Navigating a Brewery Acquistion and Change in Management Style

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Organizing your brewery operations made easy

Learn how Haven Brewing Company overhauled their accounting and inventory practices, and learned the best way to efficiently operate and grow their business.

Acquiring a Brewery has Unique Challenges

Nathan Anker took over an existing brewery and discovered that management style can make or break a craft brewery’s profitability.

When taking over for an existing brewery, Haven faced a lot of challenges in the transition, chief of which being that the two management styles of each set of owners were very different.

Acquiring an existing brewery is an excellent way to step into the business. When starting up a new brewery, it may take up to a year and a half to acquire equipment, a location, permits, staff, etc. When buying an existing brewery you are able to brew and sell immediately. They hit the ground running but they struggled to grow the business and to transfer the business over to their new way of doing things.

How did Haven Brewing Company overhaul their accounting and inventory practices to efficiently operate and grow their business? Read on…

Brewery Management is about People and Data

When asked to summarize the “problem with management”, Nathan described a messy back-office with manual counts, unfilled purchase orders and unopened mail. The brewery had lots of information, but it was all useless if it wasn’t accessible when and where it was needed.

Brew Ninja is a mobile-friendly brewery management platform. Once onboarding was complete, Haven was able to dispose of manually created inventory counts and purchase orders. They only had to enter data one time - and it would be accurate. This was a huge relief for management - and surprisingly for staff morale too. Nathan was able to make faster decisions when his team asked him important questions. They felt empowered and were able to see the significance of entering quality data.

According to Andrew Anker (Brew Master + Co-Owner);

“Our accountant works remotely so we had to do most of it (the transformation) ourselves. The data entry and scanning and man hours to get going was worth it - and we never have to do it again”.

In short, they needed a solution that would help them in inventory, accounting and getting their business in order, and Brew Ninja came in handy just for that.

Lead the growth of your brewery.

“Brew Ninja was the first we tried that offered all the features we wanted: production planning, inventory, and good syncing with (user friendly) accounting software (Quickbooks)”.

They were glad to be able to catch up and sync their inventory, sales, and accounting into one easy to use unit that they were able to access whenever and wherever they needed to. Haven also found that as a newer piece of Software, Brew Ninja “has been very quick to help find solutions and listen to critiques and requests for new features.”

Despite how many challenges they faced in taking over a previously existing business, they found that signing with Brew Ninja brought all their numbers together into an accessible and traceable single source, and that it saved them a massive amount of time and money chasing paperwork and opening a million documents and web pages.

Haven felt that Brew Ninja was able to streamline their business, save them time, and allow them to focus on growing their business and making great beer that everyone can enjoy, instead of spending all day staring at a computer screen.

Check out Haven Brewing Company

Located in Peterborough, Ontario, Haven Brewing Company prides themselves on brewing traditional European beers the traditional European way. Haven focuses on creating beer the way it’s always been made for hundreds of years, and strives to deliver a modern take on the German, Belgian, and Czech beers of the last 500 years.

Nathan Anker, their President and CEO, wanted to quit his corporate grind and set up roots in Peterborough, and as alluded to in the name, to give the people of Petersborough a place where they can feel at home and drink great beer. This has been their goal ever since taking over the business from previous owners, and while they’ve incurred challenges, they’re thriving now due to Nathan’s leadership and commitment to better management. Brew Ninja is proud to be part of Haven Brewing’s success.