I work at and own a two year old pizza restaurant that is modestly successful. We are adding to and updating our expansion plan. This plan involves moving to a new location, increasing our hours and adding a brewpub component. We are trying to do the whole expansion for $125,000 or less if possible. I'm in charge of investigating and planning the brewpub part of the business plan and doing the start up and two year projections.
Since we have an extremely tight budget I'm attempting to do the brewpub part of this very cheaply. I have read all the posts related to start-ups and Cost of Beer Sold that I could find on this sight. I'll summarize some key pieces of advice:
1. get a consultant who has start up experience (but choose wisely)
2. get a brewing system that's slightly larger than the one that you think you'll need
3. get a job at a brewpub or a brewery for a year or more to get experience (and thereby save money)
4. budget for 2 or 3 times the amount of start up capital you think you'll need
5. don't go to a bank, get cash
6. good service, good beer, good atmosphere
It seems like the way that the business plan is headed we'll really only be able to follow #6. Let me tell you our idea and feel free to call us crazy but please say why and give us any other hints or help you can.
the Plan:
So we'd like to get a 1/2 barrel Sabco Brewmaster IV (about $4500) and 35 reconditioned kegs from Sabco that are fitted for use as both fermenting and serving vessels. We plan to brew on average once per day to start and do this in our commercial kitchen. The law in minnesota is that brewpubs are restricted to producing 500 barrels per year so this would put us well below that at about 180 barrels per year. Since we are relatively small, our main business is pizza, and our license would allow us to also sell wine we feel like this would be adequate. We want to buy only organic grains for brewing, and until we can figure out how to culture yeast, the yeast would be purchased continously. We plan to get a drinking water filtration system and we'd like to get one that is compatible with brewing as well.
the Questions?
1. Is this plan just crazy enough to work?
2. What are we totally not thinking about or missing?
Assuming that some version of this plan could work:
3. What is a realistic start up inventory cost?
4. I've seen Cost Of Beer Sold percentages range from 7% to 14% on these boards. I'm guessing that ours will be on the high end of that, espescially if labor is included. What do you think?
5. I'm crudely calculating that our beer will take, from brewing to serving, 30 days. That is if we force carbonate. So if we keep the varieties that we serve to a minimum, say 3 to 5 roughly equally popular kinds, we can keep recycling the spent kegs as fermenting vessels. This is where the 35 kegs number comes from -- at any given time about 30 kegs will be tied up in fermentation and we'll be serving 3 to 5. Are there any problems with this part of the plan? Suggestions?
6. What miscellaneous equipment would you suggest?: grain mill, pumps, refractometer, keq washing facilities, taps etc. etc.
Thank you for any and all help you can give me on this. By the way we are Spokes Pizza Collective a worker-owned cooperative, vegetarian restaurant that offers bicycle delivery and we are based in Minneapolis. My name is John Langley.
Since we have an extremely tight budget I'm attempting to do the brewpub part of this very cheaply. I have read all the posts related to start-ups and Cost of Beer Sold that I could find on this sight. I'll summarize some key pieces of advice:
1. get a consultant who has start up experience (but choose wisely)
2. get a brewing system that's slightly larger than the one that you think you'll need
3. get a job at a brewpub or a brewery for a year or more to get experience (and thereby save money)
4. budget for 2 or 3 times the amount of start up capital you think you'll need
5. don't go to a bank, get cash
6. good service, good beer, good atmosphere
It seems like the way that the business plan is headed we'll really only be able to follow #6. Let me tell you our idea and feel free to call us crazy but please say why and give us any other hints or help you can.
the Plan:
So we'd like to get a 1/2 barrel Sabco Brewmaster IV (about $4500) and 35 reconditioned kegs from Sabco that are fitted for use as both fermenting and serving vessels. We plan to brew on average once per day to start and do this in our commercial kitchen. The law in minnesota is that brewpubs are restricted to producing 500 barrels per year so this would put us well below that at about 180 barrels per year. Since we are relatively small, our main business is pizza, and our license would allow us to also sell wine we feel like this would be adequate. We want to buy only organic grains for brewing, and until we can figure out how to culture yeast, the yeast would be purchased continously. We plan to get a drinking water filtration system and we'd like to get one that is compatible with brewing as well.
the Questions?
1. Is this plan just crazy enough to work?
2. What are we totally not thinking about or missing?
Assuming that some version of this plan could work:
3. What is a realistic start up inventory cost?
4. I've seen Cost Of Beer Sold percentages range from 7% to 14% on these boards. I'm guessing that ours will be on the high end of that, espescially if labor is included. What do you think?
5. I'm crudely calculating that our beer will take, from brewing to serving, 30 days. That is if we force carbonate. So if we keep the varieties that we serve to a minimum, say 3 to 5 roughly equally popular kinds, we can keep recycling the spent kegs as fermenting vessels. This is where the 35 kegs number comes from -- at any given time about 30 kegs will be tied up in fermentation and we'll be serving 3 to 5. Are there any problems with this part of the plan? Suggestions?
6. What miscellaneous equipment would you suggest?: grain mill, pumps, refractometer, keq washing facilities, taps etc. etc.
Thank you for any and all help you can give me on this. By the way we are Spokes Pizza Collective a worker-owned cooperative, vegetarian restaurant that offers bicycle delivery and we are based in Minneapolis. My name is John Langley.
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