Having closed down for the rest of 2013 about forty-five minutes ago, I thought I’d be fun to dust off the old business plan (which had a five-year projection) and play the “how good of a guesser am I?” game. If nothing else, I thought it might be a good bit of information for start-up brewers out there.
While we ended up making & selling about 18% less beer than I thought we would in our first year, turns out I was a pretty good guesser from years 2-5. I projected within 1% of our output in year two, 1.74% in year 3, 6.75% in year 5 and 4.14% in year 5. Pretty good considering all those projections were made before we even had an idea of what our restaurants floor layout would look like! The bad news: all those percentages I was off? They were all to the negative, meaning we didn’t end up making as much beer as I thought we would. But, we still finished a shade under 1,100 barrels in 2013. Not too shabby for a brewpub in a town that some felt couldn’t support one.
On the revenue side, there was good news. After falling 1.8% short of our revenue projections in year 1, we’ve exceeded them ever since (6.9%, 4.3%, 10.0% & 13.3%, respectively). Hey, more revenue is a good thing (sorry, I’m not going to share our financial details with you)! Unfortunately, our actual profits have been about half of what I projected (hence why I still don’t drive a Lambo) as it turns out running a brewpub costs more than I thought. I will say that counter to some narratives I read, running a brewpub doesn’t mean you’re going to struggle to keep food on your family’s table. You definitely won’t get rich doing it either: there is always something else to spend some money on, including a brand new brewery!
With five full years in the books, my original projections are an out-dated reference (not that they really matter once you open the door for business anyway) and I feel like our little pub on the outskirts has reached adulthood. In 2014, we start the next chapter for Freetail, opening our production facility. It turned out I was pretty good at projecting brewpub numbers, but I’m far less confident in projecting wholesale figures. Thankfully I tend to err on the conservative side, so I’m hoping I’m pleasantly surprised as we blow through our wholesale projections.
Thanks again for everyone who has supported us and we look forward to the adventures to come!
