Small distilleries need to be creative to put their name on the map and to make a mark. Diversifying and expanding your operations can help with your bottom line and can simultaneously work to support each branch of your business. Expanding from being a supplier only to a restaurant or bar, for example, can bring more people in to taste your whiskey directly.
It can be hard to be a smaller new distillery, but with these tips, you’ll be better able to get your name out there and put your business on the map:
Open Up Your Distillery
Have a whiskey tour or even consider opening a whiskey bar or restaurant on site. This can bring people directly to your distillery and can help your business see some of those tourist dollars. The ultimate goal of opening up your distillery is to win over more customers and increase orders across the country. Depending on what your distillery looks like, this new avenue could become a huge money-maker for your business.
You will need to renovate a dedicated space and bring in a team of mixologists and bartenders in order to see it through. Even if you only offer a whiskey tour and tasting, you will want your team trained and looking sharp in uniforms from https://www.chefworks.com/bartender-aprons.
Start with one project at a time. You may start with a tour, then open a bar, then a restaurant, and they even get into the events business and host weddings, birthdays, and work events alike.
Enter into Competitions
Competitions bring awareness, and if you win, they bring prestige. Continue to workshop and develop your whiskey range and enter into competitions as they come. Not only is this a great way to get the recognition your distillery needs it can actually be used as a way to quality control your products. If you manage to develop an award-winning mixture, then you have an exceptional product and a great way to market it.
Attend Events and Conferences
Don’t just sell to individuals. You want your product on the shelves of restaurants, hotels, and other businesses in the hospitality industry. To do this, a great way to get your brand out there is to go to events and conferences where businesses are the focus. You can make business partnerships and make large volume sales to those in the events and hospitality industries.
Offer Multiple Product Options
There are so many great ways that you can sell your products, depending on what the rules and regulations are in your country or state. For example, you can offer a whiskey subscription as a gift option which provides a different gift-size whiskey each month. You can have a tasting product that includes all of your products in one package. You can even create cocktail kits that provide everything a customer needs to create classic signature drinks.
Other than personal drinking, one of the most common reasons why people buy whiskey is a gift. By offering multiple different gifting options, you can make your distillery the go-to destination for those looking for something fun for their whiskey-loving loved ones.