In today's podcast we review the Top 12 Financial Challenges facing Craft Breweries. 

This list was assembled by our network of brewery owners and managers in the Beer Business Finance Association.

In the podcast, I review each challenge and provide one thing you can do right now to help overcome the difficulty in your beer business. 

The Top 12 Challenges:

1. Cost management. How to implement cost controls and identify areas for cost reduction
2. Benchmarking and KPIs. How do we measure up against our peers?
3. Budgeting. How do we help managers own their budget?
4. Employee retention. What can we do to provide more competitive wages and benefits?
5. Succession Planning. How do we thoughtfully implement a succession plan?
6. Gross profit management. What are best practices to actively manage margins?
7. Mergers and acquisitions. How do we evaluate a potential acquisition? 
8. Sales compensation. How do we "re-imagine" sales comp to create a system that rewards the right behaviors?
9. Operational efficiencies. How do we achieve improvements in this area and what are best practices?
10. Financial planning. What are the best tools to automate the process?
11. Building a better culture. How do we break down silos across locations and departments so we can operate as one company with a common vision?
12. Financial training. How do we increase financial literacy and understanding of the business?

Resources

• Get the free brewery financial training newsletter - financial tips and tactics to help you run a successful beer business

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

On today's podcast you'll hear the audio version of our brewery lease negotiation workshop. 

You'll learn strategies and best practices to tackle a lease negotiation (or re-negotiation) for your brewery. 

Key Points

• Lease terms, definitions, what you need to know
• How to build 'optionality' into your brewery lease
• Triple net lease watch-outs
• Negotiation strategies and tactics

Resources

• Join the Beer Business Finance Association and gain instant access to financial training courses, resources, and video replays of past training workshops

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

Today on the podcast we hear from Dave Williams, the Analytics Czar from Bump Williams Consulting.

Dave provides a recap of 2024 beer industry data, trends, and insights. We also cover “Dave’s Top 7”. These are the hot topics that he's been hearing about recently in the beer business.

Key Points

• Growth in non-alcohol beer and ready-to-drink products
• On-premise results
• Health guidelines and the impact of tariffs
• Trends in cannabis and crossover brands

Resources

• Connect with Dave, [email protected]
• Sign up for the free Craft Brewery Financial Training newsletter. Financial tips and tactics to build a stronger brewery, delivered straight to your inbox.

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.

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]

Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.