The Nita Beer Company is a brewery in Ottawa, Ontario that has been in operation for almost 5 years. The company has been growing since inception and is now producing approximately 150,000 litres per year, doing this will minimal overheads and a small staff. Here are some interesting notes from the conversation Andy Nita, the cofounder of the brewery:
· Nita Beer Company started with a small taproom that accounted for about 20% of their space. Their distributions revolve around local restaurants and they have built good working relationships with local beer stores and grocery stores.
· With a history of electrical contracting and industrial processes, Andy and his team were able to get their brewery up and running for a lot less than normal because they were able to offset a lot of their costs for construction and labour. Also, because of their experience in operations and productions they have been able to hit the ground running from the operations side of the business.
· A lot of restaurant sales have disappeared because of COVID-19, but since restaurants only accounted for about 20-25% of Nita’s businesses, they were able to offset those sales with direct to consumer business and have been able to keep their sales consistent throughout COVID-19. Because of the shift from kegs to cans during COVID-19, the can supply has been an issue in the industry. With good foresight, Nita Beer Co. was able to stockpile cans at the beginning of the pandemic and currently feel like they have enough cans and guaranteed pre-orders to meet demand.
· They have adopted an interesting delivery strategy to supply their consumers with their product with free local delivery to a fairly wide area. They have staggered their delivery and service sections of their delivery area on different days to have a wide reach without extending themselves. The use of Track-POD has help them optimize their delivery routes and helped them service as many customers as possible on each day.
· Nita uses the Shopify platform and uses the data from that platform to gauge the financial health of their company. They are beginning to implement systems for process data and are partnering with engineers and programmers to streamline that process. They are trying to discover ways to shorten the fermentation process so that they can recover more time and put more volume through the tanks. They are also looking at various platforms that could fit into their business to try to automate everything from raw material inputs to production efficiency. They see value in a platform if it can help with time saving, organization, and inventory management but they feel like the right software may be difficult to find as they are too big for some of the smaller, niche platforms and too small for most of the large software providers.
· They have had some discussions with other brewers in the area about possible group buying initiatives to increase their buying power and obtain their raw materials cheaper. Partnerships or group buying strategies are becoming more common in the industry amongst small brewers.
· Nita is looking to grow their business, specifically in branding and marketing. They would like to build relationships with larger distributors so that they can expand beyond their local market, which is difficult for most small brewers to accomplish. The company has the ability to increase their production volume to meet the needs of a larger market, but the difficulty is in expanding their reach and creating that demand.
Check out their website at: https://nitabeer.com
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