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The Beer Edge covers all aspects of the brewing industry with long-form interviews, keen insight, and expert analysis.
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Led by experienced brewery brand builder Chad Melis, who spent over a decade elevating the Oskar Blues Brewery brand and now runs the marketing collective Turn It Up Media, this presentation will provide a roadmap for breweries to execute an effective media relations strategy.
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Sponsorships can be an important revenue stream supporting diverse entities from national sports leagues to local brewery events. In this session, participants will learn essential elements for attracting sponsors and getting maximum revenue. We will cover how to identify good sponsors, how to create mutually beneficial relationships, how to sell sponsorships and more. Participants will leave with a general understanding of sponsorships and gain insight into best practices.
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Financial health is one of the most important parts of your business, but do you know how to get to the right metrics? In this session, we’re bringing insights from working with over 100 craft breweries and providing you with insights on understanding your brewery’s finances, including:
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During this session, I’ll walk you through our Fundamental Brewery Marketing Strategy.
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Over the past several years, many breweries have reconsidered their service models – searching for the delicate balance that best maximizes the experience for both guests and staff. In doing so, this has also generated more conversations about best practices regarding tipping. In this panel, we will discuss different tipping models, their benefits, their challenges, and how conversations on tipping can result in greater success for your taproom.
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Alcohol e-commerce isn’t just a trend, it’s here to stay — but how can beer and hard seltzer brands fully utilize this sales channel and grow their businesses? Join Jason Sherman, CEO and Founder of TapRm, as he discusses the value of having your own customized e-commerce channel and the many ways it can help your beer brand scale.
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Running a profitable taproom isn’t all flowing tap lines and good times. There’s a method to the madness, and it’s DATA!
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As brewery owners and taproom managers, you know you’re supposed to host events. You may even have a staff member dedicated to creating and booking events. But they never seem to live up to expectations – and your regulars and your staff hate them.
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Almost every brewery is tracking their data – whether it’s in a spreadsheet, paper logs, or an electronic brewery management system. As breweries start scaling, there are two key areas that brewers and owners start looking at for their products — (1) making consistent quality beer and (2) improving costs over time.
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Retail sales data, like that collected and reported by companies such as IRI and Neilsen, can be extremely valuable for suppliers that are seeking to expand their retail presence, but it’s also confusing and pretty overwhelming.
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Good employees can be difficult to keep around. Never has this been more true than in the Great Resignation. So how do you stay competitive as a workplace?
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The 2022 Craft Beer Marketing Awards (CBMAs) “Crushie” winners have been announced. Part one was announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday, May 28th and the final winners were announced on May 4th Live at the Craft Brewers Conference in Minneapolis, MN.
The Craft Beer Marketing Awards was established in 2019 to give recognition to the best companies in the marketing realm of the brewing industry.
Some notable winners were Starr Hill Brewery who won a gold medal in the Best Packaging Design for Bottles category for their Northern Lights IPA and Florida Beer Podcast which was awarded a gold medal in the Best Beer Podcast category.
We will focus on how to create something you can sell, which will involve clean records, and a solid business platform. 2nd, How to appraise your business based on profit and loss statements. 3rd, how you find a buyer and my preferred method. 4th, you may find after making the changes to your business (having something to sell, you decide not to sell) you may decide not to sell your business, but rather keep it without having to work it everyday anymore. Example – There is no owner working in Starbucks.
Tom Hennessy has opened seven breweries of his own and helped over 100 more with his Colorado Boy Brewery Immersion Course. His video Frankenbrew, from 1995 has become a cult classic in the brewing world. His three brewing books include The Brewery Operations Manual, Colorado Boy SOP, and his latest The Affordable Brewery. Tom lives, brews, and writes in his mountain town of Ridgway, Colorado.
For many, the idea of owning a business is part of the American dream and there are thousands of examples of that in the country’s small breweries. There are times when founders and owners want to add new people to the mix and considering bringing on existing employees as owners can have a lot of benefits.
Separate from establishing an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) where multiple employees have a stake in the company, finding a single employee who wants to take on an ownership role that can benefit the overall company can be a smart move, says Erik C. Coleman, a beer industry consultant and the director of the Trocaire College Brewing Distillation and Fermentation Program.
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The small business survival rate can be terrifying to people contemplating opening their own shop. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20 percent of small businesses in this country fail within their first year of operation. By the end of year five, half have closed. And these stats were before the pandemic took its toll on already strained businesses.
In the early days of the pandemic, we heard that hundreds or thousands of breweries might close in the United States. Thankfully, that prediction has not come to pass but many beer related businesses have closed while many others contemplate the possibility. For businesses that close, they may have suffered from a sudden downturn in consumer demand for their products or been crushed by substantial cash flow problems. Whatever the reason, breweries that are considering closing can’t just shut the doors and walk away. Closing up a business can take months of work and there needs to be a plan for winding down the business.
As the brewing industry grows and becomes more competitive, brewing companies need to make sure they are offering competitive salaries and benefits to recruit and keep top talent. Sean O’Keefe, the CEO and co-owner of Pontoon Brewing in Sandy Springs, Georgia spoke with Beer Edge editor John Holl about his brewery’s approach to employee compensation.
Let’s be honest, absolutely no one enjoys dealing with insurance issues. In the best of times, insurance can seem like a pricey extravagance, a hedge against some hypothetical crisis that will likely never appear. And every year when it comes time to renew your coverage, the irritating process starts all over again.
There’s at least one person who loves talking about insurance, especially when it comes to brewery insurance. Peter Whelan of Whalen Insurance in Northampton, Massachusetts, didn’t invent brewery insurance but he has been in the business about as long as anyone. Brewery insurance used to be “damn near impossible back in the late ‘80s,” he notes. But as Whelan was getting ready to enter the insurance trade, he knew he needed to specialize in specific market segments. So when Janet and Peter Egelston opened the Northampton Brewery in 1987, Whelan helped insure their operation. From there, Whelan helped the then titled Association of Brewers develop its insurance program for the industry. Now he has advice for brewers looking to insure their operations or just review their policies.
Today, March 14th is the last chance to enter the Craft Beer Marketing Awards.
The CBMA was developed to recognize and award the best marketing in the brewing industry across the world. Breweries, their agencies, artists, and marketing partners are invited to enter their work. The 2022 CBMAS include categories that recognize all aspects of beer–related marketing and are open to beer, cider, seltzer, mead and brewery-made RDT cocktails. There are more than 40 marketing and design categories in total.
For more information on the awards and to enter, go here.
A goal of brewery owners should be to focus not only on making great beer, but providing a workplace environment that values employees, fosters careers, and seeks to keep the calm and peace. That can be easier said than done in a high-pressure environment that touches on many different skillsets but there are ways to achieve a positive workplace beyond just paying a fair salary.
“I always impress upon people who want to get into the industry that you do this for love, not money,” says Erik C. Coleman, the owner of Beer By Coleman, a consultancy company. “You’ll never get rich unless you’re an owner but there is camaraderie, it’s a brotherhood and a sisterhood and it can be really rewarding to be involved with.”
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When the time to retire arrives and the conditions are right, a brewery owner must decide what to do with the company. In some cases they can simply decide to close the doors, sell the equipment and walk away, living happily in consumers’ minds as a memory. In other instances a decision is made to sell the business.
There are options but the plan to an eventual sale should be a long process in an owner’s mind, thinking about what they would like to see the business become and who will be at the reins. Three possible paths for finding a suitable new owner are a generational sale, creating an employee stock ownership plan, or selling to an outside company or individual.
Jason Sleeman, the Vice President for Craft Beverage Lending at United Community Bank in Woodstock, Georgia spoke with Beer Edge editor John Holl about the three options.
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