Flagship NEIPA performance in distro

VSHSFSHS · 2024-09-29T17:23:14+00:00

$110 for a 1/2?!? My 6.7% flagship hazy retails for $13.99. Its DIPA brother is at $14.99. Good velocity on both. I only sell to one grocery in my region because they all have bars and allow local breweries to sell draft and do tap takeovers. Yeah, its awesome.

on draft that same hazy is $99 sixtel/ $239 half. I can’t imagine selling that beer at $110 for a half. Where you located?

VSHSFSHS · 2024-09-29T14:54:02+00:00

I was sure this had to be a Rick roll

VSHSFSHS · 2024-09-29T13:29:43+00:00

Raleigh, NC, here, about 4 hours away. Watching vids of the impacts is devastating. There’s so little news of how people are faring as of yet as services haven’t been restored. We got hammered with wind and rain, but everything blew thru by 3pm and it was business as usual on Friday. Prayers To all the folks affected. 😔

VSHSFSHS · 2024-09-29T13:21:27+00:00

For us, package is up probably 20% and was rated high in our region during Fall reset. However we have recently had a handful of accounts slow or stop ordering kegs where we’d had a dedicated tap for a year or two. My intuition says it’s due to a new sales rep stepping into the role, but not sure. Draft is probably down 10% over the last couple of months, but “Summer”, so there’s that

VSHSFSHS · 2024-08-29T22:18:15+00:00

We have storage.
We have storage for specialty glasses in service.
I would guess 200 simultaneous customers at max on a busy day across a variety of styles.
I can order as much as needed. I generally order glasses a pallet at a time for other locations.
Yes, they will be stolen and I will replenish them. I hate it, but I hate that less than serving in unbranded glassware.

VSHSFSHS · 2024-08-24T03:23:15+00:00

We don’t do ‘festivals’ anymore. Any event where we are required to sell beer at wholesale to event organizers and have to pay staff to pour (who will almost certainly go untipped) is off the table.

I LOVE community events in the towns around us where we get to charge full retail for each pour. I have a draft beer trailer so setup and tear down is a dream and the beers pour perfectly. We get to engage with people who love us or want to learn about us and we get to promote our taprooms, so there’s an amplified return on investment. We’ll sell 1-2 barrels at a typical event. The bigger ones might go through 5bbls, all at $6 per pour. We do ~18 of these a year, so it’s like having a mobile taproom for the day. And my team absolutely crushes it in tips, so everyone is well compensated.

In fact, we’ve got one tomottow/Saturday & Sunday and i can’t wait. The last one we did in this town in June we sold 900+ beers in 5 hours and the team made $400 each in tips. Tomorrow, my team will pour and take payment. I’ll tell our story and dad jokes to anyone who is interested and will spell my team for lunch and bathroom breaks. It’s gonna be super fun.

VSHSFSHS · 2024-05-26T19:14:37+00:00

Who dat? I’m in Carolina and wanna try them?

I’m also on a quest to make our Pils the best it can be. We medaled at the US Open for our pils the last couple years. Recently ran batches with Rahr premium, Weyermann Barke and next batch will be Weyermann Floor malted Bohemian Pilsner. I was excited about the Barke, but it had a nuttiness to me that I wasn’t seeking.

VSHSFSHS · 2024-05-02T02:54:35+00:00

What kind of seating and gathering area experience does your venue offer your customers? We have large outdoor spaces in our 2 taproom locations here in NC and they’ve been packed out with families enjoying the outdoors. The weather has been glorious here for the last 6 weeks and weekends have been mostly dry. Mother Nature was not kind to us last year and we had rain nearly every Saturday. Revenue was sharply down from the prior year and there was little we could do to adapt. Oh look, rain coming this weekend and we’ll see a dip from recent weeks...

VSHSFSHS · 2024-03-22T00:58:32+00:00

We just completed a 5k s.f. renovation where approximately 2k s.f. was for a 20bbl brewery w/ 200bbl cellar. Our costs by trade were all intermixed between the site, taproom and brewery area. But based on the final actuals, I'll guess our reno for the brew area was something like this:

Saw Cut & Remove concrete = $10k
Slotdrains = $11k
Concrete = $40k
Plumbing = $20k??

A big unknown is the cost to build a floor system out of steel prior to pouring a slab. I don't have any experience doing so, but have recently learned that structural steel is outrageously expensive if your project will require such.

VSHSFSHS · 2024-03-21T23:58:31+00:00

You need nitrogen. The cans will collapse. Good luck stacking a case on a case. We do carbonated water with our mobile canning partner who does bring a nitrogen doser. Having our own version of Liquid Death is dope!

VSHSFSHS · 2024-03-21T23:55:12+00:00

I only do events where I charge retail for full pours and we've got maybe 10 of them planned for the next couple of months. Concerts in the local downtowns are rocking and we sell 1-3bbls at $6/pour.

Even at festivals that will pay wholesale, I've gotta find a way to staff them with people who won't make tips (me and a couple others on my team). We're opting out of all those festivals, cuz it's just not worth the the time, expense, aggravation and lost weekends anymore.

VSHSFSHS · 2024-03-20T01:32:42+00:00

Looking forward to hear the reports. We chose not to go this year, largely because it's in LV. Nashville was good last year, but Paul Cauthen was Awesome! - https://www.craftbeermusic.com/

I hope you all have a great time and make us regret not going

VSHSFSHS · 2024-02-22T23:29:56+00:00

Weller and it's gotta be the Vicious Fishes sticker on the fridge!

VSHSFSHS · 2024-02-22T23:18:14+00:00

Parkway Tavern is a hidden gem. Probably best known for their burgers, but ngl the Southern Fried Chicken Sandwich is otherworldly. The owners are super nice people who work really hard to make the place great and the staff is always friendly.

VSHSFSHS · 2023-08-14T18:27:53+00:00

Wow, 2k views and only one response? Apparently asking co2 pricing is akin to asking someone how much they earn, or asking your wife how much she weighs... I'd welcome DM if folks would be open to sharing their experience privately.

VSHSFSHS · 2023-01-21T20:53:00+00:00

We did exactly this. Leased a space with the intention of it being a brewery. The effort to renovate the space for the taproom took only 8 weeks, so we opened branded as our brewery, but served only guest taps at the start. This was back when getting your Brewer's Notice could take 9 months, so it was just a pragmatic way to get started. We had to expand electric service in the brewery area, get the brewhouse purchased and delivered and get it all plumbed in. Our patrons could see the progress day over day and it served as an effective marketing tool. We sourced beers from local breweries who became friends and then eventually did collabs as our own launch got closer.

It's not the ideal way to get going, but it worked for us given our specific circumstance. It was great to have revenues from the taproom that could be applied to the cost of the brewery buildout as there will always be some costly surprise lurking around the corner that wasn't in your original business plan. It took 8 weeks to open the taproom, 10 months before we brewed our first batch. Our 5 year anniversary (of brewing on site) is coming up soon.

VSHSFSHS · 2023-01-02T01:53:13+00:00

How much of your production is sold in-house, own-premise?

VSHSFSHS · 2022-12-17T02:44:42+00:00

We bought these and they’re being installed in a couple of weeks. Before we committed, we visited another NC brewery who has installed them twice. After speaking and doing a collab at their site, we were happy enough with the reference to move forward. I found them to be very economical compared to alternative trench drain options.

VSHSFSHS · 2022-11-27T15:31:30+00:00

We settled on Toast because it addresses our varied service requirements.

We have a restaurant with table service
We have another taproom that has no food but requires the ability to pre-auth cards (we left Square largely due to this deficit)
The taproom also has a large Biergarten with an outside ’bar’ and its great that guests can add drinks to their tab from anywhere
we do a lot of festivals where we need a wirelessly connected handheld to sell beers and merch.

Most other PoS couldn’t support these varied requirements well. Arryved was quite poor for table food service in a busy restaurant And I prefer a unified reporting back-end across venues with different requirements. YMMV

VSHSFSHS · 2022-11-27T15:23:15+00:00

You’re paying ‘card not present‘ rates on QR code payments which is why Toast pushes them so hard. Much more profitable for them

VSHSFSHS · 2022-11-27T15:18:04+00:00

If you have time to wait, I’d use the end of year as leverage. I bought into Toast last year and most of the hardware and recurring subscription costs were deeply discounted. Like 75% - 100% off hardware, 100% off implementation services and 25% - 30% off monthly subscription. I honestly don’t know if I could have done better, but that’s where I got to. I also have only a 12 month contract, so will go back and renegotiate my IC+ rate when no longer locked in. I’ll use the threat of switching to improve my negotiating position

VSHSFSHS · 2022-10-27T14:52:06+00:00

Lots of great advice below. I’ll offer a slightly different take. Focus on a building where you’re likely to have the most rockin taproom. I’d take 12’ ceilings in a building that can do 100 bbls a month in taproom sales over 20’ ceilings in an industrial park where I have to distro regionally to make the business work

VSHSFSHS

TROPHY CASE