Expand Your Rewards Program Without Wrecking Your Margins
Get creative with your brewery's rewards program. It doesn’t have to be limited solely to beer. Food, merchandise, exclusive events - all these elements can add value and make your best customers feel special. But, be careful not to give the house away.
Quantify What You Want in Your Next Brewery Lease
Break a potential lease down and calculate its dollar impact per year - then incorporate that into what you ask for when it’s time to negotiate. Things like tenant improvement (TI) funds, exit clauses, and capped NNN increases should be treated as negotiable, not extras. Use anchoring: ask for two or three concessions you’d love to have.
Mastering Follow-Up Ship Dates: Lock in Your Sales Velocity
When you’re tracking sales velocity, it’s important to know when the product has been used up. If your communication and relationships with distributors and retailers are strong, you can often get that information directly. Otherwise, the best indicator might just be the follow-up ship date.
Sales Velocity vs Points of Distribution: Which Matters More?
Every brewery wants more placements - but more isn’t always better. Getting your beer into more bars, taprooms, or stores only helps if it’s actually moving. If your product is sitting still, it’s tying up cash, risking freshness, and damaging your brand perception.
Brewing Cost-Effective IPAs (or Any Other Style of Beer)
IPAs are on every brewery's menu, and many people come to breweries looking exclusively for IPAs, so they’re an important part of your lineup. But they’re often made with expensive ingredients. The temptation to make your IPA stand out can lead to using higher quantities or premium ingredients—without fully realizing how it affects your costs.
Slow Moving Beers Cost More Than You Think
Slow-moving beers don’t just hurt your cash flow—they block progress. Holding inventory is expensive, and it's often overlooked. It’s the equivalent of putting cash on a shelf and wondering why it’s not working for you. It ties up space, it clogs your tap lines, and it kills staff enthusiasm.
Pricing Beer for Profit: How to Maximize Margins in Different Markets
Your beer’s price sensitivity will vary depending on where it’s distributed. You have to know the market—and what its tolerance is for higher-priced beers. Then, measure this against not only the cost of goods sold (COGS), but also the shipping cost to get it there.
Pay Attention to Your Taproom Data, Not What You Read Online
Retail data that you find in trade magazines or industry reports is built on averages. And while averages can provide context, they don’t tell the full story of your brewery’s performance—especially your taproom. Those numbers can be skewed, and they certainly don’t reflect what’s happening in the trenches of your business.
The $200 Mistake You Make With Every Small Batch of Beer
Overhead is the forgotten cost in brewery economics—especially with experimental or small-batch beers. Because there’s both art and science to allocating overhead, many brewers skip it entirely or under-allocate it.