KISS

It's been said before

A McMenemins Brew Kettle

I always welcome anyone who wants input on their project to reach out to me, but I see a lot of complicated projects that folks are still starting. By this I mean huge renovations, and large complicated breweries. Plus kitchens that are large and need a real chef to operate. It makes my head spin.

About 15 years ago these things would fly in the brewing world, but not so much today. I mean, you don’t want to just pay the bills in your brewery, you want to make money and even more importantly you want to have fun as a brewery owner. Isn’t that why you got into this business in the first place??

93% of breweries (according to the Brewers Association records) produce and sell less than 1,000 BBL’s per year. You can make really good money off of selling 2,000 kegs (1,000 BBL’s) of beer in a year by the pint over the bar. But to produce great beer in that quantity does not require sophisticated brewing equipment. Most of your customers, if they see stainless steel tanks they will be happy. Spending 70k instead of 150k is the smart thing to do.

If you are serving food, you might also want to consider what is simple, good, and profitable. By simple I mean a menu that doesn’t require a chef. We do pizza and any high-schooler can make an excellent pie. The same goes for street tacos, Asian food, or even burgers. All appeal to a large audience. Fine dining on the other hand is for date night and in my experience when you have fine dining, the customers expectations go way up. To be successful, the key is to exceed expectations. That’s easy to do with simple salads and street tacos, but in creating plates that look like architecture with a smear of some special sauce that you need to charge $45 for - it better be great. I’d rather be the place where someone say’s, “Hey let’s grab a pizza and a couple pints tonight.”

Here’s another thing too: If a place is large, it takes a lot of customers to fill it. If it’s not full, then in the back of your customers mind is ‘what’s wrong with this place? why isn’t it busy?’ On the other hand, the little brewpub that only seats 40 or 50 will be packed every night of the week. It’s much easier to make schedules in a situation like that. And then those customers go to their cubicle the next day and say, “We were at that new little brewpub and it was packed on a Tuesday night. It was great.” It’s about quality for sure, but it’s also about psychology.

Colorado Boy in Montrose seats 50. There are 3 cooks, a bartender/manager, host, and 2 or 3 servers depending on the night. It’s really simple. The one in Ridgway seats 23 (winter, 43 summer) and has 2 cooks, 1 bartender/manager and 1 to 2 servers. Both places are always full.

Believe me, I’ve done the large complicated thing in the past, which is why Colorado Boy was set up with simplicity in mind. Our first big Italian restaurant called Scalo, in Albuquerque had 100 employees and we made everything from scratch. Then we opened IL Vicino across the street, a 50 seat wood oven pizza joint (later I added a brewery) that had less than 20 people working there. Guess which one made more money??

Reach out to me if you want any input about your project. But I think by now you know where I’m coming from. I have strived to keep it simple and you know what? It’s always been fun.