Bean Counter

When I say Bean Counter, your image is a skinny, nerdy person sitting at a desk with a calculator. This isn’t the image of the hipster brewery owner who is the center of any party. But if I could generalize, the Bean Counter is not typically going to start a brewery. This is because a Bean Counter wants things to be predictable and safe. Just about every brewery owner I’ve known - myself included - sees themselves as a leather jacket wearing, 1969 Triumph motor-cycle rider with camping gear attached and a worn copy of Kerouac’s On the Road tucked in his jacket pocket: riding into town to shake things up and get this brewery open! Damn it!

But you can’t have one without the other. Sorry. So look at yourself and decide; which are you? I’m both, but lean to the Bean Counter. I really like predictability and safety, however when I was just starting out, I threw all caution out the rolled down window of my ‘64 VW. And why not? I had nothing to lose and I was young, so there was plenty of time to start again if it all fell apart.

When My partners and I started out on our little restaurant, and later brewery adventure, we didn’t really know how to count the beans. In fact we didn’t start to figure it out until after the first day we were open and had to make a deposit. But we quickly learned that counting the beans was actually what business is all about. I became self-taught, and as the years rolled along, I became more focused on being a Bean Counter as we kept opening new businesses and started to have more to lose.

I ask this again, do you have any Bean Counter in you? Do your eyes glaze and you start to drool out the side of your mount when looking at a Profit and Loss Statement? This is really important. If I tell you that if you decide to pay a musical duo $200 to entertain on a Saturday night, and you typically net 15%, you need to do an additional $1,333 in sales on top of what you normally would have done without the band. You need this amount of extra sales just to pay for the band. To figure this out, divide the $200 by 15%.

If what I just wrote makes you go cross-eyed, then as you are planning your brewery, also plan to get a Bean Counter along for the ride. Give them the power to tell you like it is. They may be able to stop you from wasting money. And don’t get me wrong; there is more to this math than just numbers. A band for a special promotion can have other benefits besides just the Bean in Beans out.

You see, as I’ve been saying all along, “we are a business of pennies”. We have to track every cent that comes in and goes out of the brewery. Ideally we do this on a daily and monthly basis like I’ve shown in these posts over the last four years. If this isn’t you, don’t go into business without a numbers person along for the ride. If you don’t, I believe it could be a short ride.