This morning I watched a video that got me really excited about alternative business models for breweries. It's something I've been thinking about for about a year or so now and someday hope to open either a brewery or a pub that operates on a different playing field. Not sure how or what it will be like but I've been thinking about triple-bottom line breweries, CSA style breweries, and non-profit breweries. That's all I really want to say for now because I haven't really acted on this interest, except in creating Beers Made By Walking.
I want to show you the video that got me excited (I found it on this site, which I hope to learn more about soon). The video shows us a brewery called Flying Dog Cooperative Brewery, located in Seattle, and it looks like they are starting a cooperative brewery, where the community can become members, or owners, of the brewery. I'm assuming, like in a cooperative grocery shop, that the profits from the brewery would then go back to the members. Then another part of the idea is that homebrewers would get to have commercial products (I've been trying to do this here on some levels). Have a look at the video and I've got another video below as well:
This next video is one that I saw about half a year ago or so on the New School Beer Blog. It's a non profit pub in Portland, Oregon called the Oregon Public House. I think this is my favorite model of these two. I'll let the video do the talking.
The Oregon Public House-A Vision for the First Non-Profit Pub from Ritch Marvin on Vimeo.
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Do you know of any coop breweries in the planning stages in Colorado? I think in today's tough times, having a wide base of owner/investors might be a good idea. However, it still takes a lot of smarts to run a business like this. Other ways to fund and start a brewery are to get funding through sites like Kickstarter.com. Having too many owners may be a distraction and make decision making more difficult. Sounds like an interesting concept but it'll be interesting to see if a business like this actually works. Start off with a charismatic leader and attract hard working co-owners. Investors should be aware that they really need to know who they invest with and not to invest too much before getting a solid business plan in place first.
ReplyDeleteHey Dave, you've make some good points, especially about having too many owners, owners that don't get along, or people who generally don't have the same values as you. I'm not sure how much decision making power each owner will have, but that would be something to think about.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about Kickstarter too, many breweries have used Kickstarter to fund the costs of starting up their brewery, often offering beer, shirts, tours, and a whole bunch of other things to those that contribute money.
http://craftedsocialmedia.com/ Does a great job at covering breweries using social media (ie. Kickstarter) to fund their business.
Lastly, I'm not sure if any breweries in Colorado are doing things this way. I know New Belgium gives out grants, which I think is awesome but I'm not really sure. One of the pages I linked to looks like some sort of alternative business model, but I can't fully understand everything, and I don't think it's for a brewery. I'm hoping to learn more about this group soon: http://onlinecommunitysupportedbrewery.wordpress.com/
Anybody know of any other models?