Tinga

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feel free to argue. please.

rexbanner

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You can get copies of business plans pretty easily. Not to disparage the OP but obviously a business plan written for a college class is not the business plan one would use when actually starting a business. The amount of research for a real business plan is absolutely staggering and far outweighs what a reasonable person would want to put into a college assignment. I also wrote a business plan for a brew-pub last semester and I had to cut many corners and make a lot of guesses, and it still took me a very long time. It's just a place to start from.

I can make one pretty good suggestion for your plan. Don't sell anyone else's beer. The profit margin on brewpub beer is super high and there's no reason that anyone inside your doors should be spending their money on any other beers than your own.

Other than that, I decided to go with a smaller location and set-up, for a few reasons, but it's just personal preference. There's a lot lower risk/reward with a smaller restaurant, but restaurants are risky to begin with, and you could always relocate/expand/open another location. Start-up costs are really high, too.

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brettwasbtd

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Skimmed the plan, did you state your expected profitability within 5 years? Additionally, the salary's of the employees seem rather low... Especially from the business end. If you are offering benefits the 40k that an employee sees is closer to 50-60k that it costs the employer.

I had to do a business plan in school, and after doing all the research, basically realized the business model would not be profitable - Surprisingly Im pretty sure there are companies that offer what I had thought up - A mobile automotive service repair.

Anyways, SOLID JOB!

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brettwasbtd

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Wow, just realized this post is over a year old! doh!

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luke2080

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First off - congrats on getting an A. In college, that is all that really matters.

As for the business plan, it is good. For those looking to grab it as a template, remember it is written with the college feel. Like the previous poster mentioning the Competitive Advantage. No college business plan is complete without a SWOT analysis. And you put it in, as one would suspect, and I'm sure was required for this paper. Not a bad thing to have, just...eh.... (There is a good book on the merits of this type of work, denouncing a bit of Porter and other science of management folks. The Management Myth. Good book). It is important to do a proper market analysis, and that is what should be emphasized. How many beer drinkers in your region? Percentage of craft brews sold in the region? Growth rate over the past 3-5 years for this market?

Again - nice plan, but a few pointers:

*You went into the average revenue per seat. But is that averaged yearly? What a bank and a financial planner (i.e. your account) would need is a monthly cash flow forecast. There is certainly going to be seasonality to your sales. As well as week day versus weekend. Tough to forecast, and probably too much detail for many college business plans, but for a real startup, forecasting how much cash you have on hand, means how much cash you need per month, so you can pay people and plan appropriately.

*It seems the revenue increases quite a bit. But, the amount of employees doesn't increase. I'm not spending too much of my time here, but with a 10% or 11% increase in revenue, that tells me you are getting better seat utilization (more clients). I would assume you aren't jacking up your prices at a rate 3 times higher then inflation, so with the increase in clients, you'll need to increase staff. Not a huge hit, just something to think about. (Maybe there was an increase, I didn't see it though)

*The founder being the BrewMaster for free doesn't really fly. That would be a full time job, with probably 2-3 others on staff on the brewery end. I don't believe you went into the rate of beer consumption. If you did, you could better forecast alcohol sales (which is where most of the good margin is for a BrewPub) then forecast a pipeline for brewing, and thus a staff in the brewery.

*I'm not sure your brewery cost really accounts for brite/storage tanks for the aging beer. Thus, I'm not sure your brewpub is sized to handle this. If you had a quote from someone, you should have attached that as an appendix. (Surprised your Prof. didn't ask for this)

Brewing is my new found hobby. Business processes and management is what keeps me tied to my cubicle and pays the evil bills.

luke2080

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Also, I hate re-reading my posts. Far too many commas and parenthesis. Apparently my brain pauses a lot and that translates to my typing fingers.

luke2080

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Ooh, good call. I didn't realize that either. Suddenly jumped in posts.

Dynachrome

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I disagree, It's about the beer, but I don't have a couple weeks to go card everyone at my local microbrewery to get stats.

Agreed, Start with a limited strong selection.


Now you're talking!

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DPTBREWER

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This was a great help to look at. Very well written.

AlTheGud1sRtaken

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I've been getting several emails lately asking for me to change the permissions to share it with others (I guessing it's that time of the semester again for many students). I've just double-checked and they should be able to see everything as long as you send whoever you're trying to share with the orignial link.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-4KintQ0DLKNGQwZjU2MDYtMjIwNi00MDM1LWE1ZWItOGQzZWUy NzI4Y2U5

And to address a few concerns I've seen on the thread, payrole was in line with industry standards. Yes, the brewmaster working for free as the founder is cutting a huge corner, and my beer really isn't good enough to get away with it. If you're serious about starting a brewpub you should have a better solution for this. We did have tanks for storage and serving. We did somewhat glance over certain minimum production and sales requirements in Virginia (they may have changed in the past few years, I'm not sure) that would have made this plan more difficult and I'm surprised that more people haven't brought this up. Yes, I can tell many of the people who critisized portions of this plan didn't actually read it as most of their concerns were covered.

Bottom line, I doubt you could take this plan, use it verbatim, and have an incredibly successful business. But it's fairly thorough, covers almost everything, and a decent place to start. I hope that it's been helpful to people with writing business plans for school and if anyone does go out and start a brewpub I'd love to hear how it goes.

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