3 Steps To Open A Brewery

Yes, even in 2025

Mar 09, 2025

I published a book in 2012 called The Brewery Operations Manual. 3 Steps to Open and Run a Successful Brewery. I still haven’t -damn - updated it, but the information is good all these years later. I thought I would highlight what these 3 Steps are that I even now believe are the key to prospering in this business.

But First

This is just my advice but, do not sell wholesale! Open a Brewpub, or a tasting room brewery but no matter how great you think your beers are, stay away from the temptation to open a packaging brewery. Sell a keg to one local bar to get your name out there and massage your ego, but then concentrate on selling in your own place by the glass. You will be much happier in the long run.

Step One - Find an existing restaurant

Whether you are doing a brewpub that sells food or a simple tasting room brewery, locate it in an existing restaurant. Find one for lease, or even find a restaurant business for sale and convert it. Why? Because..

It already has the infrastructure such as floor drains, restrooms, HVHC, a parking lot, grease trap, kitchen hood, probably an office, etc. A lot of things you would spend a fortune on.
By adding (in most cases) a brewery, you are not changing use. A change of use triggers all sorts of building codes that could cost big-time and add months to the building process. For example you would need architectural plans as well as engineering plans. With a restaurant, in most cases you are just adding a really big soup kettle (brew kettle) to your kitchen.
With all the money you saved above, you can now spend on things that your customers will actually see, as compared to installing floor drains, etc.
Bottom line: it saves buckets of money and loads of time.

Step Two - Go Frankenbrew

Of course one of the most expensive parts of opening a brewery is buying your brewing equipment. Most of you who have been reading my dribble know how much I believe in the Frankenbrew concept, in fact I came up with the name thirty years ago. If you look at a lot of these past articles you can see all the ways I have delved into this area, but the bottom line is you probably don’t need a brewing system larger than a 7 barrel set up, and for that you should expect to pay from $40,000 to $70,000 depending on how many fermenters and serving tanks you need. My book, The Affordable Brewery goes into it in detail.

Step Three - The Business System

Oh how I’ve harped on this. I was talking to a friend the other day. He sold out of his brewery years ago, and I remember him asking me to figure out how much his brewery was worth. But I couldn’t. They had no Profit and Loss reports. They only knew if they were making money based on their checking account. I could never talk him into installing the business system into his brewery. Now he wants to open another and when I mention the business system to him again, his eyes glaze over as though I am asking him to read the Illiad in its original Greek.

But the truth is, if your gas tank of energy holds 100 gallons, you will spend 95 gallons building your beautiful brewery. Then spend just 2 gallons to install the business system, leaving 3 gallons of energy left over in reserve. And it’s those 2 gallons of energy that will make all the difference in whether your brewery will succeed or fail.

The business system is what actually runs your brewery so that it is consistent and you are watching your numbers on a day-to-day basis. Once you spend that 2 gallons of energy to plug the business system into your brewery, to operate it takes about 5 minutes per day. I think that’s a pretty good return.

Again, I’m not going to go into it here. I have a book on it yeah, but I’ve also written about it in past articles, ad nauseam, and you can look at past issues on this site.

Well, that’s my two sense for this Sunday.