Business Plan Question

Hey Everyone-

To anyone who has written a brewery business plan, I have a question for you. I am in the midst of writing my own and am trying to size my market. Now we know that craft beer industry statistics are hard to come by, and I'm familiar with the work done at the Brewer's Association- they have some good stats. But other than those, how have people arrived at craft brew market size on a local level. I.e. how are you sizing your target markets? I assume I'm going to have to make some assumptions based on a combination of state census data (for demographics), state alcohol tax data (for local alcohol/beer sales) and the Brewer's Association data (for some sort of "craft beer multiplier").

Just wanted to see what methods other people were using/had in mind.

Thanks for any help,

H

Hi H. I have no idea, but wanted to make sure you knew there is a professional brewer discussion forum like HBT, at www.probrewer.com

Thanks Pappers- I've also posted over there but figured I would cast a net here as well.

Thanks!

Off topic here, but I just wanted to tell you I was checking out your website and noticed the long hose you have attached to your bottling bucket. Do what I learned from here and just cut about an inch and a half of tubing to connect the bottling wand to the spout and just lift the beers up over it. It's hands down the best advice I got from here.

As far as the business plan goes, I haven't written one for a brewery, but what I've done is look for a similar business and reference their plan. They can be hard to find, but they are out there. Start looking for one that's local if you can. The best website for helping me write my plan was sba.gov. Here's the outline:

http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessplan/SERV_WRRITINGBUSPLAN.html

Cheers!

Juice

The easiest method would be to contact local breweries in your region/state and see if they will share their data. If not, you may be able to obtain that information from the state regulators or possibly the TTB.

I am working the same angle and am starting to talk to my local breweries now. So far I have spoken to one that just opened and he helped me with a very eye-opening trip through his operation. I am excited to dig deeper this weekend and hopefully get is business plan from him.

good luck to you sir!

Thanks for your replies everyone-

I did some number crunching and I think my best, most grounded-in-logic approach thus far would be to use the national data and arrive at some sort of craft beer multiplier for my state (MA). One thing I'm thinking I might do is round that multiplier up a few points because I think craft beer here sells a little better than it might nationally. What do you think? My reasoning for this is that Sam Adams is based out of Boston which is as we know the largest craft brand in the country. So if say I arrived at a figure of 2% of all beer sold is craft, I'd tack on a few extra points to compensate for that.

Does this sound reasonable?