[quote=“560sdl”]Personally I could not imagine trying to open a restaurant today, but I am sure glad my clients do.
Recently designed stores for a small pizza chain. They got a good little following and tried to with the “best pizza in DC” by Washington Mag. readers. There was a place to vote online with comments. How easy for a competitor to trash the newcomer autonomously?
In the real world, with the internet today and facebook etc, one person has a bad experience and the whole world know about it within minutes. THAT is very scary![/quote]
There are something you just have to experience for yourself, yeah there are poeple that will beleive any damn thing that is written.
tha’ts why you take ratings with a grain of salt.
How about a brew-on-premises set up? Basically you offer space and equipment to people who want to brew… for beginners, you provide instruction, fermentation space and services, bottling equipment and services, etc. Customers could be people who love to brew but don’t want to invest in the equipment (or live where it’s not convenient to brew) schedule brew time and rent equipment to brew. They could also be folks looking to brew a couple large batches a year for personal consumption. And the space could be rented out to a local Brew Club to use…
Add other services… labels, custom caps or bottles, racking, bottling… anything really.
You would need the space (with 2 or 3 sink stations with stainless counters and storage racks, ventilated and built out to safely accommodate 5 or 6 brew stations), equipment to brew extract and AG (in batches up to, say, 20 gallons), bottles (to sell), kegs (to rent), storage space for ingredients, insurance, and probably some things I’ve not included.
Without running numbers, it has to be an easier start up than a brew pub… and, you can start small and scale up.
i’ve been toying with the same idea but just brewing and kegging, self distribute and sell to local bars. don’t want the hastle of food or a tasting room. there’s too much crap thats gets the fire marshall and food inspector involved. K.I.S.S. m’kay?
Brew and keg and self-distribute AND make sales calls, fight for and maintain your taps, and not make a dime until you are selling LOTS of beer, which requires that you spend lots of time on the non-brewing part of the business (unless you hire a sales staff or have a partner who does it). If your state allows you to sell directly to customers at the brewery, then you could make some money on those easy sales while you try to get your product noticed in the crowded craft beer niche.
There’s a podcast/internet radio show out there called BrewStrong, from The Brewing Network. One of the hosts, Jamil Zainasheff has just started Heretic Brewing. They have a host from another show who is in the process of starting a brewpub, Kinetic Brewing. They have had 4 shows over the last couple of months about Going Pro. It’s been fascinating. Here’s a link to the first in the series:
your still going to have to deal with ATF and tons of other legal stuff[/quote]
i realize that, i’ve got all the forms in hand from the ttb and state licquor comm.
Brew and keg and self-distribute AND make sales calls, fight for and maintain your taps, and not make a dime until you are selling LOTS of beer, which requires that you spend lots of time on the non-brewing part of the business (unless you hire a sales staff or have a partner who does it). If your state allows you to sell directly to customers at the brewery, then you could make some money on those easy sales while you try to get your product noticed in the crowded craft beer niche.[/quote]
our state has changed the law to where i can self distribute. our area is a little different as there isn’t much competition if any for craft beer.i can get my beer in at least 3 towns without any problems and possibly 2 more bigger towns on of them being about 25000 people.
This is how I started brewing in the mid-90s. The place was great. Brick walls, cement floors, 100 recipes to choose from, a pizza place next door that would bring food over, etc. But the owner told me he had $100,000 in the copper kettles (6 of them, maybe 15-20 gallons each), the custom plumbing and the walk-in coolers. Plus, people usually think that the price is not worth the beer… not knowing that it’s not just beer but entertainment too. I think the batch sizes were around 12 gallons and the lowest price tag in the place was $100. The bigger or better beers were closer to $150 and you ended up with about 72 bombers (22oz). The place was very fun… if you were brewing, the people in the bottling area would share their beer with you and if you were bottling, you would share. He ended up going out of business which is how I got into homebrewing!
Our local BOP is about $115 for an all-inclusive 5-gallon extract batch. I like the owner, but I just can’t justify that for anything but an introductory tutorial. His shop and BOP are bare-bones and his inventory is reasonably priced, so I can’t imagine he has a steep margin on the BOP.
We have two brewpubs in the area. One is downtown, the food and beer are awesome, and it’s generally very busy. The other is in a more retail-heavy area (big box stores) and the traffic is just average (though, less than the surrounding restaurants). The biggest complaint I hear about the second one is the food is mediocre. Personally, I’ve never had a meal I was pleased with (and I’m easy to please). Next time you’re in a brewpub, take a look around the other tables and count the glasses of beer versus the plates of food. Most of the customers won’t be drinking and the ones that are will have food, too. If your food sucks, the best beer in the state won’t save it.
I think that’s spot on. There is a local chain here (maybe all over the country?) called The Ram. There are a few around this area and I would call the beer “good”. I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. But the brewpub is very nice… pub tables and booths, lots of big-screen TVs and pretty good food. A lot of people drining beer but the people who are drinking soda and eating seem to have a good time as well. There are brewery tours and tastings and the place seems to run pretty nicely & has been around long enough that it must be doing decently. But again, you have to enlist the talents of someone who is food-saavy. I think the best possible situation for this would be that someone wants to open a really nice gastro-pub that involves great food and beer brewed on the premises. Except this person doesn’t have anyone to do the brewing part so he calls YOU to ask you if you would do the honors. He would own everything but you would get your feet wet and get a feel for the business. Then ditch that (unless it’s really sweet) and open your own! Ah, the stuff of dreams.
I think that brewers who are thinking of opening a brewpub can get caught up in the brewery side of the business and forget that a brewpub is a restaurant that has a very small sideline in beer production. If, at a bare minimum, 2/3 of your receipts aren’t food, you’ll go out of business. At the scales that are more typical (7-20 bbl, 50-300 seats), 80-90% of receipts will be food in order to turn a profit. The up-front and operating costs of the restaurant will likely exceed those of the brewery too.
[quote=“a10t2”]Gruneun wrote:
Next time you’re in a brewpub, take a look around the other tables and count the glasses of beer versus the plates of food. Most of the customers won’t be drinking and the ones that are will have food, too.
I think that brewers who are thinking of opening a brewpub can get caught up in the brewery side of the business and forget that a brewpub is a restaurant that has a very small sideline in beer production. If, at a bare minimum, 2/3 of your receipts aren’t food, you’ll go out of business. At the scales that are more typical (7-20 bbl, 50-300 seats), 80-90% of receipts will be food in order to turn a profit. The up-front and operating costs of the restaurant will likely exceed those of the brewery too.[/quote]
kinda a point along these lines is that the brew pubs i have been too are also full service bars and i see a lot of cocktails and bmc getting consumed. from what ive seen i would bet it is half of the alcohol sales
[quote=“Gruneun”]Our local BOP is about $115 for an all-inclusive 5-gallon extract batch. I like the owner, but I just can’t justify that for anything but an introductory tutorial. His shop and BOP are bare-bones and his inventory is reasonably priced, so I can’t imagine he has a steep margin on the BOP.
We have two brewpubs in the area. One is downtown, the food and beer are awesome, and it’s generally very busy. The other is in a more retail-heavy area (big box stores) and the traffic is just average (though, less than the surrounding restaurants). The biggest complaint I hear about the second one is the food is mediocre. Personally, I’ve never had a meal I was pleased with (and I’m easy to please). Next time you’re in a brewpub, take a look around the other tables and count the glasses of beer versus the plates of food. Most of the customers won’t be drinking and the ones that are will have food, too. If your food sucks, the best beer in the state won’t save it.[/quote]
thats pretty spendy to all the BOP I have seen. All the ones I have seen are 10-15g of beer (AG) for 100-200 depending on what you make, wines are around the same price range to
I know it’s not EXACTLY about my original post, in that it doesn’t talk about actual cost, but I found the new video here on NB very interesting. It’s where Jake talks to Kristen England about opening his new brewery “Pour Decisions.” Definitely worth watching, I think!
[quote=“ShortTom007”]I know it’s not EXACTLY about my original post, in that it doesn’t talk about actual cost, but I found the new video here on NB very interesting. It’s where Jake talks to Kristen England about opening his new brewery “Pour Decisions.” Definitely worth watching, I think!
Ken Lenard Wrote: But the owner told me he had $100,000 in the copper kettles (6 of them, maybe 15-20 gallons each), the custom plumbing and the walk-in coolers. Plus, people usually think that the price is not worth the beer… not knowing that it’s not just beer but entertainment too.
(sorry, I can’t figure out how to add a quote to a reply)
That’s a pretty steep start up… but equipment does cost, and the floor plan set up is key as well.
I enjoy the hell out of brewing, from sanitation, brewing, fermentation, bottling… the whole nine. When I talk brewing with non-brewer friends, but who really enjoy beer, it’s like I’m Bill Nye the science guy, and they are fascinated, but don’t want to take the plunge. I’m thinking to run a BOP, you have to be brewer/entertainer and find some way to make the whole process fun and exciting…
I think that brewers who are thinking of opening a brewpub can get caught up in the brewery side of the business and forget that a brewpub is a restaurant that has a very small sideline in beer production. If, at a bare minimum, 2/3 of your receipts aren’t food, you’ll go out of business. At the scales that are more typical (7-20 bbl, 50-300 seats), 80-90% of receipts will be food in order to turn a profit. The up-front and operating costs of the restaurant will likely exceed those of the brewery too.[/quote]
+1 to that! To keep a brewpub open and successful you need to have both good beer and good food. If you’re food isn’t good, people won’t return no matter how good the beer is. Sure you’ll get a few beer geeks returning, but you won’t get families, group outings like dinners, holiday parties etc… Turning a profit in the food industry is very tough. Extremely tight margins. The pub part is a huge help, but if you’re not making money on the food side, you will fail.
