Why Open A Brewery?

A McMenemens Frankenbrew Mash Tun and Corona Mill

This would be my first question for someone who tells me they want to open their own brewery. I mean I know why. People would rather earn a living making beer rather than sit in front of a computer, or crawl under a house in the winter to find a leaky pipe, or (insert crappy job description here).

But the question goes much deeper than that. It’s one at the very heart of every Frankenbrewer. The real question is: How do I see my life as a brewery owner?

You see, the first question just opens the door to the entrepreneurial world. What’s more important however is how do you want your life to function once you do own that brewery? I mean, we all want to make great beer in a warm and friendly atmosphere where we love our customers and contribute to our towns in meaningful ways. But how much of our limited hours of life are we willing to sacrifice for that, and how long can we keep it up?

Frankenbrew is so much more than inexpensive brewing equipment. It’s a philosophy of operating a business. I want people to do a high quality brewery without spending a lot of money. But in addition to this, I personally would also like to see those same Frankenbrewers’ install a kick-ass operations system into their business so that they are not working 100 hours per week putting out figurative fires in their brewery, from employees not showing up for work, to equipment failures, and so on.

The brewery equipment businesses want you to spend a lot of money on equipment, architects, engineers, marketing people and so on. I don’t blame them, they need to make a buck after all. The result will be a beautiful large brewery with gleaming fully automated equipment, lots of glass and custom furniture. There will be lots of free press and hordes of customers too. But in the day-to-day running of that brewery, there will also be a huge rent payment and huge bank loan that have to be paid every month, which means a shit-load of stress for the owner to make those payments and also make those huge payrolls as well.

But you, Mr./Ms. Frankenbrewer want to build a smaller craft brewery that costs a tiny fraction of what the big gleaming brewery does. By renting out a funky restaurant and doing a simple re-model, your rent is cheap, and your bank loan is peanuts. With the Business Operating System, there is less turn-over and all the pieces of the successful business are in place. It will run with you there or not. In fact if the operating system is adhered to, well, it may run better if you are not there.

You also won’t get caught up in the barrel production trap. “We brewed 8,000 barrels last year. How many did you do?” This won’t worry you because you will be insanely profitable brewing 500 barrels, while that big shiny brewery needs to brew 2,000 just to break even.

So, what is that life like that you created as a Frankenbrewery owner?

There is time to brew really great beers because you don’t have to package or market them. You get full price right at the tap. You don’t need to be there at night because you have a management staff that will be, however you still have your audit system and every once in a while you will pop in just to say hi and see how it’s going. You can go to your kids play, you can invite people over to your house for great pot lucks. You live close to the brewery, so when you go, you walk or ride your bike. Because you didn’t spend the equivalent of the military budget to open your brewery, you pay it off quickly, and now you can pay your people an insane amount of money, thereby making turn-over even lower, and still make plenty of profit that you can funnel into some index fund for your retirement (you aren’t going to do this forever). In fact, your best shift manager is being trained to take over the business eventually so that you can sell it to them and you will finance the sale so they can be the next owner and you can go onto some other fun project.

This may sound like dreaming, but I wouldn’t write this if it wasn’t true. Why are you opening a brewery? Because you want to create a fulfilling lifestyle that takes care of your monetary and creative needs, and most importantly, is fun.