Breweries: How to Price your Beer

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I recently bought a book called Priceless, The Myth of Fair Value. The book is 300+ pages long and provides great information about pricing and the role of human psychology in how purchasing decisions are made.

While the book contains a lot of interesting stories, studies, and research, it doesn’t do much to help with the fundamental question: How should you price your products?

Ideally, to price your beer, you would determine the costs, add a healthy markup, and sell it to your wholesaler (or retailer) at a fat profit. Unfortunately, the market forces and your competitors have some influence here.

So, how do you price your products?

You can look at what everyone else is charging and follow suit. You can take a wild guess and hope it will work out profitably in the end. Or you can go along with what your beer wholesaler suggests for pricing.

Regardless of how you may have priced your beer in the past, today we’re going to talk about how you can price your products profitably for the future. To make the concepts easier to understand, we’ll use hypothetical pricing numbers and examples. And we’ll walk through a template you can use to make pricing easy. Best of all, you don’t have to read a 300-page book to find the answers.

Disclaimer: Since we are talking pricing, all examples listed are hypothetical only and used for illustrative and informational purposes. Prices, costs, and margins will vary widely based on market conditions and other factors.

How to Price Your Products

• Pricing Terms: PTC, PTR, PTW
• How Pricing Works in the Real World: Margin needed by the brewery, wholesaler, and retailer
• Use the Pricing Model: Plug n’ play Pricing tool for your Beer

Pricing Terms

The typical beer sales cycle looks like this: the brewery sells to the wholesaler, who then sells to the retailer, who then sells to the end consumer.

At each stage in the sales cycle, there are different prices and markups that are charged. The Price to Wholesaler, or PTW, is the amount the brewery charges to the wholesaler. The Price to Retailer, or PTR, is the price the wholesaler charges to the retailer. Lastly, the Price to Consumer, or PTC, is the amount charged to the consumer. This is the amount listed on the store shelf for your beer.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the price the consumer pays for your beer is significantly higher than what you sold it to the wholesaler for. The reason, of course, is that each stakeholder in the sales cycle needs to make money. The brewery, the wholesaler and the retailer all have margins that they need on the sale of the beer in order to run their business profitably.

Those terms again…

• PTW = Price to wholesaler
• PTR = Price to retailer
• PTC = Price to consumer

How Prices Work in the Real World

To properly price your beer, it may be useful to work backwards from the Price to Consumer. This is the price of the beer on the shelf at the retail account. If your competitor’s brand is selling for a hypothetical $12.99 a six-pack, you may want to price your beer accordingly.

The challenge is to figure out how much to charge your wholesaler, who then will charge the retailer, who then will price the beer at the $12.99 price point. How does all that math work? We’ll take this in small steps.

Here’s a hypothetical example. Let’s say you charge the wholesaler $25 for a case of beer. The wholesaler needs to make, for example, a 30% margin when they sell it to the retailer. To get a 30% margin, the wholesaler then charges the retailer $36 for the beer.

The math: $36 minus $25 = $11 Margin for the wholesaler. $11 divided by $36 = 30.5% Margin percentage.

Continuing the example, let’s say the retailer also needs to make 30% on the beer. Since they will sell it in six-packs, they markup the beer and charge the customer $12.99 per six-pack.

The math: 4 six-packs times $12.99 = $51.96 total sales to consumer for the case of beer. $51.96 minus $36 cost of beer = $15.96 margin.  $15.96 margin divided by $51.96 sales price = 30.7% margin percentage.

Each stakeholder needs to make their margins at each point in the sales cycle. This is what keeps the world going round, and the beer being sold. The numbers can get confusing fast. Thank goodness we have a Pricing Model that will do the math for you.

Use the Pricing Model: Plug n’ play Pricing for your Beer

There are many variables to consider when pricing your beer. You can break out the calculator, pen, and pencil, or you can use this Pricing Model spreadsheet. Below is a snapshot:

The first step is to determine what your beer costs to make. These costs include direct labor, direct material, and overhead. Next, determine the margin that your brewery needs to cover operating costs and realize a net profit.

In the example above, the total costs of the package are $14.80. The PTW, price to wholesaler is $25, and the brewery margin is 40.8%.

The next step is to understand the required margins for the wholesaler and retailer and expected price to consumer.

In the example above, the wholesaler sells to the retailer at $36 per case. The retailer then sells the case in four units (four six-packs) at $12.99 each. This is the price to consumer. 

The pricing model takes all the variables involved in setting the price and combines them into an easy-to-use spreadsheet. Simply enter a few numbers and you’ll have the information to get your beer on the shelf at a competitive price.

Wrap Up + Action Items
Read and understand the pricing terms – Price to Wholesaler (PTD), Price to Retailer (PTR) and Price to Consumer (PTC). Know that everyone needs to make money at each step in the sales cycle. The wholesaler needs to make their margin, and so does the retailer. Most importantly, so do you, the brewery owner.

Don’t guess or follow the herd when it comes to pricing. Use the pricing model to properly price your beer and achieve profitability. Your income statement will thank you.

You can download a copy of the pricing model at www.CraftBreweryFinancialTraining.com.

 

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