Friday, November 29, 2013

Financing the Brewery

Hi Y’all,

Happy Thanksgiving to you!  We’re in Seattle doing some recon on good craft beer.  We’ve been to several choice restaurants and the numbers of local brews that are available is really impressive.  Perhaps one day, Louisiana and NOLA will have as many offerings.

 

We’re chugging along on the business plan.  We head to New Orleans on December 29th and we want to meet with our banker at First Bank and Trust to discuss financing.  We found some great help at score.org.   It’s a website dedicated to free small business advice.   One of our larger challenges is figuring out the profitability and company worth.  We have a few gaps – we need quotes for insurance – business interruption, worker’s compensation, inventory, etc.  We hope to get those by the end of next week.  The other challenge is developing the pro forma without a piece of real estate.  And, speaking of real estate – the $500k question is do we lease or buy?  Again, we’re huge fans of buying but that will lock up some cash.

 

As soon as the pro forma is complete, we’ll meet with our legal team in New Orleans; they’re going to help us put together a term sheet so we can go out and raise money through a Private Placement Offering (PPO) or a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM).  They’re the same.  We need to figure out where we want to price the offering.  We’re hoping the legal team can help with this.

 

Our logo is almost finished, our designer Jennifer Carbuto has been doing a great job.  When the logo is complete we’ll get Secondlinebrewing.com up and running.

 

Cheers for now y’all,

 

Karen

Friday, November 22, 2013

Here's an Interesting Article

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/blog/2013/11/lakefront-brewery-bringing-back.html

The Business Plan. Part 2.

Here’s and update on where we are with the business plan.  We submitted it to the Oregon State competition and apparently there are better writers out there; we didn’t win.  Ho hum.  We did receive very positive feedback.  And in the meantime, we’ve been busting a hump day and night working on updating the business plan.
Here are the basics of the plan:

 

  1. Executive Summary

  2. Company Overview (who, what, where, when, why)

  3. Products and Services

  4. Beer Market Analysis

  5. Our Market Segmentation

  6. Demand

  7. Demographics, Etc.

  8. Industry Analysis

  9. Our Business Strategy

  10. Our Marketing Strategy (lots of stuff on social networking!)

  11. Operations (including HR!)

  12. And…  Profitability - we’re still working the end.


 

Our goal is to have our completed business plan to our banker by December 15th for a face-to-face meeting in early January.

The business plan is a labor of love.  The more we read and learn, the more we want to keep updating the business plan.  The line in the sand will be drawn on December 15th for the banker.  The line will be erased on December 16th as we progress.

 

We’ve got a lead on a piece of property.  It may be a financial leap but it’s all that we could ask for and more.  Ten thousand square feet of light industrial warehouse space in a “hot” part of New Orleans.

 

More to come y’all!

 

Karen

Saturday, November 16, 2013

The 2013 hops have arrived!

Hi Y’all,

We’re excited; a 2013 batch of hops have arrived.  The new hops include:

  • Motueka

  • Nelson Sauvin (did I go to grammar school with him?)

  • Centennial

  • Simcoe

  • Amarillo

Let the brewing begin.  Tomorrow we’re going to brew our third batch of a session beer.  The beer will be a ‘session white IPA’.  I’m thirsty just thinking about it!

On another front, we’ve signed the non-disclosure agreement and letter of intent with our brewer (AKA Parade King) and with our Chief Spiritual Officer (AKA Cardinal Beer Goddess).  We’ve asked both of them to send us their bio and a picture – we’ll post it on the “About Us” page when we get their information.

We’ve done an amazing job at cleaning up the business plan since our trip to Bend.  We’ve broken down the details and Mark has hit it out of the ballpark working on the market research section.  While I always knew Louisiana was desperate for some local brew, the market research helps reinforce our mission:  Louisiana has space for some additional craft breweries that produce great craft beer!

The Cardinal Beer Goddess lives in New Orleans and her current mission is to find a space for the brewery.  May the beer goddess spirits be with her. Industrial real estate in New Orleans is expensive and it sure would be nice to find a space that is in a well-traveled area so that our beer-consuming friends will find it easy to drop in for a taste of a cold brew on their way home or out.

We went through the Pro-forma today and it looks promising.  Thanks to all of our fellow brewers that have posted great information on various websites.  We love the craft brewing community’s willingness to share.

What’s next?  We’re working on recruiting a couple of mentors.  I’ll let y’all know how that goes in a couple of weeks.

Cheers,

The Grand Mistress
photo

Friday, November 15, 2013

What does it take to start a Brewery?

[caption id="attachment_142" align="alignnone" width="225"]http://www.blackberryfarm.com/brewery/landing http://www.blackberryfarm.com/brewery/landing[/caption]

Well, those were our thoughts several months ago.  We’ve been figuring it out one day at a time.  Outside of financing and good beer, it takes a management team and that is what we’ve been focused on for the last few weeks.  Here’s what we’ve come up – Chief Operating Officer (aka The Toots), Chief Executive Officer (aka the Grand Mistress), Brewmaster (aka Parade King) and finally Chief Spiritual Officer (aka Cardinal Beer Goddess).   No doubt there will be others such as Chief Safety Officer (aka Save the Day) and Human Resources Director (aka Hugs-a-Lot).

We’re assembling the team and working out the legalese and that my friends takes time.

On the personal front, I was traveling last week and had the chance to taste some great beer.  I had the Great Divide IPA while I was in Colorado and Tennessee’s Blackberry Farm - Farm Ale.  Both were delicious.  I had hoped to get a tour of Blackberry Farm’s brewhouse but it was all work and no play…  insert sad face here.

Well y’all, its another Friday and TGIF!  Please support your local craft beer company and drink some tasty craft beer.  And of course, leave fat tips for the servers!

Cheers for now,

The Grand Mistress

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Happy Winter to Everyone!

Hi Y’all,
We’re still in Anchorage churning the business plan.  We had our first snow today which is quite late for Anchorage; in general there is snow on the ground by Halloween.  So have you been wondering what we’ve been up to?  Well, it doesn’t take a whole lot to figure us out – it’s the business plan.

 

Mark continues to pull together the market research and I’ve been doing my best to refine the numbers.  Thus far, we’ve spoken with our banker, two lawyers and have interviewed several marketing people and brewmasters.  We’ve learned a lot.  For starters there are a lot of talented people in the brewing world.  If you build it, they will come.  Second, the legalize is a bitch.  Third, we’re closer than ever.

 

Mark talked to our banker last week and the banker thinks we won’t have an issue getting a loan.  Great news.  Now we need to figure out if we are going to lease or own the property.  For those of you who know me know that I am a firm believer of leveraging in order to own real estate.  What never loses value in New Orleans?  Real estate – even after Hurricane Katrina real estate prices continued to rise.  So now we need to search high and low for that perfect location.

 

Brewhouses – man there are a bunch of options out there.  We’re headed to Seattle for Thanksgiving and that will be our opportunity to check out the brewhouse manufactures.  I’ve printed a map, if all goes well, we’ll try and hit at least one brewery per day…

 

Ok, I guess I’ve rambled on enough.  What do we need help on?  I’ll tell you, figuring out the number of kegs per tap handle account is a challenge.  If any of you probrewers  are out there reading this, I sure could use some help.
Cheers for now,

Karen