Latkasimka

We have a custom bottle with our distillery name etched in it that’s made for us in china. We have some difficulties with lead times, customs, and general communication, however. Does anyone have a custom bottle supplier they can recommend?

Higher quality and purity than technical grade. Available by the 55 gallon drum. $30 per gallon.

We’re in the market for a bottling/labeling machine for 750 ml and 375 ml bottles. Also interested in automated waxing machines.

We’d like to buy several (maybe 5) 300 gallon cypress fermenters. Anyone know a good source for these?

Hi all, can anyone recommend a good inexpensive source for 50ml bottles? Happy 4th!

Awesome. We're on it.

We're looking at possibly opening a small cocktail bar next to our distillery. I'd love to hear from other folks in terms of what impact it has had on your financial picture (i.e. revenue/profit relative to your tasting room sales, etc). Of course there are a million variables that would impact results, but would just like a bit of anecdotal information if possible.

Greetings, We are in the market for a cream base for a new product we plan to introduce. I see that there was a recent post on a new cream base coming to market, and I have contacted that distillery already about procuring samples. Are there other cream base products on the market that folks are using? A google search hasn't yielded much, so hoping others might have some helpful insights... Thanks!

So selling at farmers markets has become legal here in WA state, and I assume it's legal in some other states as well. Anyone doing this? If so, how is it going?

Do you find that to be the case for your distillery as well? And if this is indeed the "slow season," when do you typically find sales start picking up?

Ok, signed up with groupon for tour promotion. I'll update on how it works for us once we know. I must say, though, we have found tours to be helpful. We're having good conversion on those visitors. Thanks for everyone's feedback on this topic.

And by the way, where were you on the night of the 12th...

Re-reading my question, bluestar, and I sound like an fbi interrogator. Sorry. Feel free to pm me if that's preferable. We're gearing up for our annual planning session and I'm going to be pushing hard for adding tours.

Thx, bluestar. Do you use some sort of online booking software to reserve spots and take payment, or is it a more manual process? And how many tours a week do you do with how many people?

Follow up to this question. We've established that tours are important/worthwhile. Has anyone used groupon to promote them? Good experience/bad experience?

Sorry, started at end of 2012 - not 2013. Years are running together as result of inhaling ethanol fumes...

So we opened our distillery at the end of 2013, 2 people working full time, six days a week 10 to 12 hour days.. Grain to glass operation from the outset. I read just about everything I could get my hands on in terms of online material from folks who'd started distilleries before, much of it here. A recurring theme was that this business is difficult, won't make money for years, etc. While I believed it, at some level I thought it was a bit of gamesmanship - keep the newbies out by telling them it's not all roses... Well three years later, I'm here to tell you (you being my alternate reality self, heeding my warning) - it's for real. This business is hard! It takes more money than I thought, more time to get going, the works. I still love it, and wouldn't change anything - finally feel like we're getting some momentum - but dang! I officially declare the warnings legitimate.

Sorry to see no one has replied to your post, as I'm curious about this as well. We'll be needing to scale up soon. One thing I notice about your plan is the modest increase in production space, from 2k sq feet to 2300 sq feet. For us, increasing sq footage for production will be top priority. Sounds like your move is more intended to increase your capacity to host customers and sell direct. Is that accurate?

Thanks for the feedback, gents. Sounds like we'll be gearing up for some tours in the near future.

How important do you regard distillery tours to your business? How popular are they (i.e. do they tend to fill up)? Is the percentage of buyers from tours comparable to that of your regular tasting room traffic? We have yet to offer distillery tours, and wonder what we're missing out on in terms of potential sales. Thanks for any insights.

Thx, bluestar. Good to hear. I suspect you're right.

Thanks, all, for the feedback here. Much appreciated.

We're in wa. No sales by glass, just merchandise and bottle sales, and I'd say 95 percent or more is bottle sales.

In the last 6 months, we've signed on a distributor for statewide distribution. Over that same time, we've stepped up promotion of our tasting room. I've been surprised to find that our tasting room revenues actually exceed our sales to our distributor pretty much every month, though it's close. My question: is this unusual? I would have expected our sales to distributor to far exceed what we could do in our little tasting room. I suspect our distributor is underperforming, but would like to hear some other perspectives. Thx!

Wondering if people find Sundays to be a good sales day at their tasting room? We've not been open on Sundays yet to date, but we do find Friday/Saturdays to be our busiest days.