Page 11 - Beverage Master December January 2020

Craft Beverage

budget comparisons, etc. - report both in dol- Are you at capacity and losing orders? Is it time
lars and as a percentage of revenue. to increase capacity? Are you consistently under
capacity? Possibly consider contract brewing or
Investigate areas where expenses are increasing other ways to fill capacity. Evaluate labor costs to
(either in total or as a percentage of sales). Identify ensure efficient production staffing levels.
areas where there are cost savings opportunities.
Variable expenses should fluctuate with sales levels, So, now we know what type of data successful
including staffing costs. brewers are tracking but what technology is need-
ed in order to access that data?
5. Tasting room and restaurant metrics: Revenues
and margins tracked by month year over year, Introducing new technology to any business is
food cost as a percentage of food sales, staffing commonly viewed as complicated, timely and
costs as a percentage of tasting room revenue, costly. However with the rapid expansion of cloud-
daily sales trends, etc. based technology, there are now a number of
applications tailored to meet the needs of small
Evaluate seasonality trends to determine staffing and midsized businesses in any industry.
needs and consider training time needed when hir-
ing new staff for busy season. Monitor food costs Most of us are familiar with the phrase “moving
to determine if menu price increases are needed. to the cloud” but, what does that really mean? In
Assess daily sales trends for potential promotions its most simple form, cloud computing is the use
on slower days of the week in order to increase of a shared resource on the internet to store, man-
business. age and process data. Unlike the historical way of

6. Capacity/efficiency: Production volumes as a hosting a technology platform on your own serv-
percentage of full capacity month over month, er, cloud-based technology allows unique users
direct labor costs as a percentage of revenue, to access the same software application from any
etc. device, anywhere, at any time. Information is easily

BEVERAGE MASTER December - January 2020 9

BM120120 Main Pages .indd 9 11/15/19 2:59 PM