As the craft beer community faces uphill battles for the foreseeable future from new entrants to the beverage alcohol space, changing regulatory environments, an unfavorable economy, and finicky new young drinkers, it’s more important than ever for organizations to get strategic with their business plans and infrastructure. This process could feel like “busy work”, but getting clear about how your brewery business drives revenue and how your departments coexist together helps define business goals and improves cross-department communication. Those in craft beer tend to not see the forest because of the trees – we get so caught up in the day-to-day operations that we forget that the organization has multiple working parts, even if you’re a small organization. Those individual parts drive revenue for your business and clear strategic business systems can help you manage them efficiently.

Conceptualizing your brewery business as an ecosystem, where all those parts work together towards a common goal and cannot exist without one another, is a great way to define systems for your business that will lead to long-term success. Understanding and defining how each department compliments the others can also help you identify strengths and weaknesses, so you can proactively stay ahead of the game. This session will explore how to conceptualize your brewery as a business ecosystem and identify how each department contributes to the overall goal of profitability. Attendees will walk away with fresh ideas about how to approach the management of their business, how to identify their own set of strategic business goals for each department, and how to improve communication amongst brewery departments.

With over 2 decades of experience in the food and beverage industry, Julie Rhodes is an expert in off-site beverage sales, digital marketing, leadership, team management, and distributor partnership management. She is the owner of Not Your Hobby Marketing Solutions, an educational services and strategic business consulting company built specifically for small to medium-sized craft beverage companies where she teaches owners, operators and teams how to work smarter, not harder. She is also a freelance business journalist and active public speaker, belonging to multiple state brewery guilds and cider trade associations. She was the 2023 Mentor of the Year for the Brewers Association, sits on the BA DEI Marketing and Communications Subcommittee and teaches marketing and sales for multiple business of craft beer programs at the university level.