Something's Brewing in Mid-City

It’s back to the business plan…  Hi Y’all, we’re still making progress on the brewery.  We’re actually pretty close.  We applied for our permit with the TTB and they responded quickly.  They need several more questions answered and then we should be good to go.  We’re hopeful that we’ll get our permit soon.

We’re also close to taking possession of our building.  Once we take possession, we’ll begin the brewery build out and I’ll start posting some photographs as we make progress.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, our building is roughly 12,000 square feet and it has access from two streets with  North Bernadotte being the main entrance, this is also where the power, water and sewer tie into the building so we’re planning putting the brewery on that end.  Our engineering firm has given us a great idea on how to manage water without having to cut trench drains in the slab; it will be interesting to see how this works…  we’ll share more information soon.

I say it’s back to the business plan because we’re at the point in our startup where we’re going to be spending a lot of money.  It will be interesting to see how accurate we were when we put our rough estimation together.  For me, this will be one of the most important phases of the startup.  All of our numbers are based on a several important financial consdierations which are:

1. Salaries and wages


2. Insurance costs


3. Legal and accounting fees


4. Lease and utility deposits


5. Supplies (office and such)


6. Licenses


7. Advertising and promotions


8. Equipment freight and installation costs


9. Equipment costs


10. Raw materials


11. Utilities


12. Lease expense


13. Contingency

The closer we’re able to get to the numbers we put together in our pro forma, the more likely we’ll be financially successful and sustainable.  It’s pretty easy to get distracted on the fun stuff, like brewing beer, drinking beer, marketing beer and dreaming big but ultimately, it’s the business plan that will guide us.  This is what our investors have bought into as well as our banking partner and the SBA.

Some of our plans have changed since we originally put together the business plan and we need to update it accordingly.  In addition, Mark has been diligent about getting multiple bids for equipment and for the most part, that has worked really well.  There are a lot of suppliers out there and there are even more sales people and depending upon who you talk to an how specific you are with your specifications and requirements, the pricing can vary by as much as 100%.

And, finally, if you’re wondering about our website, we hope to have it up and running soon.  While we may be beer aficionados, we are not website builders.  This has taken more time than we expected.  That said, we’re going to keep our website to the K-I-S-S model.

Cheers for now y’all and thanks for following us.  I hope you’ll be drinking one of our tasty beers in the near future…  If I haven’t mentioned this in the past, we plan to kick off our production with two styles of beer:  a pale ale and an IPA.