e.g., you will need a bit of a cushion that will allow you to dump batches of beer until you get the operation and equipment dialed in. Opening with batchs of poor beer offered to folks who know their beer will cost you long term customers and get you the wrong kind of word of mouth advertising.)

(BTW, If you plan on serving food, who will provide it and how good are they and their food?)

 

@JDice20, have you constructed a business plan? What sort of brewery business do you want to have? Do you want to be a packaging (production brewery)? Or do you want to be more like a brewpub?

IMO there are plenty of opportunities for more businesses like brewpubs; you are essentially like a restaurant that also serve locally produced beer. A business like a production brewery is a totally different thing.

Cheers!

 

I can't say whether or not somebody else should do this, as it is a big financial risk. The other business points people on this thread make are very valid too. You need to have some idea of costs down at minimum.

Personally I wouldn't start a taproom without knowledge of how to brew myself, or alternatively if the company was a 50/50 split with somebody who does so that person is invested in the idea. If the person is simply an employee/contributor, they could decide at any time to not continue.

The person who is a homebrewer and mentor could work with you to increase your knowledge on how to brew before you even decide if this is what you want.

 

But you see most of the folks on this forum have never opened a brewery/taproom and their emotional response isn't really going to be of much help in making a deci

However, I'd say you've already started a critical step, i.e., preliminary market analysis. What's going on elsewhere would seem to me to matter very little in the sense that if you can clearly bring good local beer to an area where its lacking and in the process create an environment where people want to go relax and have a beer or two and/or pick up a growler or a few bottles then what the situation is like in say, Philly, isn't particularly relevant.

 

I still sense that the excitement here is in that it is beer and an alternative job.

The basic thing to me is whether the product you intend to make is good, repeatable and if the process to source and make that product on a routine basis is something you really want to do.

 

Then you really need to quit dreaming up business plans. Commit to a written plan with the idea that it is a living document that may have to have fundamental changes as you learn more, etc. and before you are done. Also, that business plan can be both a tool to help you think through the issues and serve as a part of your sales pitch to investors who aren't putting up anything but money. (My prediction is that you'll need a few.)

Creating that core plan also helps you to realize what work is in front of you. Eg., imagining you can learn the skill of brewing because you have a science background and an amateur brewer to coach you may be totally off base when it comes to being able to make beer that folks will plunk down their hard earned dollars to enjoy more than once. There's both science and craftsmanship involved in brewing good beer, and the craftsmanship is learned only through doing (which includes a good bit of guided trial and error learning).

Edit: BTW in my view a good business plan includes a budget which is a critical part of planning, etc. Many think budgets are just about counting dollars. I'd say it's much more than just a way of keeping track of money when used as a planning tool.

 

This is why I am trying to say to be cautious. There are a number of small breweries in my area that have opened whose product doesn't seem to even equal what my friends homebrew - although they homebrew on a much smaller scale. It's hard to go back to a places that make beer like that just because they are local with so many options available through bars and stores.

 

Exactly. You've got to pull all those warm fuzzies out of the back of your mind and expose them to the harsh light of day to see if they survive or wither and die from exposure.

 

I would say no but not because of over saturation. I can think of plenty of cities near me that a new brewery would likely do well in. But the start up capital for equipment, bureaucratic red tape, acquiring hop contracts, and making consistently good beer all sounds like a nightmare to me. I'd rather open a craft beer bar and pour some of the thousands of amazing beers already being made.