New Trillium Expansion Plans

And Canton is moving to a new “forever home” which will definitely let them expand production if needed

 

Apparently you've never been to the Trillium Garden on the Greenway. This will obviously require more of an investment, but if nothing else the Fenway location will be mobbed six months out of the year during baseball season. As was mentioned previously, it will also be a much easier locale to access for those in the Emerald Necklace (read: Brookline).

 

How, exactly? How do you make more money without making more product (you do know that you need to sell product to make money right?)?

The Canton expansion is years off by their own admission. So we’re talking about spending money to open a new facility without making any more beer until that expansion happens. It’s not possible for them to make money unless that have someone more to sell.

The greenway isn’t relevant because they didn’t have a full service bar in Boston when it was open.

 

They can make the same amount of beer but sell it at a higher price to make more money. Instead of canning beer at $4/16oz they can sell it on draft for $8/12oz or whatever.

 

That’s significantly higher labor cost and overhead isn’t it? Sell someone a case of beer a minute or a 12oz pour every thirty minutes? It costs trillium way more to build and staff a bar where someone drinks maybe 64oz of beer total over their visit than to keep canning the beer and charging $22/4pk and selling it by the case.

 

I get that costs increase, but whatever other criticisms people may have of Trillium I trust that they’ve done the math such that they believe the incremental revenue will outweigh the costs of rent/construction.

There’s probably also a joke to be made about employee wages vis a vis costs...

 

The new Fenway location will have a Farmers license. They will produce at least some on site so they can sell cans there as well. It may be 1500 sq feet, but they pumped out a lot of beer out of old fort point which was small.

 

According to a press release, they'll have a 1 bbl system on site. Seems like a move to meet minimum requirements for the license

 

The Fenway one will be a shitshow on the level of the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Every Sully-Mac and his pink hat girlfriend will cram in there to pre game on double and triple IPA’s for as long as possible before going into the games. I’ll definitely aim to check it out on a non game day.

 

And it will be mobbed the other six months with BU students. It's a goldmine.

 

It being packed will be more a "craft beer taproom in 2019" thing rather than exclusively Trillium.

On more than one occasion now I've been at Trillium and people are trickling over from Harpoon because the line is over an hour long.

There aren't too many tap rooms left in the Boston area that you can just stroll into on a Saturday afternoon/evening.

 

Not to mention the Colleges of the Fenway, all of which are a bit closer than BU (Wentworth Institute of Technology [represent!], Emmanuel College, Wheelock [RIP], Simmons, Mass Art, Mass Pharm).

Northeastern is just a quick walk across the Fens as well.

 

I don't think college kids (most of whom are under 21) can or want to pay the premium for Trillium.

 

If you've seen the amount of Canada Goose jackets on the BU campus, they will pay for premium products (or use mommy/daddy's credit card to do so...)

 

Perhaps true of everyone except BU students who are already used to paying more for things than they are worth.

Zing!!!

 

Haha that was good.

 

Don’t forget the Maserati’s with Supreme vinyl wraps.

 

I think this statement, combined with the guy earlier who said something about Trillium not being about neckbeards anymore, is completely what it's all about now for Trillium - expansion beyond Beer Advocate...and focus on mainstream beer drinkers. They're definitely taking their marketing machine and moving it from the upscale downtown beer drinker to both the baseball pre/post game crowd, but also to the college crowd. This is some serious market saturation effort going on. Also, you've got their new beers Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse IPA and The Six States stout - clear affirmations that they're starting their creep towards a more focused move targeting the rest of New England in some way. What way - who knows? I wonder if this new facility somehow ties into future distro plans? Distro is a pretty hard nut to crack but Trillium has proven pretty good at making money and I wouldn't be surprised if its owners have their eyes on a huge prize somewhere down the road. The Wicked Weed model is largely based on distro, and at this point, I'm not sure where Trillium is compared to where WW was prior to its purchase by ABI, but I think they're much bigger - so I guess it could be argued both ways as to how much more value they can create prior to selling out to one of the big boys. I'm stumped at this point as to what lies in between Trillium's current plans and that inevitable sale...and these current expansion plans - well, maybe they're just all part of growing market share and dollars, but I suspect there's a lot more to it.