Are you considering starting your own craft beer brewery? If so, you need to know the five following things.

1. How Much It Costs to Start a Brewery

If you’re thinking about setting up a brewery, you’ll need to know how much your estimated startup costs will be so that you can begin looking at funding options.

While the precise startup costs will depend on multiple factors like your location and how much craft beer you intend to produce, on average, most small breweries cost between $500,000 and $1 million to set up.

You’ll need to calculate all of your expenses beforehand to get a more precise figure. Expenses typically include rent, utilities, brewing equipment, ingredients, salaries, licenses, and marketing.

2. Licenses are Required

To legally begin a craft beer brewery in the U.S., you’ll need a few permits and licenses. They include:

-A federal brewer’s permit, which enables you to produce beer.
-A state liquor license, which allows you to sell alcohol to consumers.
-A retailer’s license, if you intend to sell things other than beer, such as merchandise.

You’ll also need insurance to cover your business for liability. And you’ll need a brewer’s bond, which ensures your brewery pays all of the relevant state and government taxes.

3. Sophisticated Backend Software Helps Breweries Run Their Operations Smoothly

Once you’re ready to get your brewery up and running, you’ll need to consider your daily operations. To make things run smoothly, many craft breweries use sophisticated backend software, such as the software from GetOllie.com.

With Ollie software, you can better manage your brewery production, order processing, inventory, customer relationships, reports, and payments, all from one single platform.

In turn, that enables you to do things like grow your B2B sales and process orders faster than ever, collect payments with ease, and track the raw materials your business uses.

4. Branding and Marketing Is Important if You Want Your Brewery to Be Successful

You can make the best craft beer in the world, but if you don’t get your branding and marketing right, you won’t be able to reach as many potential customers, set yourself apart from the competition, and create a highly profitable business.

Getting your branding right is crucial. There are currently around 9,000 breweries operating in the U.S., so you need to create a brand that will generate customer interest to set your brewery apart.

That means coming up with the perfect brand name, logo, designs, and names for beer. You’ll then need to invest in advertising through various online and offline marketing channels.

To be successful, you’ll need to also identify your target audience, determine which social media platforms your audience mostly uses, and adapt your marketing channels and materials accordingly.

5. Successful Craft Beer and Brewery Startups Know How Important Their Beers Are

While it’s true that you can have the best beer in the world but not be successful if you don’t focus on your branding and marketing, it’s also true that branding and marketing won’t help you to gain success if your beer isn’t high quality and you find a gap in the market.

So, in addition to creating quality, tasty beers that you can sell all year round, you should focus on making specialty and seasonal beers.

For instance, you could make a beer for special occasions, such as for the Fourth of July, and seasonal beers to promote during Halloween and Christmas. You could also create craft beers for niche groups of customers, such as making a golf-themed beer for golfers.

If you want your brewery to be successful, the key is to identify opportunities that will help your beer and brand stand out from the crowd.