Yes, benchmarking can sound like a sustainability exercise. But you can make the case that the practice is just as much about financial performance, operational discipline and long-term business resilience as it is environmental stewardship. A brewery can’t improve what it doesn’t measure.
Janae Chaney, sustainability director at Rhinegeist Brewery, said tracking key operating metrics gives breweries the information they need to identify inefficiencies before they become expensive problems.
“I’m a big believer of you can’t really improve something that you’re not measuring or don’t have goals set to achieve,” Chaney said at a 2026 Ohio Craft Brewers Conference panel on sustainability. Whether it’s water, energy, carbon dioxide, raw materials or waste, Chaney said consistent tracking creates a clearer understanding of both operational efficiency and cost drivers over time. More importantly, she said, it provides context.
Comparing current performance against previous months has value, but comparing it against the same period in prior years often reveals issues that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Chaney pointed to one example from Rhinegeist’s water-use tracking. Looking at monthly usage alone, a January increase may not have appeared unusual. But when compared with the previous January, the spike became obvious.
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“That’s the power of year-over-year tracking,” Chaney said. “It quickly exposes issues you might not otherwise see or you might miss.”
That historical perspective allows breweries to investigate abnormalities before they become recurring costs. It also gives other breweries confidence that improvements are actually working rather than relying on assumptions.
Benchmarking, Chaney said, isn’t about collecting data for its own sake. It’s about creating information that supports smarter business decisions.
“Comparing performance against your own history or industry peers of your size highlights the biggest opportunities and informs smarter investments,” she said. “It keeps your brewery competitive, resilient and sustainable no matter the size of your brewery.”
Even breweries that aren’t building dashboards or complex spreadsheets can benefit from routinely reviewing utility bills or reading water and electric meters. That idea resonated because it lowers the barrier to entry. Comprehensive benchmarking systems can provide detailed insights, but the habit of consistently reviewing operating metrics may be enough to identify trends that warrant further investigation.
Chaney noted that the Ohio state guild has adapted the Brewers Association’s sustainability benchmarking resources into a simplified Excel-based tracking tool for member breweries as well. Rather than requiring advanced analysis, breweries simply enter monthly usage and costs for categories such as water, wastewater, carbon dioxide and solid waste, allowing charts and trend lines to be generated automatically. But attractive graphs aren’t the goal, the value comes from what they reveal.
One of Rhinegeist’s most significant discoveries came from measuring something many breweries may overlook: solid waste.
“When I started tracking the solid waste data back in 2018, I discovered we were actually paying for and not receiving credit for, recycling,” Chaney said.
The finding prompted Rhinegeist to reevaluate its recycling partnerships and waste streams. After changing vendors, the brewery expanded the materials it separated for recycling beyond cardboard and shrink wrap to include items such as keg caps, PakTech can carriers and paper cores from shrink-wrap tubes. The financial impact became increasingly apparent.
“In 2021 our recycling credits actually exceeded what we were paying for our landfill and our mixed recycling dumpster,” Chaney said.
That transformation didn’t happen because of a sustainability initiative alone. It happened because data uncovered a business opportunity. Tracking waste volumes, disposal costs and recycling credits revealed that materials previously treated as expenses could become sources of revenue while simultaneously reducing landfill waste.
The lesson extends beyond recycling.
Breweries often focus on major investments when looking to improve profitability, but conference speakers suggested operational gains frequently come from identifying small inefficiencies that accumulate over months or years. Water losses, unnecessary energy consumption, excess carbon dioxide use or overlooked recycling opportunities can all become measurable once they’re consistently tracked.
At the same time, Chaney cautioned other breweries against comparing themselves to operations with vastly different resources.
“One topic that our sustainability committee makes the point to be mindful of is scale and scope,” she said. Not every brewery is going to have a sustainability department or dedicated personnel overseeing operational metrics. Some operate regional production facilities while others serve primarily through a taproom. Because of those differences, benchmarking works best when breweries compare themselves against businesses of similar size or, perhaps more importantly, against their own historical performance. That approach shifts the focus away from trying to match another brewery’s numbers and toward building continuous improvement within each operation.
Ultimately, benchmarking should be seen as less of a sustainability program and more of a management discipline. The breweries that consistently measure water, utilities, waste and other operational metrics aren’t simply producing reports. They’re creating a roadmap for identifying inefficiencies, validating investments and uncovering savings that might otherwise remain hidden.
You don’t necessarily have to measure everything immediately, but you should start measuring something consistently. The first chart may simply confirm expectations. The second year of data, however, could reveal a operational blind spot that quietly affects profitability.
