I found out the hard way that to serve more beer in your brewery, most folks want to eat too. When we opened Colorado Boy in 2008, I had already had restaurants and breweries before. So when I got the idea to do another, my wife Sandy said - yes, only no food! We are done with restaurants.
So we opened and the one concession to food was free popcorn. Guess what? Sandy and I worked for free for about 2 years to keep us at a break even. So I added a small pizza set up with about 8 pizzas and a couple of salads, and things just took off.
If the idea of a kitchen and serving food scares you, most likely you have thought about just having some food trucks. I mean, how simple that could be. You don’t have to deal with any of the food headaches and your customers get to eat something while drinking your great beers.
But let me throw a few things at that idea, and why I wouldn’t do it.
You don’t make any money off the food truck unless you charge them rent.
They may not show up when they say they will, or they show up late pissing off your customers who were counting on them.
They suck. I mean, I think most restauranteurs are really clueless about running a restaurant consistently.
They get someone sick, because, well, they suck. They don’t follow proper sanitation, refrigeration, chopping chicken on a cutting board then chopping vegetables without cleaning it off. How would you know until a customer calls you up and complains, then tells everyone they know how they got sick at YOUR brewery.
So you say, -well Mr. Smarty Pants Dr. Frankenbrew, what would you do? Glad you asked.
Start simple. You own the food truck or trailer. While adding a kitchen to your brewery can be an expensive endeavor, adding a food truck can be much less expensive. These trucks and concession trailers are outfitted with everything the health department requires to get your food license. They can be really cheap and small selling hot dogs and shaved ice, or really nice like the one above that has a wood oven pizza kitchen in it. Either way, they still are going to cost less than adding a physical kitchen into your brewery.
Start with the simplest of menus. Panini Sandwiches, Street Tacos, Burgers, Pizza. And keep the menu small and limited until you get your feet under you and understand what’s going on. In my first beer book The Brewery Operations Manual I discuss how to control food cost with inventories etc., or maybe you hire someone with kitchen experience and give them a cut in food profits. There are lots of ways to get this done.
If food turns out to be a real winner, you can then add a kitchen into your brewery proper or perhaps your next location. And that food truck? You can probably sell it for what you paid for it. Remember it’s a truck, you just have to tow it or drive it away.
