Small craft breweries are feeling the pinch in today’s market. With more than 1,000 new brewpubs and microbreweries opening every year in the United States alone, the need for data management and software specifically designed for craft breweries is increasingly essential.
However, operations can be challenging as a small supplier. By volume, NBWA estimates that the top 10 suppliers account for 94.2% of volumes sold off-premises and 90.4% of volumes on-premises. However, when you look at the data more closely, you will find that sales for these top suppliers are down over previous years. Compared to that, the sales of the ~7,500 craft breweries across the country have been steadily increasing.
Hyper-competition, market saturation and volume stagnancy affect the operations of breweries today.
It means you have to look for ways to increase efficiency every day to protect margins, promote stronger partnerships and maximize your resources. The number of breweries has risen substantially over the past decade, as have the tools available to them. Smaller breweries can now access previously only available solutions to major brands, like educational content and market data. To survive in this industry, you must leverage these resources as we advance.
Even though small breweries might be tempted to use Excel or Google Sheets to manage their data, these platforms can cause many problems. To help craft brewers decide whether or not to implement a software system to collect and manage data, we compiled a list of four reasons why they need to handle data effectively:
Read on to learn more about how craft beer software can benefit your microbrewery.
Breweries can benefit from data management systems in a variety of ways. A sales manager can use data analytics to track year-over-year growth, market share, target versus actual sales, sales by an associate, on-premise vs. off-premise sales and many other metrics. With a real-time understanding of sales numbers, better forecasts can be made, and more efficient production.
In addition to streamlining their production processes with data analytics, breweries can improve their bottom lines by gaining insights from data. With data, brewers can determine the quality of their brew, the residence time of their tanks, the quality of their first pass and the safety of their plants. The only way to streamline and optimize production is to understand all the components and data points involved completely.
Having a brewery data management system can also improve demand planning. The use of demand analytics could help breweries better manage orders, fulfill orders, monitor distributor inventory levels, track days of inventory left and forecast demand patterns.
The craft industry is experiencing an increase in mergers and acquisitions. It is crucial to have the brewery’s housekeeping in order when it is in the process of being acquired. A buyer who is aware of the time and resources required to integrate multiple systems would be less likely to be interested in it if they are using various data systems.
Using Beer30, breweries can track data from grain to glass. Our modular approach allows each staff member to focus on what is relevant to them – such as inventory management, brew log & fermentation data, finished goods inventory or sales & distribution.
You can now enter in-process data in real-time on your mobile device, tablet or laptop and, ultimately, brew better beer by removing the paper logs that go into daily data tracking like brew sheets and fermentation profiles.
We integrate with Xero and QuickBooks Online so that our customers’ balance sheets and ledgers are accurate and save hours each week by syncing their invoices.
To make real-time business decisions for your brewery, it is necessary to assess the actual cost per can, bottle or keg of beer to get a deeper understanding of your overall margins.
Beer30 software enables brewers to capture, display and analyze their data across multiple systems. The use of real-time data analytics allows brewers to identify and resolve issues with inventory and production. When an entire brewery uses the same system and accesses the same data, accurate information can be used to make decisions collaboratively.
Schedule your FREE demo today for more information on Beer30!
