Two Ways MadTree Finds Its Best Equipment Deals

By Jon Sicotte on October 11, 2022

Like many veteran breweries, MadTree has watched the craft beer industry mature over the past several years — with a consumer market now demanding more products, both in type and size — the Cincinnati brewery has focused on changing, modifying, or adding new equipment to help it become more effective at delivering.

“We only see this trend continuing,” said Matt Rowe, Capital Projects Manager, “so we are constantly looking for ways to increase our ability to respond to the rapidly changing needs of our customers so that we can continue to push innovation in products, execute against new trends, and be much more flexible as a production operation.”

Rowe said that the overarching theme of all the upgrades and changes made over the past several years is to increase flexibility as a company from a production standpoint.

”When we built out our process flow and equipment plans for our new brewery in 2016, we had fewer brands and more volume planned that prioritized efficiency on a smaller set of SKUs over everything else,” he said.

That means finding ways to maximize new equipment purchases. Rowe shared with Brewer some ideas that he has when it comes to making those decisions.

For some of these changes, MadTree leveraged current relationships with existing suppliers. Especially those who Rowe said they had faith in to help modify equipment and meet any needs. ”Many times the advantage of these existing relationships is that they understand your current process or equipment, and can help you make smart decisions about how to move your production process from where it is currently to where it needs to be in the most effective way possible,” he said.
Additionally, Rowe mentioned that MadTree has a really solid engineering and design company that assisted them with the original build. “Their breadth of experience and expertise is invaluable when we are looking at new projects,” he said. “Not only do they many times have creative solutions to help us meet our goals, but they also have direct connections with suppliers we may not otherwise have access or relationships with to begin conversations on equipment, upgrades, and infrastructure needed to support our projects.”

Photo courtesy MadTree