Hello there! After a year of so of research and planning to open a brewpub I've recently decided to go another route and open a beer store with tasting bar. Basically similar concept to City Beer Store in San Francisco, if you've ever heard of it. Anyhow, during the planning of the brewpub I never thought much about distribution because I had no interest in distributing...so anyhow now here I am trying to get this beer store going and I know very little about how brewers work with retailers. I have not been able to find much info from the retailers point of view on this, so hoping some of you will be willing to share your experiences. First of all, here is my concept:
The beer store will stock about 300 bottled/canned beers to start with; some chilled and some on the shelf. Customers will be able pick their own mix and match six pack or case. We'll also have a bar with up to 10 constantly rotating taps (served out of two five-keg kegerators). All beer will be served in appropriate glassware, and we will do growler fills. We want to really focus on the smaller breweries with an excellent variety for the serious beer connoisseur who's seen it all (and have them be shocked at all the beers we have that they haven't tried yet). We'll have light snacks; several variations of a ploughman's platter to aid in beer tasting.
Here are my questions:
-Do you have minimums for bottles/cans/kegs? (and what are they)
-Do you provide tap handles or does the retailer pay for those?
-Do you provide or sell glassware? (we want to be able to sell growlers and glassware from all different breweries so people can collect them)
-If you self distribute and you are not local to a retailer who wants your beer, do you ship? How does that work if any of you do this?
-If you go through a distributor, do you still interact with retailers who desire more product knowledge or who want to establish a relationship with you for branded merchandise?
-Any experiences of relationships you have with retailers you would like to share?
-Anything else I need to consider?
Thank you so much--this forum is AWESOME! Thanks for reading this and I look forward to hopefully doing business with some of you soon!
The beer store will stock about 300 bottled/canned beers to start with; some chilled and some on the shelf. Customers will be able pick their own mix and match six pack or case. We'll also have a bar with up to 10 constantly rotating taps (served out of two five-keg kegerators). All beer will be served in appropriate glassware, and we will do growler fills. We want to really focus on the smaller breweries with an excellent variety for the serious beer connoisseur who's seen it all (and have them be shocked at all the beers we have that they haven't tried yet). We'll have light snacks; several variations of a ploughman's platter to aid in beer tasting.
Here are my questions:
-Do you have minimums for bottles/cans/kegs? (and what are they)
-Do you provide tap handles or does the retailer pay for those?
-Do you provide or sell glassware? (we want to be able to sell growlers and glassware from all different breweries so people can collect them)
-If you self distribute and you are not local to a retailer who wants your beer, do you ship? How does that work if any of you do this?
-If you go through a distributor, do you still interact with retailers who desire more product knowledge or who want to establish a relationship with you for branded merchandise?
-Any experiences of relationships you have with retailers you would like to share?
-Anything else I need to consider?
Thank you so much--this forum is AWESOME! Thanks for reading this and I look forward to hopefully doing business with some of you soon!
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