Equipment Installation and Buildout Costs - Sanity Check Please

[briangaylor]

Anyone willing to share what their expenses were on the buildout of their space?

We are looking at a ~9000 square foot building that is brand new and an empty cube of a warehouse. Between money we have earmarked for the installation and buildout and tenant improvement money from the developer we will have 300k to:

1. Prepare the brewhouse/cellar floor
2. Install 20bbl brewhouse + 4 FVs + 1 BT (rigging and all electical/water/etc)
3. Install boiler and glycol systems.
4. Section off and create a 1500sq ft taproom with its own HVAC. Nothing crazy in the taproom (10 taps, basic bar and table seating, no food being made in house, no hyper-expensive fixtures of 90inch tvs).
5. $25k in architect/mechanical engineer fees.

While a number of projects I have numbers for (sloping floors, drains, etc) some of the rest remain elusive and will depend a lot on what we come up with our architect. Seems a bit chicken and egg for knowing if you have enough investment/loan money. With our currently investment amount we have the 300k mentioned above. Think this is easily accomplished? Am I crazy?

[Montanaandy]

Buildout Costs

IMHO $300K seems a bit on the low side for a 9000 sq ft space at least based on our experiences. Granted we are in Colorado and were taking an existing building and gutting everything but the 4 walls but we essentially had a 5000+ sq ft shell or a space roughly 1/2 the size of what you have. We were looking at roughly $300K to buildout the 5000 sq ft. The taproom was nice but nothing too fancy. The larger expenses involved the plumbing - having 1 1/2" lines installed, hookup fees to the municipal sewer system ($75K) and electrical (3 Phase). We used a local contractor that has done numerous breweries in and around Denver and they did a line item on each expense which allowed us to see exactly where the money was going.

[TiminOz]

I agree with Montanaandy, I think the 20BBL brewhouse, FV's, brite, mill, auger, keg washer, kegs and chiller will take up 300K. That does not include the boiler and associated piping.

[briangaylor]

The 300k is exclusive of buying the actual equipment. I am strictly talking about the buildout of the space and installation of the already purchased equipment.

Thanks,

Brian

[arrkev]

Then you shouldnt have a problem, We have just launched a 5000 sq ft, 20hl system and are in it for almost 650K now but that ioncludes purchase. I would suggest getting a main contactor to do the bulk of the work and make it his responsibility to sub contact everything else which will be in his quote ( you should approve all sub contractors). get a few quotes. make sure your fitter is experienced in brewery setup, we had a problem with the wrong size of pipe and lack of high pressure welding on our boiler which had to be done after we had launched, amongst a number of other issues due to lack of relative experience. I would also allocate 10-15k for secondary eqipment, hoses, clamps pumps, solenoids etc, etc,etc...
you probably have but i thought I should mention the money you will need on start up for ingredients,bottles, growlers, kegs etc. and wages while you are still waiting for that first brew on your new system to come out the other end! take into account your client payment plan, is it another 30 or 60 days before you see any cash rolling in. if thats looked after and you get the quotes, you'll be good.

[LupulinBrewing]

I'm with Montanaandy on this one. I think $300 is a bit low. You won't believe how fast things add up. We are in about 3200 sf and just the plumbing alone was $100k, cutting all the concrete and running pipes and drains. Ours was around $450K for our space. Figure to spend $30K+ on steam piping and $10-20k on glycol piping depending on how long the runs are.

Matt