In today's podcast you'll hear the audio version of our workshop on brewery expense management and cost cutting tactics.

We hold these workshops monthly for our Beer Business Finance Association members.  If you'd like to join 150+ other breweries in financial success, learn more about membership packages here.

Key Takeaways

• 2 cost analysis models to identify and reduce unnecessary spending
• 5 cost cutting tactics to reduce expenses
• 5 initiatives to implement right away to quickly lower costs 

Resources

• One of the best books out there on cost-cutting: Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less, Bob Fifer
• Free brewery financial training newsletter

Today on the podcast Chris Overlay from Get Hoptimized delivers a master class in brewery marketing.

You'll learn how to build your brewery sales forecast and super charge results with a best-in-class marketing plan.

Key Points

• Sales forecasting best practices
• Brewery revenue drivers and key metrics to simplify planning
• Tools and models to build a comprehensive marketing plan
• Tactics to align sales and marketing to achieve revenue goals 

Resources

• Connect with Chris to super charge your brewery marketing plan, [email protected]
• Learn more about the financial education network of brewery owners and managers

In today's episode you'll hear the audio version of our 2025 Brewery Budgeting Workshop. We cover questions ranging from how to build your payroll plan to what key metrics to track to the best way to forecast beer margins.  

Key Points

• 3 steps to supercharge your 2025 financial plan
• Best practices for building your financial key metrics dashboard
• 6 questions to ask before building your budget to ensure success

Resources

• Join the network of brewery owners and managers focused on driving financial results
• Get the free brewery financial training newsletter delivered weekly to your email inbox

Today on the podcast we hear from Jake Lohse from Presidential Brewing in Portage, Michigan.

Jake has written a new book which serves as a road map for folks looking to open up a new brewery:

In Shifting Gears: The Ultimate Roadmap To Crafting Your Legendary Brewery Or Restaurant, I will show you step by step how to pull it all together. Leveraging experience from having built a legendary brewery myself, I will share practical next steps, lessons learned along the way, and tips and tricks to help fast forward the amount of time it takes you to go from zero to 100 miles per hour.

Key Points

• The characteristics that set legendary breweries apart from the others
• Advice for new brewers who want to stand out in today's market
• How and when to scale your brewery

Resources

• Check out Jake's new book: The Ultimate Roadmap to Crafting Your Legendary Brewery or Restaurant
• Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association

In today's podcast I share the 5-step process that I use to assess our financial position, create our goals, and build a road map to success.

This process is designed to help you create timely, accurate, and complete financial statements so that you can make data-driven decisions in your beer business.

Key Topics

• How to create a process for predictable financial results
• How to build a plan that allows you to work ON your business not IN it
• One book you must read to build a better business plan, and one book you must read to build a better business

Resources

• Free mini-course: 5-Step Process Brewing Financial Excellence
• Free Craft Brewery Financial Newsletter

Key metrics measure the most important things in the brewery. Things like sales growth, margins, profits, and cash flow.

When identifying key metrics, the first step is to measure what matters.

Start with one problem you need to solve or one opportunity to take advantage of.

The next step is to build a dashboard of key metrics.

Identify one company goal, one KPI that is critical to watch, like cash flow. Then build up the KPIs for each department that support the company goal. 

Key Topics

• How to use lagging indicators, leading indicators, process goals, and outcome goals
• Best practices in choosing key metrics
• Example scorecards, templates, and dashboards
• How to align compensation and KPIs

Resources

• Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association

The average health insurance premium for families and individuals has increased more than 24% in the last five years, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

And there's no sign of this slowing down.

For breweries who want to provide good, affordable healthcare for employees these cost increases are a real problem.

One option to lower costs and provide better benefits comes in the form of self-funded health insurance.

Speaking from my own experience, self-funded health plans saved our company millions of dollars.

Yes. Millions.

What exactly is self-funded insurance? How does it work? How do I know if this will be right for my business?

You've got a lot of questions, and Erin Butler from BevCap management has answers.  Listen to the podcast and check out the resources below to learn more.

Key Points

• 65% of covered workers in the U.S. have self-funded health insurance
• Self-funded insurance has been available in the U.S. since 1974, with the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
• Bottom line, self-funded insurance is not new nor limited to just a handful of large companies

Resources

• Watch the video of my interview with Erin and download the self-funded health insurance presentation deck
• Connect with Erin to learn more about how you can lower costs and provide superior health benefits, [email protected]

In today's podcast we break down the key steps to build (and implement) a successful brewery financial plan.

The financial plan is the road map. Where are you now? Where do you want to go? What does financial success look like? 

Listen to the podcast. Download the resources. Build your best plan EVER today! 

Key Takeaways

• Use the 6 building blocks to organize the planning process
• The X Factor to financial planning success 
• How to crowd source the best ways to grow sales and cut costs
• Simple and complex financial models to build your best plan

Resources

• Join our network of brewery owners and managers working together to build the best brewery financial plan EVER!
• Get the Brewery Financial Training Program included with your membership to the brewery network

Tom DeMayo is a partner with PKF O'Connor Davies, specializes in cybersecurity, and is a self-described 'ethical hacker'.

Cybercrime is a $10 trillion problem globally, and breweries are target.

In today's podcast, Tom shares how these crimes occur, how to find out if your brewery is vulnerable, and what steps you can take right now to prevent a ransomware attack.

Key Points

• Terms defined: Dark web, deep web, surface web, ransomware
• How hackers break in to your systems and what you can do to prevent this
• Basics of compliance testing and risk assessment
• Tips for creating and managing those pesky login credentials 
• The case for a cybersecurity committee 

Resources

• Connect with Tom and learn how to protect your beer business from cybercrimes, [email protected]

Today we welcome back Tim Near from Agrowgate, a company that works to save you money on cost of goods sold. Think cans, cardboard, malt, freight and so much more.

Key Points

• State of the industry: Trends in costs and commodity pricing
• Brewery purchasing 101: Best practices 
• How to properly source key ingredients 
• Keys to benchmark your costs against industry averages

Resources

• Connect with Tim Near and learn more about how to save money 
• Listen to the Brewery Supply Chain Management podcast
• Join the brewery financial network - connect with other brewery owners to learn best practices to improve profits and cash flow