Setting Up Your Own Brewery And Distillery: 10 Things You Need To Conside
Setting up your own brewery and distillery is exciting, make no doubt about it. As one of the most unique businesses you could choose to run, it’s both as artisan and creative as it is technical and scientific, and is something you can really pour your heart into.
Of course, anything worth doing isn’t easy, and setting up this sort of business is no different. It’ll take a lot of strategising and planning to get yourself up and running.
This article is here to help with that. Here are ten things you need to consider as you embark on this new adventure!
1. Picking Your Location
Your location is one of the trickiest parts to get right with this sort of business, so it makes sense to prioritise it early on. Your facility will have to be big enough to house a lot of hefty equipment and have access to enough water and electricity to power it.
You’ll also have to think about how close your base of operations is to customers, suppliers, and distributors, and find a happy medium between them.
2. Understanding Regulations and Licensing
When you’re setting up a brewery and distillery, you’ll find regulations and licensing laws to be very strict, given that you’re dealing with alcohol. The law can change considerably depending on where you’re located, so make sure you contact the local authorities to learn what you need to do.
You’ll need a number of different licenses covering production and distribution, and regular inspections will need to take place on your premises to make sure everything is up to standard.
3. Purchasing Your Equipment
By far the biggest expense early on will be the purchasing of your equipment, and exactly what you need depends on what sort of beverages you’ll be making. It’s also not just about what you buy, but how it all works together; a fully functioning brewery and distillery has many moving parts, both figuratively speaking and literally, so you’ll need to book consultations with multiple manufacturers to determine what you need.
Consider the scale of your business carefully: it’s likely best to start off with a smaller operation first.
4. Product Design
A good chunk of your time in the beginning stages should be figuring out product design. It’s not enough to simply make a bog standard beer or spirit – people have come to expect unique, avant-garde products, so you’ll need to think hard about what sort of beverage you want to sell.
To come up with something different, you’ll need to experiment with various strains and varieties of ingredients, and do plenty of pre-sale taste testing to get an idea of what people like. It’ll take you a while to settle on the perfect flavour, but you’ll get there.
5. The Importance of High Hygiene Standards
When you’re dealing with food and drink, food safety and hygiene standards are critical. Once you’ve got your equipment set up, you’ll need to prioritise a strategy for cleaning everything efficiently after use, which may require the purchase of more gear.
For example, you might need to contact a spray nozzle specialist, given that you’ll need to guarantee cleaning solutions are applied consistently and efficiently throughout your machinery, and you must develop a set checklist so that you know everything has been sanitised appropriately.
6. Finding High-Quality Ingredients
Your products are only as good as what you make them with, so it’s crucial to source quality ingredients from sources you can trust. Research what suppliers are available in your area, and meet with them to discuss what sort of standards they adhere to: you’ll need to investigate what makes high-quality botanicals, for example, so that you can verify the validity of a supplier’s claim.
7. Managing Your Finances
A brewery and distillery has the potential to make you a lot of money, but there are also a lot of overheads to consider. You’ve got the running of the facility and machines, ingredients coming from here, there, and everywhere, the constant costs of cleaning and sanitisation, packaging, and more, so it’s key to make sure that you have a clear breakdown of what’s going out and what’s coming in early on.
Establish a good working relationship with an accountant, and check in with your finances every month to ensure things are moving in the right direction.
8. Don’t Forget About Your Environmental Impact
These days, there’s a great deal of pressure on all businesses to adhere to environmentally friendly practices, and rightly so. Businesses – particularly those that conduct large-scale manufacturing – have a large carbon footprint, and so need to be kept in check.
You can do your bit by investing in sustainable, energy-saving machinery and doing your best to cut down on distribution-related emissions where you can. You should also employ strict recycling practices when it comes to your ingredients.
9. Why Marketing Matters
It’s simply not enough to have a great-tasting product anymore – it has to look, feel, and smell the part. Particularly with food, it’s essential to engage the full spectrum of senses.
Everything from your packaging design (the colour scheme and shape of the bottle, for example) to the sort of social media content you’re putting out matters, so it’s a good idea to approach a professional marketing team to help you, preferably one that has experience promoting beverages.
10. Always Strive to Improve Efficiency
A common thread across many of the points above is that there’s a lot going on at once with this type of business. With that being the case, you’ll need to continually check for efficiency: don’t simply let things chug along in the background simply because you’re making money – be proactive about looking to improve things.
There will always be small ways you can make something a little better, or tweak things to be more conducive to greater profits.
Hopefully, you now feel a little clearer on the ins and outs of running a brewery and distillery. It’s something that will take a great deal of time and effort to get right, but it’ll certainly be worth it in the end. Good luck on what will no doubt be a worthwhile and rewarding venture!
This is a collaborative post.
