Wanna start a brewery?

Starting a new brewery can be cost prohibitive. Buying equipment, renting a space, navigating the permitting fees, and buying supplies can quickly make your new adventure a non-starter. Finding investors can be quite difficult and they would most likely want a significant stake and possible control over your brewery. So what do you do?

One trend I’ve seen lately is asking the Internet to help “kickstart” your brewery using a web site called Kickstarter. The way it works is you set a money goal, like $20,000, and ask for donations. If you reach your goal by your set date, Kickstarter charges everyone’s credit card for their donation and your project is under way. If you don’t reach your goal, no one gets charged and I’m really not sure what happens next. Maybe change your name and try again?

One brewery doing this is the Lucky Town Brewing company. They’re a startup brewery in Mississippi who’s looking for $20,000 and they have 33 days left as of this writing. So far they have a little under $10,000, so this looks like it’s working for them. They are looking to raise the money to “to help cover some of our up front costs such as license fees, insurance costs, keg expenses, and ingredients costs among others”. If you want to help a new brewery out, check out their Kickstarter page.

This sounds like an interesting way to raise capital for your brewery. What do you think? Leave your thoughts below!