urbanMSP

Maybe we've finally reached peak brewery, I can only hope.

There is no such thing as too many breweries, Peter.

Long past Peak Taco Bell tho

As a grumpy old man that doesn't drink beer and prefers to order my food from a server rather than trudging outside to go to a food truck, I really don't like that there's this entire category of entertainment venue that I'm excluded from. Granted this is the fault of our silly liquor laws and not any individual business owner, but I'd really rather these be places that have a regular food program and full bar, and not just the breweries product and literally nothing else.

Granted this is the fault of our silly liquor laws and not any individual business owner...

Pretty sure that this is a misconception. There's nothing about the liquor laws that prevents taprooms from serving their own food (see, for example, Surly's food program). It's just that there's also nothing that requires them to serve food (unlike other liquor licenses). And so most taprooms would rather not deal with the bother and upfront cost of building out a commercial kitchen that food service requires.

In other words, it is the fault of the individual business owners and not silly liquor laws.

There are hundreds of business with full menus and liquor licenses. They're called restaurants.

Also what mndible wrote.

I thought there were all sorts of limits on what you could do if you were serving your own product.

Anyway I'm a grumpy old man and all these breweries need to get off my lawn.

There's a box of wine in my fridge rn you can come over and have some if you like.

Breweries with their own food: Surly, Urban Growler, Northbound Smokehouse, Herkimer. Then there's brewpubs that also sell drinks other than their own products: the three Town Hall locations, Rock Bottom, Central Waters.

Also, you have excluded yourself with not drinking beer, old man.

Day Block and Great Waters also sell food.

I had thought the limitation was that you can't sell your beer at retail stores and also sell food, but Surly does, and Urban Growler is doing a canstarter right now. So idk.

I wonder if breweries would be less likely to run tap rooms if they could just sell their beer to a real bar and be done with it? These breweries that do literally nothing but server their own beer have to be expensive. Sitting in prime real estate with high rents, limited functional operating hours, limited clientele, limited product, limited opportunity to raise check totals (all you can sell is beer!) it doesn't seem like a great business model if there were better alternatives available to them.

Brewpubs cannot sell their beer in retail locations, and must sell food. They are allowed to sell their own beer at a limited number of other locations, provided they are under the same ownership. They are allowed to have guest taps.

Taprooms can sell their beer in retail locations, and can but are not required to sell food. They are not allowed to have guest taps.

From the above list, my understanding is that Herkimer and Northbound are brewpubs, not taprooms.

I wonder if breweries would be less likely to run tap rooms if they could just sell their beer to a real bar and be done with it? These breweries that do literally nothing but server their own beer have to be expensive. Sitting in prime real estate with high rents, limited functional operating hours, limited clientele, limited product, limited opportunity to raise check totals (all you can sell is beer!) it doesn't seem like a great business model if there were better alternatives available to them.

It's actually a great business model, because when you're selling only at your own establishment, you're producing the beer at wholesale prices but selling it at full retail markup, cutting out the costs of distribution and the profit that a middleman usually keeps and putting all of that money straight into your pocket.

This is the basic structure in Minnesota

Brewpub:
Can produce beer onsite (but only one site. All of the new Town hall locations get their beer from the main location)
Can sell packaged beer directly to customers in 64oz and 750ml containers (incl Sunday)
Can sell other company's alcoholic beverages like a regular restaurant with a full liquor license
Can not distribute their product to bars/liquor stores/etc
Can only produce 3500 barrels a year

Production brewery:
Can sell packaged beer directly to customers in 64oz and 750ml containers (as long as the brewery produces less than 25k barrels a year)(incl Sunday)
Can distribute bottles/kegs to bars/liquor stores, etc
Can self-distribute if they produce less than 25k barrels a year, otherwise they have to go through a distributor.
Can sell beer/food to consume onsite in a tap room (new w/ Surly Bill. Limited to one taproom per company, so no pints at Fulton's new facility in Northeast.)



So before the surly bill if you wanted to sell drinks and food to people directly a brewpub license was your only option. Production breweries can do that too now, but it seems like most of them have done the cost/benefit analysis and decided it's not worth the hassle/expense of running a kitchen when there are many food truck and delivery options.

Unfortunately, the Surly Bill only removed a few restrictions from the production brewery rules without also overhauling the brewpub side of things which is kind of confusing for consumers and is also not great for current brewpub license holders. They still can't distribute or grow beyond 3500 barrels a year and now they've got to compete with the taprooms that do have full kitchens. For example - http://www.twincities.com/2014/02/08/fr ... wisconsin/

I wonder if breweries would be less likely to run tap rooms if they could just sell their beer to a real bar and be done with it? These breweries that do literally nothing but server their own beer have to be expensive. Sitting in prime real estate with high rents, limited functional operating hours, limited clientele, limited product, limited opportunity to raise check totals (all you can sell is beer!) it doesn't seem like a great business model if there were better alternatives available to them.

How is a brewery that much different from, say, a coffee shop in that regard?

Other than a few breweries (the North Loop ones, really), most of the breweries are in what seem to be low-rent areas: tucked away on crumbling roads in industrial parts of the city.

A coffee shop can sell tea or water of soda or muffins or scones, or really any of a variety of products that aren't specifically coffee (which, as a person that in addition to beer, finds coffee to be disgusting, is an apt analogy). LynLake seems like it has to be a pretty expensive space, but maybe it's not. But also I guess it hadn't occurred to me that the profit margin would be so very high.

Ultimately I just feel left out at any event at a craft brewery and I'd rather they served more than just beer they've brewed themselves, but if the business model works for them and it's not a result of our weird liquor laws then I guess I'll just have to settle for being grumpy.

Some breweries (Fulton is the one coming to mind, but I know there's others) sell craft sodas!

Also, I'm splitting this page off to a different topic.

I am my own worst enemy but I also don't drink soda.

Complimentary water -- you can freeload off of your beer drinking friends.

I wonder if other cities with big craft brew scenes have it play out the same way we do, lots of taprooms that only server their own beer with food provided by an assortment of food trucks.