Location, location, location

Rent, Rent, Rent. I'm sure if rent was cheap in a mall most breweries would set up shop there. But, alas........

 

I miss the old Red Oak Brewery in Guilford College. The new production brewery is in Whitsett, east of town. Back in the early 90s a nice brewery nearby was a treat. My kids, now 30 and 33, often tell me how much they liked going there. Now we have Natty Greene's, Gibbs 100, soon to be Preyer Brewing, and two or three that I know of that are in the works. It is a very good time.

 

If I remember correctly, Alewerks in VA is in a trailer park. I guess its a change from an industrial park.

 

Thanks for the kind words. We don't hide anything in Mills River... We really are that clean. Chico is the same way, except the plan of the building is a lot more jumbled due to 3 decades of expansions and revamping.

 

Bingo!
Breweries are zoned as light-industrial businesses. They have to be built in places that accommodate for that. Most new breweries will look to a existing space due to lack of funds to build from scratch. Water, sewer, gas, electric and truck traffic are huge components. For many production brewers the end goal is beer in-market. A tasting room or gift shop is secondary to the main purpose.

 

Some of the local places here have had to re-do the floors and drains after the fact, expensive when you are making beer at the same time!

 

These guys certainly went about it in a different way:
http://www.yourlittlebeachtown.com/pelican
They had a very nice place first. Then decided to make it into a Brewery.

 

"Hide" wasn't meant to be taken in a negative way bill.. Yes, even the manufacturing areas that you see on tours looks awesome and clean. My comment referred to how the large manufacturing that goes on there is not evident by visitors unless you take a tour.

 

The "location, location, location" mantra doesn't apply as much to businesses who make most of their profits from off-site sales. Specifically, most breweries make most of their money selling their product in stores and bars, not at the brewery, so they do not need foot traffic to keep them in business.

Restaurants, on the other, are foot traffic reliant - they need to get you there in order for them to make money.

I don't think wineries, also not reliant on foot traffic, are any less remote than breweries, but I'm just speculating. I'd imagine they need even more room, assuming the vineyard is on-site. Most breweries have their ingredients brought in.

 

That is true about Hill Farmstead. It is beyond the end of the world. No signs at all.

Then a local favorite TreeHouse is kind of in the middle of nowhere, but nowhere close to what HF is.

And then there's Trillium right in Boston itself.

But yeah, hard to imagine any more remote than Hill Farmstead.

 

Smaller places make more money on the sales at the brewery/taproom, guys in the business tell me that is their situation. Once they get the volume on packaged products, then that side will make more money, but those volumes need to become higher to pass the taproom revenue.

Edit - the same guys are opening a larger production facility to 'pump up the volume'.

 

I have a bunch of friends in the industry of brewing/distributing. Warehouses, mill buildings and desolate locations are ideal for these companies. The price for the locations is cheap enough to start your business.

 

Golden Road in LA is housed in different former railroad warehouses right next to active train tracks.

 

I've often brought this up in conversation about Sacramento breweries. Most are in industrial areas, where there are large parking lots that the breweries have to themselves due to being open mainly on weekends, and plenty of room for food trucks.

Quite the opposite of wineries. Breweries have a much lower barrier to entry.

 

There's a new brewery called Pinelands brewing co. Down the street from me. It off a main road towards the woods in what I think to be is an oversized storage unit or business park. Carton brewing is just a two story square brick building in Atlantic highlands suburbs.

 

Nowadays, location doesn't mean much to people who have smart phones with GPS maps. Not only should good breweries have good beer, they should also have good websites with good information (exact location and detailed map; tap/food list with prices if applicable...) listed on them.

 

Yeah...Deschutes is a really fun place to visit and Bend is so much fun itself...

 

location location and zoning and zoning.

 

Surprised it took so long to mention zoning. That's the reasoning the vast majority of the time.

 

This is the case in most cities. Breweries are typically required by towns and cities to be in an industrial zoned area because they are considered "manufacturers." This puts them in places with non-descript warehouses... In CT, the permit to open a brewery is called a "Manufacturer of Beer" Permit. Believe me, if brewers could find large places in high traffic areas with low cost per square footage, they would. Overhead is everything and those nice downtown locations are sometimes 3x or 4x the cost per sq ft. We're going through this process right now.