He has one employee - himself. Not that that is bad but you still need to pay yourself and deal w/ the various taxes,insurance, etc. Not a negative comment, just reality based on experience.
Considering opening a homebrew store
- Thread starter reeberom
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Well yeah... I think that goes without saying, but he won't have to deal with many of the issues listed before, like a payroll with multiple employees. It's much easier to pay yourself from a private business than worry about paying employees, taxes, etc.
Obviously you don't know anything about running or owning a business. I don't know anything about the op, so I was explaining things that I know from experience. To be successful you don't just half ass it. It's all or nothing to succeed and make money. You put your life into it.
I just love the random comments. No elaboration, just spewing hate and insults. You didn't explain anything. All you said was
Great explaining. Very constructive. He can now take all of this extremely useful info and start up his business. Great work!
I just love the random comments. No elaboration, just spewing hate and insults. You didn't explain anything. All you said was
Great explaining. Very constructive. He can now take all of this extremely useful info and start up his business. Great work!
Or people could not point out difficulties and the OP might start another of the large percentage of business that fail within a year......
I am sure the negative posts, as well as the positive ones, will give the OP things to look into when he gets started building a business plan.
I just love the random comments. No elaboration, just spewing hate and insults. You didn't explain anything. All you said was
Great explaining. Very constructive. He can now take all of this extremely useful info and start up his business. Great work!
Hey, it's just some of the few thousand tips he can use to be successful.
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My LHBS is for sale. They are selling everything as a turn-key operation. That would be the ticket if one was so inclined.
I can only imagine it's not very profitable due to online competition and # of actual homebrewers. They are also a regular liquor store so I'm sure that helps pay for some overhead.
Found their prices on are on par with online stores. Some stuff was surprisingly cheaper. Still seems I like the ease of ordering online but they are handy for picking up consumables if in a bind - like santizer or bottle caps.
I can only imagine it's not very profitable due to online competition and # of actual homebrewers. They are also a regular liquor store so I'm sure that helps pay for some overhead.
Found their prices on are on par with online stores. Some stuff was surprisingly cheaper. Still seems I like the ease of ordering online but they are handy for picking up consumables if in a bind - like santizer or bottle caps.
Old thread from about 9 years ago. Interesting to see how the landscape has changed.
I briefly owned a store in the Philadelphia area from 2000-2004. I did not do well almost from the beginning and just ran out of money and owed too much by the end. I had no employees and couldn’t even pay my bills most months let alone pay myself anything. Struggled for too long before I gave up. Pretty much only got by because my wife at the time had a good job.
The average sale is not a big number. You get a couple people buying their entry kit or package and those are your biggest sales. An average batch back then was $25 or $30, today it might be more as the price of everything is up. Your credit card processor will beat you up because your average sale is not a big number and your monthly volume is also small unless you own morebeer.
Its a niche hobby, not like owning a pizza place. Everybody eats pizza. Only a small fraction of a percent homebrew. There were many days I sat in my store and sold very little for the day. A bag of bottlecaps was sometimes a whole days sale. Like all retail you do your best business around Christmas but that wasn’t enough to get through.
In my area, today almost every store has closed, changed hands, or both. Long standing stores are now gone. We have one guy who closed his store but is still operating on an on call basis because hes getting free space to work out of at a local micro. And thats the only reason he’s still going. Online competition is fierce and its now the only way some of us can get our supplies.
Hombrew clubs organize batch purchases and pallet purchases among themselves and cut you out. Others come in your store, ask questions about everything, pull stuff put of boxes, then go buy online because its free shipping and the big guys buy in bigger volumes so they get better price breaks and can sometimes sell stuff for what you are buying it for.
From my experience, I would not advise anybody to open a homebrew shop unless you’ve got lots of money to throw away and don’t care how much you lose. The money just isn’t there. Again, unless you are morebeer or one of the real big guys.
I briefly owned a store in the Philadelphia area from 2000-2004. I did not do well almost from the beginning and just ran out of money and owed too much by the end. I had no employees and couldn’t even pay my bills most months let alone pay myself anything. Struggled for too long before I gave up. Pretty much only got by because my wife at the time had a good job.
The average sale is not a big number. You get a couple people buying their entry kit or package and those are your biggest sales. An average batch back then was $25 or $30, today it might be more as the price of everything is up. Your credit card processor will beat you up because your average sale is not a big number and your monthly volume is also small unless you own morebeer.
Its a niche hobby, not like owning a pizza place. Everybody eats pizza. Only a small fraction of a percent homebrew. There were many days I sat in my store and sold very little for the day. A bag of bottlecaps was sometimes a whole days sale. Like all retail you do your best business around Christmas but that wasn’t enough to get through.
In my area, today almost every store has closed, changed hands, or both. Long standing stores are now gone. We have one guy who closed his store but is still operating on an on call basis because hes getting free space to work out of at a local micro. And thats the only reason he’s still going. Online competition is fierce and its now the only way some of us can get our supplies.
Hombrew clubs organize batch purchases and pallet purchases among themselves and cut you out. Others come in your store, ask questions about everything, pull stuff put of boxes, then go buy online because its free shipping and the big guys buy in bigger volumes so they get better price breaks and can sometimes sell stuff for what you are buying it for.
From my experience, I would not advise anybody to open a homebrew shop unless you’ve got lots of money to throw away and don’t care how much you lose. The money just isn’t there. Again, unless you are morebeer or one of the real big guys.
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The worst part is (assuming you have no employees) that you always have to work saturday. Thats standard retail. Plan on having no weekends ever. During Christmas season I was open on Saturdays and Sundays trying to get what I could get. I’ve been in IT forever working in a 24 x 7 operation trying to get off of working saturdays. I hate it.
1. Homebrewing "fad" has subsided.
2. Ingredient costs way up.
3. Plenty of competition from online suppliers.
4. Money is tight for a lot of people.
5. Razor-thin margins.
Opening a LHBS now would be a huge gamble. I live in a metro of almost 4 million, and we have only one--and that's merely a sideline for the company's equipment business. MW and NB closed up their retail stores for a reason.
Once you take a fun hobby and try to make it into a business it's no longer fun.
2. Ingredient costs way up.
3. Plenty of competition from online suppliers.
4. Money is tight for a lot of people.
5. Razor-thin margins.
Opening a LHBS now would be a huge gamble. I live in a metro of almost 4 million, and we have only one--and that's merely a sideline for the company's equipment business. MW and NB closed up their retail stores for a reason.
Once you take a fun hobby and try to make it into a business it's no longer fun.
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I know this is an old thread, but I can only agree with today's comments. In post-retirement just to keep busy I put in a couple days at the same store that gave me my start in the '90's. Last year, they celebrated their....50th anniversary. I couldn't believe it had been going that long. I found out the reason the original owner opened the store is because he has a small vineyard on his property and honest to god, wanted to find a way to get a conduit to winemaking supplies. That's what I was told a few weeks ago, anyway. Hard to believe someone would open any business for this reason but knowing the guy as I did, anything's possible. Anyway, he did well enough.
Cut to today. I am truly sad for the current owner, who worked for the original owner and bought the store sometime around 2018. I see it - many days, exactly right, maybe 150 bottle caps here, a yeast pouch there. Hours go by, and nothing. I had a restaurant that failed, and I can see this younger man's 1000 yard stare. It's downright scary and sad because I know those sleepless nights all too well.
Being a chef-owner has been burned out of me, which is a rare thing for me. Crazy thing is, I still have a sort of smoldering and entirely insane vision of a little British-oriented brewery somewhere in our beautiful countryside. It feels like I've forgotten everything. I've re-acquired all the books in my former beer library, including the "serious" British books (e.g., Briggs and Young), but my brain is not the same one of even a few years ago - memory and cognitive grasp has been dinged pretty well.
Mainly, my wife would not only divorce me, she'd murder me. So, probably not going to bring it up. Too much.
Not in a million years could I recommend it to anyone.
Cut to today. I am truly sad for the current owner, who worked for the original owner and bought the store sometime around 2018. I see it - many days, exactly right, maybe 150 bottle caps here, a yeast pouch there. Hours go by, and nothing. I had a restaurant that failed, and I can see this younger man's 1000 yard stare. It's downright scary and sad because I know those sleepless nights all too well.
Being a chef-owner has been burned out of me, which is a rare thing for me. Crazy thing is, I still have a sort of smoldering and entirely insane vision of a little British-oriented brewery somewhere in our beautiful countryside. It feels like I've forgotten everything. I've re-acquired all the books in my former beer library, including the "serious" British books (e.g., Briggs and Young), but my brain is not the same one of even a few years ago - memory and cognitive grasp has been dinged pretty well.
Mainly, my wife would not only divorce me, she'd murder me. So, probably not going to bring it up. Too much.
Not in a million years could I recommend it to anyone.
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Murder is much more cost-effective than divorce. Getting away with it is the tricky part.
huckdavidson
Well-Known Member
Don't we all.
That last sentence is pure gold
In fairness, my hobby is brewing. Owning a homebrew store, as I have for the last 13 years, is brewing adjacent so I don't feel like I ruined my hobby at all. I still brew an average of once a month. It sure as hell beats a telecom desk job.
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