Building A Small Brewpub - 4

The following is a fictional description of opening a brewpub.

It felt good to set up the kitchen and see if everything fit. It’s tight, but this kitchen can put out a lot of pizza and salads. When I do my menu I’m going to make it really simple to start. Maybe 5 pizzas and a couple salads. Why complicate things at the beginning when the crew won’t know what they are doing and besides, it’s all new to the customers.

I have a pass-through window where the food can be placed. I’ll have a little bell on that counter the cooks can ding to let the server know food is up. This kitchen can survive with two people on slow nights, and three on weekends. The pizza builder, I’m going to call P1, and the salad maker will also handle the oven, but can jump in and make pizzas as well. That position I’ll call P2. Then there is a small under-counter automatic dish machine I’ll use. It can do a rack of dishes in 2 minutes. The cooks on slow nights can run it. On the weekends or when it starts to get really busy, I’ll get a dishwasher.

I have a mixer for making my own dough. I want authentic pizza and I am as much into that as I am the beer. No Dominoes style pizza for our customers! These will be individual 11 inch size. Quality comes first. Still, with pizza, I expect our food cost to come in under 25%, that is, .25 on the dollar should cover the cost of the ingredients. I’ll work out more details later. I haven’t even signed the lease yet.

Speaking of which, I have my meeting with the architect and some preliminary drawings to show them today. The town say’s we are zoned for a brewpub. The building inspector has taken a look and saw no red lights. I have created a company, funded it, and started a bank account. I’ve even hired a person who will teach me quickbooks and continuing on, do my month-end tax reports. What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, what the hell am I going to call this brewery and what kind of brewery is it?

At first I thought I’d name it after myself and simply call it Hennessy’s. But my lawyer say’s “if I do, Hennessy Cognac will sue you.” “Why?” I asked. “Because idiot,” he told me, “they have a registered trademark. It doesn’t matter that it’s your name. You are both in the alcohol business. Now if you had a business called Hennessy’s plumbing and heating, you might be ok, but you would want to check that too. It’s typically done by a TESS search, which looks for federal trademarks.”

With that idea snuffed out, I spent the rest of the night trying on names. By morning I had one. The Crooked House Brewery & Pub. I liked it because it sounded pub-like, and I also like the hard K sound. I think it’s easier to remember and rolls off the tongue.

So I did my TESS search and nothing in the alcohol industry came up. Next I did a google search and it was mostly Agatha Christie mystery references. But I did find a pub in England that was called The Crooked House, but it burnt down. So damn it, I’m taking it.

The Crooked House is born.

Sequence of Events

1. Find a suitable location - Check

2. Draw up a floor plan - Check

3. Check with the town zoning to see if a brewpub is allowed in that location - Check

4. Get someone from the building department to do a walk through in the space while showing them my plan to see if they see any pitfalls - Check

5. Set up Company - Check

6. Set up bank account and fund - check

7. Draw plumbing plans - check

8. Draw up detail kitchen plans - check

9. Meet with architect and engineer - check

10. Apply for state and federal licenses - to do

11. Come up with a name - check

12. Get insurance set up - to do

13. Acquire additional funding - to do

14. Sign the lease - to do

To be continued…