[JAM1971]

> Are breweries typically insanely profitable? My understanding is they are like a commodity/staples business with tight margins.

I own a bit of a brewery and have learned a bit about the business in the past 7 years.

No, breweries are not insanely profitable. You might think that they are if you simply look at grain to glass and forget about everything in between.

Those in between parts are real estate/rent, equipment, chemicals, packaging costs (equipment, labor, consumables), employees, taproom expenses, marketing, and finally, the worst, distribution expenses.

It's been a fun ride and I'm glad I'm involved, but insanely profitable just isn't the case.

[mbajkowski]

Absolutely correct. Also fractional owner of a local brewer for a decade or so. Defintely not insanely profitable. As stated above distribution costs/complications and associated laws are often overlooked. Merchants and bars are a finicky bunch. Taproom sales can fluctuate a lot.

[mardifoufs]

To be honest, to me it sounds like there isn't even that much profit even if we just consider grain to glass. I'm totally uneducated about the subject but it seems like you need quite a lot of grain for beer, and beer is quite cheap... Larger brewers make sense but for smaller ones, either their beer is super expensive or I'm missing something!

I don't drink alcohol so to be fair my knowledge is mostly coming from friends getting trashed on cheap Pabst Blue ribbon lol.