You may have noticed over the past few months that we’ve been flying somewhat under the radar. Aside from normal taproom operation and a few events here and there, we haven’t taken on a lot of big, visible projects recently. Well, family, that’s because behind the scenes, we’ve been buckling down and laying the groundwork for some pretty awesome things.
While Zach and the brew team continue creating new recipes and tweaking existing ones, we’re working on an expansion plan to increase the capacity of our current brewhouse. Because of the demand of the taproom, we’ve had to miss out on a lot of big opportunities (like the ability to host huge, signature events like Garden Party and Halloween, among others), and we’ve had to stop wholesaling to bars and restaurants nearly entirely. Increasing capacity will give us the bandwidth to take on bigger, better projects, resume distribution to accounts across the city, and give our beer a lot more reach.
With the ability to make more beer comes the responsibility of growing the rest of the business to facilitate it, and we’ve gotten the ball rolling on two major projects that will become invaluable assets as we move forward: the continued development of our in-house product management software, and the creation of a company style guide.
The additions our tech team is making to our custom software platform will allow us to automate a large number of tasks, including database management, marketing, and sales processes. It already manages our digital menu list in real time, both on our menu screens in the taproom and on our website. Now it’s time to turn this thing into a multi-functional workhorse.
Since we do all of our design and branding ourselves, the guidelines we’ve built for these things have remained only in our heads. The creation of a style guide will help us consolidate and standardize everything from visual appearance to company values, providing a clear explanation for how everything we put out into the world should look, sound and feel.
As the brewery grows, the value of these projects will grow alongside it. Of course, as any brewery owner can tell you, expansion is a lengthy and convoluted process – but we’re currently standing at the threshold of the next chapter of The Brew Gentlemen Beer Company story, eager to see where it leads us.