Determining proper purchases to succeed in the future for your cidery can come in a variety of ways.
Economies of scale are the easiest driver for cutting costs, but you have to be careful not to over purchase inventory, warned Katie Greenfield of Jefferson County Ciderworks.
The Fairfield, Iowa cidery’s goal is to own its own equipment. At this time, ROI is not as important as establishing a stable operations as it is still in a start-up phase.
“Later this will be more of a factor,” Greenfield admitted.
The thing that has helped Kekionga Cider the most is getting bigger tanks.
“This has allowed us to buy more in bulk, which is driving down our cost,” pointed out co-founder Tyler Butcher.
The second thing the Fort Wayne, Indiana cidery has looked at is how to minimize labor.
“There are lots of ways to get more efficient but most of that comes down to spending money on new equipment,” Butcher said. “It is part of growing pains that most small businesses go through.
“You make do with what you got, then when it becomes a bigger pain point with more volume, you analyze what machine or process will save time and money.”
Philippe Bishop of Alpenfire said that the cidery is always looking for ways to be more efficient and cut costs.
“There are plenty of ways we could but choose to keep our top-shelf quality,” he said. ”We could always buy the ‘fresh pressed, hand picked, Northwest apples’ but these apples are really basic and in our opinion do not make interesting cider, that is why most “ciders” based in the Northwest are flavored.
”We could also speed up our fermentation, and do multiple ferments a year like most cideries, but long slow, [and] cool primary fermentation and a long maturation time is what gives our cider the nuances that modern ciders do not have. We have chosen to stick to our beliefs in what cider should be and not chase trends.”
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