Starting a Homebrew Shop

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Hello said:
Glad this came back up. I will say the most alarming comment, well one of them at least, is the comment where you are admitting that your inventory will sit on shelves for a long time. The complacency surrounding that comment is astounding. Moreover, who wants to buy grain that has sat around in a container for months on end? If I want to use grain that is that old then it better be coming from my own buckets at home. A home brew supply shop doesn't and should never strive or be okay with inventory sitting around. Everything that we brew with should be as fresh as possible. Don't you agree? If you know inventory will sit then this is a business you should either skip or open in a new location (which I believe was mentioned above).
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I'm curious as to how you know how fresh a store's ingredients are. It's dumped from large bags into bins/buckets/whatever....it's not like there is a date code on each grain:) So I really wonder how you determine that.

And I'm sure all that beer produced over all the eons by the monks in Belgium and the brewhouses in Germany had strict freshness control :p Sorry, I get all po'd about date codes on things sometimes.....ate canned goods without them most of my life and the cans were worse than they are now....
 
Complacency about inventory? Do you think the only inventory in a store is a few buckets of grain?

Please, go to a homebrew store, or even easier, open a homebrew supply catalog. You've got about 20-30 SKU's for grain.

Now count the rest of the SKU's. Oh, you can't? That's right because there are THOUSANDS of them.

I can open a single part drawer that has thirty SKU's in it.

Yes, you will have inventory that sits around and does not sell out every few months.

Where is the facepalm emoji? I found it! :smack:
 
chezhed said:
I'm curious as to how you know how fresh a store's ingredients are. It's dumped from large bags into bins/buckets/whatever....it's not like there is a date code on each grain:) So I really wonder how you determine that.

And I'm sure all that beer produced over all the eons by the monks in Belgium and the brewhouses in Germany had strict freshness control :p Sorry, I get all po'd about date codes on things sometimes.....ate canned goods without them most of my life and the cans were worse than they are now....
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Well, if you know that the store stays busy and has high turn-over, it's safe to assume that the grains are likely fresher than at the store where everything on the shelf has a thick coating of dust accumulated.. Several times that I've been at my LHBS, I've been able to watch them dump a new bag of grains (with a recent date stamp on the bag) into a bin.
 
joshjv said:
Well, if you know that the store stays busy and has high turn-over, it's safe to assume that the grains are likely fresher than at the store where everything on the shelf has a thick coating of dust accumulated.. Several times that I've been at my LHBS, I've been able to watch them dump a new bag of grains (with a recent date stamp on the bag) into a bin.
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If the store has things with a thick coating of dust, then I don't care what they sell...I'm going elsewhere. That is a sure sign of retail incompetence and lack of caring....
So you see them dump an occasional bag, probably of 2-row, pilsen, carapils, etc....base and regularly used grains. But how do you know the age of the Naked Oats, the accidulated malt, the melanoiden and other less used grains?

A items move quickly and turns are high (2-row, hydrometers, airlocks) where B items may sit a bit longer and may risk shelf life (Caramel 80L, Biscuit malt, White Labs yeast)
C items can hang around forever without risk...pots, buckets, whirlfloc, PBW
D items may never move and may get old...Carafa III, melanoiden, issinglass.......

Now count the rest of the SKU's. Oh, you can't? That's right because there are THOUSANDS of them.
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I only have hundreds :( and every last one of them is classified as A-B-C-D. But the point is well made....all the other stuff far exceeds the "desired fresh" stuff in most cases. (exception example being the second generation of FastFermet vs the first).
 
What a interesting and helpful thread. Lots of great information here and lots of it right on point as well. I just recently opened a HBS Store called The Grain Bill located in Red Lion Pa. Our target population base is York and Southern York County at 450,000 with combined household income that ranges from 35,000 in the city to 85,000+ in the out skirts and south. There is another HBS store in more towards the city that has changed ownership, but is well established. So much so that I've had to work around them in order to find suppliers that have what I need. You see LD Carlson and BSG (your 2 big players) have strict rules when it comes to who they will supply. That's a part that hasn't been discussed yet in this thread. When I started the research (2 years ago) that store was just outside the radius and I would have been god. But just a month after I signed the lease they decided to move with in the a radius of 8 miles and now LD Carlson and BSG will not supply me. I have found alternative suppliers that give me a nice variety and provide a great service. This is something you will need to research so you know you have reliable suppliers.
The rent you speak of is unheard of in my area. I have 1,690 sqft in a shopping center and my rent is..... Lets just say it's quite a bit higher then what your being quoted. And in my area I got a extremely great deal on my space, I'm well under the normal for South Central PA. If you have a parking lot you have to figure in those costs as well. Those costs are also based off of your square footage and can really add up.
As for initial start up inventory costs you are a little low depending on what that inventory will be. My very first order was a little over $10,000 of combined goods. Once everything was received in and set on the shelves I realized that I too way under estimated what I really needed. That initial investment didn't even put a dent into filling my shelves to a point that it looked like a HBS store. Good thing for me my wife had a different figure in her head that was more realistic. So when I made that second start up purchase it didn't hurt quite as bad because she already had that figured in.
The freight issues are also very real and will have a huge impact on how you conduct business. If your going to carry low inventory, which is working capitol, then be sure to factor that into your pricing.
A good grain mill is a must!!!!!! This is something I am currently struggling with. One piece of advice I can give everyone is DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE PURCHASE A CAPTAIN CRUSH!!!! This was the worse decision I've made so far and am now fighting with Northern to get my money back.
You sound like your heart is in the right place, and that's the first hurdle. If you do move forward with it please keep us (me for sure) up to date. And I'll do the same.
Cheers
Sjporr

Enjoy The Fruits Of Your Labor, Brew Beer
 
I've thought out-loud about opening a brew shop some day and put some very rough preliminary numbers together and came up to around $40k to open the doors. If someone has the capital, you've done your homework and that is what they want to do then go for it. In the distant past I worked retail for many years and then after I received my degree went into retail management for several years - though not quite on as small a scale as a LHBS.

I've been in multiple brew stores in multiple states and usually immediately look for what I feel they're doing right/wrong when I go in and take my time looking around and talk to them. It's nice to see a handful of people in this thread making a go of it. I was encouraged by the last LHBS I frequented before our cross country move. 4 guys went together for capital and they hired a couple of people to run the store for them and were still into a decent profit in their 2nd year of business. Maybe that's a rarity but it can be done. Their closest competitor was a 30 minute drive away. One thing I enjoyed was the discount for members of our local brew club.

I didn't think so much about freight as some others in the thread had mentioned so I made a couple more mental notes if the day ever arrives when I want to try and make a go of it.
 
sjporr said:
A good grain mill is a must!!!!!! This is something I am currently struggling with. One piece of advice I can give everyone is DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE PURCHASE A CAPTAIN CRUSH!!!! This was the worse decision I've made so far and am now fighting with Northern to get my money back.
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Get a MaltMill from Jack Schmidling. http://schmidling.com/maltmill.htm

I have crushed well over 50,000 lbs of grain with mine, and I got it used. We have the "Bare Bones" Model attached to a flywheel motor housed in a big box and it works great. I'll post pics in a little bit. I highly, highly recommend this mill for large scale, constant use (such as we have in our friendly little LHBS) ;)
It does 10 lbs in about 20-30 seconds, and with the way we have it set up there is very little dust.
 
sjporr said:
It would be awesome to see that baby run! You could post it as a Homebrew Wednesday video. Send me the link and I would promote it along with your store. That might throw some traffic your way!
Cheers and THANKS
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Haha that's a good idea. It's honestly not that exciting to see it run, but I'll put a video together and post it here when I get a chance
 
Weird, that picture makes the gap between the rollers look a lot wider than it is in real life. I keep that thing pretty tight and it gives an excellent crush
 
Sweet setup...similar to mine but my mill and direct drive motor sit on top of cabinet. I collect in a smaller bucket right now because I didn't order large enough bags for more than 4 lbs of crushed grain :smack: so I only do that much at a time....I pour from the bucket into the bags using a large funnel from an auto parts store :wink: It's a bit of a time consumer but I don't have any customers that brew larger than 5 gallon batches.....and my wife likes to do the grain bills!
 
chezhed said:
Sweet setup...similar to mine but my mill and direct drive motor sit on top of cabinet. I collect in a smaller bucket right now because I didn't order large enough bags for more than 4 lbs of crushed grain :smack: so I only do that much at a time....I pour from the bucket into the bags using a large funnel from an auto parts store :wink: It's a bit of a time consumer but I don't have any customers that brew larger than 5 gallon batches.....and my wife likes to do the grain bills!
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Do you guys have Uline down there? We get rolls of poly tubing from them, cut the bags to size for the grain bill and use the seam sealer to close them up. Real simple, and very effective. It will save you a ton of time, and customers love getting their "grain babies"
 
sudbuddy said:
Do you guys have Uline down there? We get rolls of poly tubing from them, cut the bags to size for the grain bill and use the seam sealer to close them up. Real simple, and very effective. It will save you a ton of time, and customers love getting their "grain babies"
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That is a good idea! I have a sealer and if I rotate it on my cabinet, I could just put the roll behind and feed thru....:p
What thickness and size are you using....Uline is available by shipment.
 
chezhed said:
That is a good idea! I have a sealer and if I rotate it on my cabinet, I could just put the roll behind and feed thru....:p

What thickness and size are you using....Uline is available by shipment.
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I'm not sure what part # they are exactly. We have a small one (about 6") for priming sugar, caps, small grain bills, etc. and a big one (10") for larger grain bills. Anything over 20 lbs. goes in a 55 lb grain sack. We use pretty thick tubing. We had a roll of thin stuff once and it sucked. Here's a pic of the setup:

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1448049011.514465.jpg
 
DurtyChemist said:
So did this shop ever open?
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Maybe.

cvhbs.png
 

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