How to Drive Brewery Profits in a Time of Shrinking Margins

The cost of goods keeps going up and margins are shrinking. How can a brewery operator drive profits in a market like this?

There are three ways to drive brewery profits: Increase sales, increase margins, and/or decrease operating expenses.

In this post we’ll review three things you can do in each category to drive profits.

3-Steps to Decrease Operating Expenses

1. Listen to this Podcast: How to lose less money in your brewery
2. Get this Book: Double your profits in 6 months or less
3. Build a financial plan that drives profits

3-Steps to Increase Margins

1. Calculate your current margins by brand/package with this tool
2. Listen to this podcast: Brewery supply chain management 101. It sounds boring, but it is awesome. Tim Near outlines the steps you must take when purchasing for your brewery so that you can decrease cost of goods, and increase margins
3. Create a plan to safeguard and control inventory. Lost, damaged, wasted or mishandled inventory kills your margins. Count it, keep track of it, properly manage it, and watch your margins improve

3-Steps to Increase Sales

1. Build a marketing plan that works. Listen to this podcast: The best brewery marketing tool you’ve never heard of…
2. Use these data points to drive taproom sales.
3. Build a dashboard of Sales Growth KPIs…use this resource 

So, there you have it. Three ways to drive profits (increase sales, increase margins, and/or decrease operating expenses) and three ideas to improve in each category.

P.S. Learn more about the network of beer industry financial professionals: the Beer Business Finance Association. We talk about reducing costs, increasing margins and driving sales and profits all the time!