Planning and launching your privately-run independent brewery takes an incredible amount of bravery.
However, with a burning passion for all things IPA, that magical element of luck, hard work, and sensible investment, it is the most exciting adventure of your working life. Following on from that, here is how to expand and improve your small brewery.
Be Authentic with Your Back Story
Some small business owners make the understandable mistake of ‘over-egging’ how professional and conformist the story of their conception is.
Instead of fabricating an easier route to where you are now and how you got there, be open and honest when revealing your journey. Potential investors and customers alike want to hear the truth about your development and showing real passion and dedication are always preferable to wearing a grey suit and pretending to be someone you are not.
Invest in Quality Machine Maintenance
Naturally, in any business whereby it is necessary to use one or more large and expensive pieces of equipment, you will be fully aware of the problems a breakage or malfunction is guaranteed to cause.
When it comes to the production and fermenting of the beer and/or ale itself, you should invest in one of the innovative and incredibly cost-effective clean in place systems, which removes any product soils and other bits of debris by automatically passing a special fluid through the pipes.
Maximize Your Social Media Usage
Whether you like it or not, social media has now grown into the most powerful way of creating a name for a company and the easiest, as well as the cheapest, way of promoting both the business as a whole and the individual lines.
From now on, focus your attention, every day, on creating on-brand and eye-catching content across each one of your social media platforms. Always accompany the information with relevant hashtags and multimedia and make sure that your company logo and brand name are present in all posts.
Other helpful hints for using social media to promote and expand your brewery include:
- Keep an eye on your industry rivals
- Ensure your posts often reference company events
- Engage your target audience
Book Yourself onto a Food Festival
Finally, if you are in the exciting position of working full-time managing and promoting your microbrewery, then it is time to get out of the kitchen and book yourself onto your very first food festival.
Across the country and in all states, there will be a bustling calendar of different events, all centered around food and drink, from the large national and heavily promoted ones and the smaller, more local shows.
To start with, try not to worry about looking professional in terms of your logo and general aesthetic of your stall and, instead, focus on making your unique and naturally, delicious, product the star of the show. In addition, be sure to give free samples and take note of the public’s opinion of your different products so you can improve as time goes by.