WOW... I just realized we are through the first quarter of 2015. It was actually a bit of a blur to tell the truth, but I guess that is just the way life is. Especially when you want to juggle too many things at once. The constant feeling of actually flying by the seat of your pants is tiring, challenging, exciting + rewarding all at the same time.
To tell the truth we are not quite where we planned to be by now. There are no new shiny brewing vessels on a boat to Cape Town, well at least not yet. I guess that is also fine as we took a bit of time and again changed our plans. It has been quite an interesting dynamic between my brother and I. Initially it started with me being on the bigger is better side of the fence. He was a proponent of a small, bootstrapped approach. In a year it turned round... I was leaning towards a smaller system size being used harder, while he was going the bigger route. Finally we have settled somewhere in the middle. Our brewhouse will be not too big and not too small, yet flexible and capable of taking abuse. A lot of it will still be a bootstrapping operation. At least we have a plan.
I reckon the motto of a family friend always rings in the back of my mind: "Running out of money is not a problem, but not having a plan IS a problem!"
We have a fairly solid idea of what we want to do now; we have cleared a couple of hurdles already and we have a hit list of items to resolve. The following couple of months are going to be riddled with logistic and cash flow hurdles.
Pretty sure this first real expansion will be challenging to say the least, but in a couple of years we should be able to look back with at least one of the following possible outcomes:
Option 1: YIKES...!! It actually worked and we pulled it off.
Option 2: Oh boy, did we fuck this up or what... !?!? At least we had loads of fun and learnt tremendously valuable lessons along the way. (And we had loads of beer on hand along the way)
When everything is running we will focus on two things... OK, maybe three.
Slowly solidifying our current footprint with additional production capacity, and when we have ironed out the first wrinkles of the upgrade a steady organic growth plan.
Focusing on QUALITY! There are quite a number of areas where we need to and can improve.
Trying new things and expanding the horizon of beer in Cape Town. Sticking to the way we like things and making what we like to drink. If you want to make the lowest common denominator beer to satisfy everyone you will be doomed.
