"John Nervo" > wrote in message
ups.com...

>I recently been doing some home-brewing and am interested in opening a
> brewpub in Roanoke Virginia; I could use any knowledge and advice that
> you might have. I am currently working on developing my own recipies
> and am brewing a Kolsch. Kolsch is a blond colored lightly hopped beer
> origenly brewed in a town named Koln.

So, after reading through roughly 40 posts of some actual advice mixed in
with a bunch of behind-the-keyboard bragadoccio, here are my several cents:

1. Dunno how long you've been lurking around rfdb, but the beer knowledge
level is pretty high amonst the regular posters (amongst the lurkers, who
the hell knows?). So, we're all pretty familiar with Kölsch (I've had it
several times in Köln/Cologne, which btw is considerably bigger than a town,
unless, say, Cleveland is a town). OK, I'm done with the pedantry portion of
the program.

2. The highway is littered with roadkill of people who loved homebrewing and
decided to make it a business and either hated it, burnt out, failed
miserably or gave it their best effort, but just couldn't make it work. Go
slow and deliberately.

3. Whether you decide you want to look at the brewpub route or, as Lew
suggested, the beer bar route, research, research, research. And when you're
done with that, do some more research. Good business plans - and, more
importantly, good businesses - are formed by finding a market, knowing it
intimately, and meeting that market's needs effectively. Find out what beers
are selling in Roanoke. Find out what's on tap at pretty much every bar and
restaurant in town. Find out what the distributors move, and what they even
have available. Find out if the distributors in the area even give a flying
**** about anything other than the usual Bud/Miller/Coors (and maybe
Heineken and Guinness if they're feeling "exotic") and treat the beer
properly: you don't want to develop a reputation for selling shit beer
because all your distributors keep the three cases they get sitting out for
a few months by the furnace. Find out the demographics of the area,
especially income and support for other "luxury" items like artisan
bakeries, non-chain restaurants, etc.

Once you've done all that research, you can begin to get a picture of
whether Roanoke has a reasonable chance of supporting such an
establishement. And then you can start to figure out what part of town to
put it in (if you should put one in town at all). You can figure out if you
should offer food if you're a beer bar, or what sort of food if you're a
brewpub (when it comes to brewpubs, food is exponentially more important
than beer; I'll get to that in a second). You can figure out how large a
place to get. Etc.

4. If you go the brewpub route, make sure you either know restaurant
management amazingly well, of find yourself the best damn restuarant manager
you can afford. And after that, find the best damn chef you can afford. The
single biggest factor I've seen in brewpub failures is ignorance or neglect
of the food side. Here's a secret that way too many people seem ignorant of:
I don't care how good your beer is, I don't care if you make the most
amazing beer that's been brewed in 5000 years, you will fail, and fail
miserably, if you don't have a good restaurant operation. I know of not one
brewpub in the entire country that succeeds without handling the food side
well (Elysian in Seatlle is the only one off the top of my head that may
even come close). Food is what brings people in. Food is what pays your
rent, your utilities, your staff. Beer is what gets you profit and,
especially in the first few years, pays down your capital investment. It's
sad how many brewpubs fail because they pay so much attention to the beer,
and then ignore the food, thinking it's OK just to throw out the usual
burgers, nachos and shitty pastas. TGI Friday's and Applebee's do that far
better than any brewpub owner ever will, and they'll kick your ass.You need
to offer your customers a good night out that happens to include your beer.
They will not come to you for your beer, at least not in numbers that are
going to allow you to stay in business very long. That's true in a place
like Chicago or LA, and it's way more true in a place like Roanoke. You
don't need to be gourmet. But you need to offer good quality food and some
things that are unique or especially well done.

You'll need to consider some of the same things if you go the beer bar
route, but not as much. Beer bars can survive without food. Brewpubs cannot.

5. Find a niche. Find something in the market that is not being met and it
seems like there might be a demand for, and make sure that thing isn't
exclusive to beer. One of the most brilliant things I have ever seen is at
the Laurelwood brewpub in Portland. There's a kids' play area. While there
are people like me who frankly can't stand kids and would therefore avoid
the place like the plague during hours families are likely to be there, I'm
in a distinct minority. What that play area does is make it possible for
husbands to take the kids off of mom's hands on Saturday afternoon and still
meet the guys for a couple beers. It makes it easier for the whole family to
go there for dinner on Friday night. Etc. I'm not saying that's you're niche
(although, in a southern city like Roanoke, it may not be a bad idea), but
you need to come up with something. Again, the restaurant is what's going to
draw 80 percent of your customers in. You need to give them a good reason to
come there.

6. Remember that even if you do everything right, you could still flame out,
and flame out bad. The restaurant and bar segment has a horrible track
record for longevity, amongst the worst for all new business startups.
That's not to say you can't make it work. It's just to say that working your
ass off will be no guarantee. But if you make sure that a lot of that work
is done at the research stage, and being open-minded enough to say "this is
a bad idea" if the numbers point that way, you'll stand a much better chance
than most of the people who open up a new shop.

7. Remember that there's an enormous difference between enjoying brewing at
home and doing it every goddamn day for years. Some things are best kept as
hobbies. Make damn sure you love the absolute hell out of brewing before
getting into it for a living. And make sure you love running a restaurant,
too.

-Steve