Bottled Progress
Starting a business is both exciting and appalling. The governmental involvement is really aggravating. A person can't just rent a building and start selling a product. Oh, no, there's a load of prerequisites. It's insane, and probably due to the litigious society surrounding us.
It's time to provide an update on the progress of establishing the Lost Cause Brewery and Homebrew Supply Store. In December, the last two weeks of December to be precise, the financial projections were completed. We've got two big spreadsheets that we hope give us a decent idea of what kind of sales we can expect. The brewery will be small to begin with, a nano-brewery with a fifteen gallon capacity. In fact, here's kind of what we're expecting:
That's right, we want to brew about seven times per week. What do you know, that's ... daily. We probably will not sell growlers and kegs right off, but we will be selling pints on site and bottles. We figured that if we sell at least sixty-two percent of the above volumes we'll manage to not lose money. There's a lot more to this spreadsheet, including overhead costs, taxes, ingredients and more. We feel we've estimated it closely.
In addition to the two financial spreadsheets we also completed an eleven page business plan which outlines our expectations of the business and where it can go in the next five years. We'd like to be able to sell coffee and tea in addition to beer and maybe even start a distribution company. Royal is working on putting together a new look for the website and the business plan may be posted there for all to review.
What else? Well, there's a honey supplier in Tempe that can provide us with various honeys. That's good news for mead makers out there. A supplier believed to be in Kingman or the surrounding areas was contacted and a partial message was left with them, but someone neglected to write down their phone number. So, if you know their number leave a comment on the blog, please. Or, if anyone from Mohave Honey is reading, give Roger a call at 928-279-9157. Thanks. We're working on getting some T-shirts done, too. Hopefully we'll have some of that available shortly.
Let's take the time to thank Bret and Heidi Montgomery for all their help. We'll be leasing the building from them if all goes well and they've been nothing but helpful and patient. They even took the time to meet with us and the county planners. We had to do a review of the building and site with the county since we're changing the use of the building. So, we spent about an hour or so with them and got two more packets full of paperwork to fill out. The health requirements are probably the most detailed. The change of use permit seemed to be mostly interested in the number of parking spaces needed and the surface material of the parking lot.
So that's where we're at now. We're filling out the paperwork for the county and tracking down a large three compartment sink we'll need to fulfill the environmental requirements. We've submitted the business plan and financial sheets and more to Mohave State Bank and we await their answer in regard to the rest of the money we need. It's only $35,000. Really, most everything hinges on that. Everything else is in place and ready to go.
The homebrew supply store will be operating first. A lot of the environmental and health requirements are for the brewery. We still need to finish getting the paperwork for the microbrewery license done for the state. So, all that can get accomplished while we run the homebrew store.
One cool thing about all this is that we've talked to a lot more people about the business lately. And everyone has been excited that we're trying to open a brewery. No negative comments yet. We hope it stays that way.
It's time to provide an update on the progress of establishing the Lost Cause Brewery and Homebrew Supply Store. In December, the last two weeks of December to be precise, the financial projections were completed. We've got two big spreadsheets that we hope give us a decent idea of what kind of sales we can expect. The brewery will be small to begin with, a nano-brewery with a fifteen gallon capacity. In fact, here's kind of what we're expecting:
| Production volume | |||||||||
| 1 batch = | 15 | gallons | Volume after losses (based on efficiency rating) | ||||||
| # of Batches | 28 | ==> | which = | 420 | gallons | ||||
| Efficiency | 85% | which = | 53760 | ounces | 45696 | ||||
| which = | 3360 | pints | 2856 | ||||||
| Yearly Volume | 5040 | gallons | which = | 840 | growlers | 714 | |||
| which = | 4480 | bottles | 3808 | ||||||
| which = | 747 | six packs | 635 | ||||||
| which = | 28 | kegs | 23.8 | ||||||
In addition to the two financial spreadsheets we also completed an eleven page business plan which outlines our expectations of the business and where it can go in the next five years. We'd like to be able to sell coffee and tea in addition to beer and maybe even start a distribution company. Royal is working on putting together a new look for the website and the business plan may be posted there for all to review.
What else? Well, there's a honey supplier in Tempe that can provide us with various honeys. That's good news for mead makers out there. A supplier believed to be in Kingman or the surrounding areas was contacted and a partial message was left with them, but someone neglected to write down their phone number. So, if you know their number leave a comment on the blog, please. Or, if anyone from Mohave Honey is reading, give Roger a call at 928-279-9157. Thanks. We're working on getting some T-shirts done, too. Hopefully we'll have some of that available shortly.
Let's take the time to thank Bret and Heidi Montgomery for all their help. We'll be leasing the building from them if all goes well and they've been nothing but helpful and patient. They even took the time to meet with us and the county planners. We had to do a review of the building and site with the county since we're changing the use of the building. So, we spent about an hour or so with them and got two more packets full of paperwork to fill out. The health requirements are probably the most detailed. The change of use permit seemed to be mostly interested in the number of parking spaces needed and the surface material of the parking lot.
So that's where we're at now. We're filling out the paperwork for the county and tracking down a large three compartment sink we'll need to fulfill the environmental requirements. We've submitted the business plan and financial sheets and more to Mohave State Bank and we await their answer in regard to the rest of the money we need. It's only $35,000. Really, most everything hinges on that. Everything else is in place and ready to go.
The homebrew supply store will be operating first. A lot of the environmental and health requirements are for the brewery. We still need to finish getting the paperwork for the microbrewery license done for the state. So, all that can get accomplished while we run the homebrew store.
One cool thing about all this is that we've talked to a lot more people about the business lately. And everyone has been excited that we're trying to open a brewery. No negative comments yet. We hope it stays that way.
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