When I am talking to future brewery owners about their business plan, I commonly hear people saying, “I’m just going to make good beer and people will buy it”. Unfortunately, in my experience, whilst making sh*t hot beer is super important, this is nowhere near enough to be successful in this business. With an endeavour to help any future brewery owners, I’ve attempted in this article to outline the some of the most crucial elements, that in my opinion, can make your business thrive.
The four high-level elements that I think require equal attention when starting a brewpub are quality beer, hospitality experience (the experience your customers are having when they're at your venue), branding & marketing and business management.
01/ Quality Beer
High quality beer is the heart and soul of your business, so treat it as such. Unfortunately for you you’re going to have to taste your beers, a lot. You want to know them like the back of your hand at all parts of the process.
The 3 high level focal points are:
1. Recipe design,
2. Process and procedures &
3. Product analysis – QA/QC
Initially, you should focus on your business’ recipe design, process, and procedures. Consider starting a basic lab and having to do some analysis, even if it’s not full kit.
1. Recipe design
An over complicated recipe is a one-way ticket to f*ck-up city. Well maybe I don’t need to be that dramatic but when you’re brewing fulltime you need to ensure that you’re capable of doing all the things that you need to do as well and run your brewery. Why make your life harder than it needs to be. You might just find that those 16 different hop additions could be done in 3 and might actually make the same or even better beer.
Remember, you’re a commercial brewer now, when you're building your range of beers try and build some recipes around using the same base malt, it sounds crazy but trust me. Try and build your recipes using ½ or full bags of hops. Share spec malts between different beers so that you don’t have half bags sitting around forever. The incremental gains you get from small ingredient changes are far outweighed by loading up your beer with old stale ingredients.
2. Process and procedures
Something I always try and drill into any brewer I am training is that beer is made in your fermenter and not in your brewhouse. You can make amazing beer with ok wort and terrible beer with amazing wort. Don’t get me wrong, brewhouse is important but cellar is more so. Focus your attention on fermentation management and happy yeast and you’re a long way to making great beer. Additionally, you want to limit any ingress of dissolved oxygen into your beer. And we’re talking parts per billion here not parts per million. So, you must be pedantic, and you must build procedures that think about every little nook and cranny, any opportunity to introduce air/oxygen to your beer should be removed as much as possible.
You should dedicate a fair chunk of time when you are commissioning your brewery building your processes and procedures to that they are easy to perform and very repeatable. It’s consistency of process that delivers consistency of product. Don’t be a cowperson, do it the same every time. And when you are tweaking process, be somewhat scientific about it and only change one variable at a time.
3. Product analysis – QA/QC
To ensure the consistency of your beer, I would suggest that at bare minimum you start with is:
1. pH, don’t use pool strips. Don’t buy the cheapest pH meter that you can get. Get something you can trust, calibrate it every day and look after the probe.
2. Density, a decent certified hydrometer works well, but if you can afford it, a handheld density meter is fantastic, easier, and faster to use.
Other items that can help greatly in order of priority (if you can afford them):
1. Dissolved oxygen meter
2. Co2 meter
3. Alcolyser
4. ATP swabbing
5. Spectrphotometer
6. Some type of micro testing capability (plates or PCR etc)
Also worth noting you should record all of this consistently so that the data is actually useful and can help you improve not just recording for the sake of recording.
In summary, keep your recipes simple, build processes that are robust & easily repeatable and test and record as much as you can with the best equipment you can afford.
02/ Hospitality Experience
Another essential part of building a successful brewpub is the Hospitality Experience you will provide. You can have the best beer in the world but if it’s served in a dirty glass by a grumpy bar tender in a hot shed with uncomfortable seats and dirty toilets, I’d suggest you’re not going to get a lot of customers. Ask yourself this, what would you want your customers to say about your brewery after they leave?
We constantly bang on about this, understanding who your customers are is crucial to building your business. Who are they, what do they want and what can you offer them to keep them coming back? You must do research and really understand your customers! I can’t say this more clearly, your business exists to serve your customers and should not be about what you like, it’s about what they like. Your business should be focussed on what your customers want.
Here are some points you should consider providing to achieve a great hospitality experience:
1. Have a nice venue where people want to come.
2. Temperature – fans, aircon, heaters, blankets, dogs to cuddle etc
3. Lights – Good lighting deserves to be Instagrammed.
4. Noise – echoy and loud environments are off putting, often overlooked but so important.
5. Well trained and friendly staff.
6. Clean glasses!!!!
I’m also a massive fan of being a “Yes Venue”. “What’s a Yes Venue?” I hear you say;
A Yes Venue is very simple. If someone wants something, you give it to them unless it is totally unreasonable. If someone comes in and you’re a fancy cocktail bar and they want a Bundy and Coke, you give them a Bundy and Coke, because they’re a customer and they want to give you money.
In summary, create a comfortable, inviting, and safe space where people can enjoy their time. Very clearly understand what your customer wants and give it to them.
03/ Branding & Marketing
In my humble opinion, branding and marketing is as important, if not more important than your beer. I’m sorry guys but there is plenty of average beer that is well marketed and very successful. Being a brewer at heart, I do not condone neglecting beer quality and prioritising branding and marketing but intended to illustrate the point, amazing beer with a crap brand leads to a crap business.
You need to think about how you are different, why would someone buy your pale ale over anyone else's pale ale? What is intriguing, noteworthy, interesting, fun or exciting about your product, process, brand etc? You need to do more than make good beer, you need to tell a story, make your customers feel something.
Marketing 101
1. Understand who your customers are
2. Understand what their problems or pain points are
3. Solve their problem with your product
4. Tell them very clearly about how you solve their problem
5. Take their money
Congratulations, you are now a qualified marketing consultant. Just jokes. But in all seriousness, follow the 5 steps above and you will be better placed than most of your competitors.
04/ Business Management
“It is great to understand what it takes to make good beer and all the processes that go into that. But more importantly, you need to understand your numbers.” - Anthony Clem
It goes without saying, but I will say it, and then it will be said. It doesn’t matter what else you do, if you manage your business poorly you will fail. There, I said it.
The reality is that running and managing a business is a different skill set to starting a business, brewing beer, making sandwiches or anything else you’re good at. If you don’t already possess these skills, you need to either learn and learn fast or hire someone who does.
I have broken down some key points that we’ve found to be important. But there are endless resources online about business so jump on the ol’ google and have a sniff around. Sniff like a pig hunting for truffles.
1. Understand your costs and margin.
If you don’t understand your costs, you can’t understand your business. The maths shows that a decrease in costs has a much greater impact on your bottom line than an increase in sales. Dig in and unpack this, report on it regularly and review consistently.
2. Culture and building your team.
Your people can be make or break for any business. Creating an inclusive and positive environment where employees can thrive is crucial for staff retention and just generally having a nice place to work. I am a believer that you can learn skills easily enough so focus on hiring for attitude and aptitude.
3. Planning and staying on task.
Having a good plan and staying focussed is so important. If you tend to constantly change course and chase the newest shiniest object, then you will never finish anything and do everything poorly. Make a plan, set goals and keep working towards them. Don’t change tack at the drop of a hat.
4. Continuous improvement
Create a culture where questioning “why do we do it that way?” is a great way to keep everyone accountable and continuously improve. There’s no shame in admitting that you do something sub-optimally because you just needed to at the start, or you hadn’t thought of it that way. When we are open to change, we can let our business organically evolve and improve as well as leveraging everyone in your team’s unique experiences and perspectives.
Conclusion:
There is so much more to running a successful brewpub than making good beer. In reality, good beer is just one piece of the puzzle. I believe you need to give equal focus to your hospitality experience, branding & marketing and business management. At WellBrewd we do everything we can to help these types of businesses succeed. If you are interested in learning more from our experienced team please reach out here…. https://www.wellbrewd.com.au/contact-us
Comments