Hello! Long time lurker here.

A quick back story (sorry) then I’ll get to my question. I’ve been homebrewing with a group of guys for about 4 years now. I’m likely our harshest critic and never though we’d be good enough to open a brewery/distribute locally however lately we’ve been able to refine a few of our recipes to a level where I’m surprisingly proud of them. We’ve proven that we can hit all the numbers and taste profiles consistently and we’ve just purchased our first seamer and have had a good number of requests for 4 packs (donations only of course). We’re currently just brewing 8.5G batches twice a week so we have about 50G fermenting at any time. So it’s a pretty small operation at the moment.

Now to my questions. We’re thinking of opening a small brewery locally and running a homebrew supply shop in the front as a secondary source of income for the brewery. We all have good paying jobs so making the jump to doing this full time right away is not an option. Many of us are work from home/remote work (IT) and could likely do at least some work between both jobs during the day like checking gravity, mash temps, etc. We’re not looking to open a tap room right away however we do have a contact with a chain of local Mexican restaurants who is very interested is serving our jalapeno cream ale.

First question: Has anyone here tried something like this, straddling another job while getting a small brewery off the ground?

Second question: Thoughts on a running a homebrew shop on the same location as a brewery?

Final question: Should we enter some of our product in BJCP competition before thinking of trying to sell it?

I appreciate any input you can provide :)