As breweries scale up their business, they find accounting and legal partners with the knowledge and resources to help them achieve their goals. Maria Pearman, CPA, will explain when a brewery should hire an accounting firm and how to find a firm that fits its unique needs.

A trusted advisor in the craft beer space, Maria will give an overview of the business life cycle and share industry-specific advice on what brewers need to know at various stages of that cycle. Maria will explain how financial and accounting needs evolve as a brewery reaches new milestones.

Finding a knowledgeable accounting partner is important to a brewery’s financial success. Maria will provide guidance on how to interview an accounting firm to ensure they are engaging the right advisor.

Over the years Maria has worked with hundreds of breweries of all sizes and leverages that experience to help the industry level up their business.

Maria Pearman, CPA, CGMA, is the Beverage Practice Leader at GHJ, a national advisory and accounting firm. She has more than 15 years of public accounting experience providing accounting and advisory services to clients. She is an expert in the beverage and alcohol industry and specializes in internal accounting processes, financial reviews, budgeting, cash-flow forecasting, financial strategy and succession planning.

Maria sits on the Finance Committee for the Brewers Association, and wrote two top-rated books, Small Brewery Finance and Distillery Finance, to help small businesses run more successful beverage alcohol companies.

She has taught courses at the Business of Craft Beer program at the University of Vermont and Portland State University. Prior to joining GHJ in 2021, Maria built a national practice focused on beverage alcohol clients in Portland, OR.