How To Start A Microbrewery

While the beer industry is still dominated by a few giants, more people these days are looking for a more authentic experience and are turning to small microbreweries. Microbreweries are often able to create better-tasting beers than mass producers too, which makes them a huge hit with real beer lovers. 

If you’re a beer lover yourself and consider yourself a connoisseur, know that you could turn this love and knowledge into a business by starting your own microbrewery. Being successful as a microbrewery is not easy and starting one demands a significant investment, but this could be a very lucrative business if done right. Let’s look at what you’ll need to do to start.

Look at the Economics

You first need to know how much you’ll need to spend to take your microbrewery off the ground. You can expect to pay anywhere from $300,000 to $350,000 to start a microbrewery, and that is at the lower end of the spectrum. You will need to spend money on a manufacturing location, equipment, and non-union labor, among other things. You’ll also need to invest in things like packaging, sales, and marketing.

Craft a business plan

The next step will be to craft a business plan for your brewery. It should start with a summary of the things that will be covered in the plan. The plan should include things like market analysis, objectives for the business now and in the future, an assessment of the competition, and a description of your business. 

Your business plan should also have the beginnings of your marketing strategy. You need to touch on things such as positioning, promotional tactics, and pricing. You also need to look at what the day-to-day operations in your business will be like along with forecasted costs, revenue, and expenses.

Start looking at equipment

In the beginning, you might want to go with a mix of new and used equipment to cut costs. You’ll need to invest in things like kegs, kettles, boilers, conveyors, bottling and canning lines, cooling systems, fermentation tanks, among others. In addition, you’ll need to look at things like refrigeration equipment and beer-labeling equipment.

One thing you’ll have to pay special attention to is how you label your cases. Labeling cases properly using barcodes will allow you to track shipments better and facilitate inventory control both for you and retailers.

Here, we would suggest that you look at some of the coding equipment from ITW Diagraph. They offer all sorts of solutions for different businesses and budgets, so look at what they have to offer and see which of their machines would be a good choice for your brewery.

Work on your brand

Branding is one of the most important determinants of a microbrewery’s success and this is where you should concentrate most of your efforts after quality control. Try to come up with an easily recognizable brand that will resonate with your core audience. 

The name will also be very important. It has to be meaningful and support the image you’re trying to convey. Ideally, it should also trigger strong emotions, and be easy to read. It has to be easily searchable, look great on different supports, and be copyrightable. Once you have everything in place, you’ll be able to release your first microbrew and sell it either directly to customers or through select outlets.

This is all you need to know if you want to start your microbrewery. We still suggest that you perform in-depth research on the state of the industry and your competition where you start spending your money, however.