The time has come

[Brewtopian]

For the last year and half I have been working on a business plan and I am now turning to you, the beer professionals to tell me if you believe this concept would be both beneficial to you and to beer consumers here in the US.

Please check out my website and let me know what you think.

Thanks a bunch.
Rick

www.brewtopiastore.com

[pennbrew2]

Well I'll tell you the problem I had. Your webpage takes FOREVER to load, then once it's loaded, scrolling up and down the page causes my (admittedly creaky old) laptop to grind to a complete halt.

I'm no web expert, but what do you have running on that page that causes my system to bog down?

---Guy

[Brewtopian]

Well I'll tell you the problem I had. Your webpage takes FOREVER to load, then once it's loaded, scrolling up and down the page causes my (admittedly creaky old) laptop to grind to a complete halt.

I'm no web expert, but what do you have running on that page that causes my system to bog down?

---Guy
The site is a bit graphics heavy but this is the first that I've heard of this issue. Are you on an old 386?

Thanks for checking out the site. If you have the patience to check out the content please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks again.
Rick

[pennbrew2]

No, not a 386. I don't know the processor speed or how much RAM it has. It's running Windows XP and the hard drive is 20 gig.

Probably 1st generation XP, I don't know, about 5 years old? It zips around the internet pretty well, but it sure didn't like your site.

[Brewtopian]

No, not a 386. I don't know the processor speed or how much RAM it has. It's running Windows XP and the hard drive is 20 gig.

Probably 1st generation XP, I don't know, about 5 years old? It zips around the internet pretty well, but it sure didn't like your site.

Sorry I bogged down your machine. I hope you won't hold it against me:)

[beauxman]

You gotta fix that webpage, it is way too clunky regarding file size. All your page is images and graphics, they need to be optimized at best. Use HTML for your text, reduce graphics where you can.

Your page size is 885k! This takes 3.03 minutes to load for a 56k modem, and even a T1 data line would take 10.29 seconds to download. Most people will wait max 8 seconds for a page load (well researched and a standard industry accepted rule). Aim for a 30k page size max 50k. Give up "glitz" for content if you have to. Most people will have trouble loading your site and never see what you are offering...it brought my computer to a near death experience and my computer is robust and healthy.

Best of luck!
-Beaux

[monkeybrewer]

just to let you know my experience, I use a cable modem and I have no trouble quickly getting around your website(the pages and all graphics appeared instantly). As for the concept I think it's great. There are too few good beer stores in New England and Northern NY so this concept would be gladly welcomed here. Good luck and I hope to see your stores soon.
Cheers

[jl07960]

I too had no problem with your page and i'm on a cable modem. I think your presentation looked good, great selection of pictures, detailed and well worded descriptions of the plan. And beyond everyone's focus on the web page itself, it is a great idea and I hope someone takes a store like that into NJ one day - there are few liquor stores that have a good craft beer selection here, those that do without a doubt are the most popular liquor stores, becuase watered-down lager stores are every other block here, more and more are traveling to the nice slection stores which coincidently are usually higher-end wine stores as well, a lot of us here have been spending a lot of time educating the NJ people on good beer, and I can see that the market is starting to change, and it is nice to see these high-end wine selection stores also carry a nice selection of craft beers. But your plan is just straight-up craft beer which is great! I just don't think you're allowed regular tastings in an NJ liquor store.

-Jeremy
Flounder Brewing Co.

[pennbrew2]

Sorry I bogged down your machine. I hope you won't hold it against me:)

I tried this morning on my son's computer, bought less than a year ago--fast processor, tons of memory, DSL connection, etc.--and gave up after 60 seconds with the page not loading.

You really should consider doing something about it, if a large number of potentially interested people can't see your page then it's a real problem.

Just FYI.

---Guy

Edited to add: OK, using a different browser I was able to see your site. Looks like a great concept, it's the kind of place I'd like to go to buy some beer.

I assume you've looked into the different states' laws. If you do ever come east Pennsylvania will provide an interesting set of challenges to your business model!

Best of luck.

[Brewtopian]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I'm really glad you all think the idea is solid and it would be a benefit to you as producers.

The individual laws from state to state are something of a challenge and not all the services may be offered in some states. Here in Idaho for example you can't offer tastings of beer but you can wine. The solution to this dilemma was to get an on premise license. Its an inexpensive fix to the problem.

I'm in the funding stage for the prototype store right now and hope to have all the money together and started on construction this Spring.

You guys feel free to pass links to my site on to anyone that you think might be interested.

Thanks and keep it coming.

[beertje46]

After reading all the posts I decided my machine was bad-ass enough to handle anything, wrong. I opened the site in a new tab so I could continue reading ProBrewer. The machine ground to a halt, couldn't even scroll through PB. I am on commericial grade broadband and am connected straight into the modem. I couldn't even log-out.

I am using XP & IE 7 with all the current updates, 1/2 gig RAM, fast Celeron processor.

Once I got rebooted I opened the site with FireFox (3.something beta). Boom, site comes up fast, navigates easily even though it is a graphics hog. There is something about the site that doesn't like Internet Exploder.

Looks like a great concept, good luck in your venture.

[Brewtopian]

After reading all the posts I decided my machine was bad-ass enough to handle anything, wrong. I opened the site in a new tab so I could continue reading ProBrewer. The machine ground to a halt, couldn't even scroll through PB. I am on commericial grade broadband and am connected straight into the modem. I couldn't even log-out.

I am using XP & IE 7 with all the current updates, 1/2 gig RAM, fast Celeron processor.

Once I got rebooted I opened the site with FireFox (3.something beta). Boom, site comes up fast, navigates easily even though it is a graphics hog. There is something about the site that doesn't like Internet Exploder.

Looks like a great concept, good luck in your venture.

This is very odd. I run Mac and have opened it in Safari, Firefox and Explorer on my Mac with no issues. I have a IBM laptop at work that is about 2 years old and it runs fine there as well in Firefox and Explorer.

I'm not the most tech saavy person out there so I will have to employ the services of my neighbor to help me sort through this issue.

Thanks again

[Laughing Dog]

Brewtopia Is a trademarked Business name
first part of any business check for trademark/copyright infringments
good Idea rolling all the different stores into one

LDB

[GlacierBrewing]

Concept of specialty beer stores is a great idea! I do miss the variety I had living in Colorado and the superliquor stores. Here in Montana, our beer selection is much more limited at the retail store (although we have a new liquor store in town who seems to get it, regarding craft beers, unusual styles). I feel that in certain progressive markets, your beer-boutique concept can really take off and find success.
As far as your website goes, yea, pretty graphics-intensive. But I'm driving a three-year old Dell using Firefox, your site loaded just fine. Took about 10-15 seconds to load. I was interested, so I waited (AN ETERNITY!!!!! :D ). Maybe I'm just use to waiting as our website (glacierbrewing.com) seems to be a graphics pig as well. Try using this image reduction tool, http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/index.php. Other than that, I like it. Really look forward to see your stores in action!
Dave

[Brewtopian]

Brewtopia Is a trademarked Business name
first part of any business check for trademark/copyright infringments
good Idea rolling all the different stores into one

LDB

Yeah, I did catch that so we're going to modify the name to deal with this but we're also going to make an offer to the owner of the trademark since they're not using the name at this time.

Thanks for the catch.

[beertje46]

The Glacier Brewing site pops right up and operates fine. It is a very rare occasion that I experience any issues online or otherwise. My two cents...

[jarviw]

very pretty website.
It loaded fine for me... I wonder if this is an issue with your server? limited bandwidth/slow connection? all come worst you can make your website into two parts, one "High-speed" one "Dial-up".


...............


What makes me curious, however, is just how much profit margin are you looking at? I assume you worked out a pretty looking pro forma?


Also, my experience with specialty superstore is often, sadly, excellent selection of old beer. As a consumer, I love these stores (it's like a candy store!!)
But from a brewer's point of view, I really wouldn't want my beer be sitting in a giant room with 500 other beers for 3 months (or 6), and finally some customer opened it and decided my beer sucks.


but in any event, good luck with it!

[ECB]

I had problems with the web-site as well, but got it going later on.
Looks interesting, but as you go farther East, the more the laws get complicated.

Goopd Luck,

Tom
ECBC

[Brewtopian]

very pretty website.
It loaded fine for me... I wonder if this is an issue with your server? limited bandwidth/slow connection? all come worst you can make your website into two parts, one "High-speed" one "Dial-up".


...............


What makes me curious, however, is just how much profit margin are you looking at? I assume you worked out a pretty looking pro forma?


Also, my experience with specialty superstore is often, sadly, excellent selection of old beer. As a consumer, I love these stores (it's like a candy store!!)
But from a brewer's point of view, I really wouldn't want my beer be sitting in a giant room with 500 other beers for 3 months (or 6), and finally some customer opened it and decided my beer sucks.


but in any event, good luck with it!

I'm operating on a net rev of 20%+.

I agree, old beer is an issue. We'll be using a inventory control system that allows us to track purchases by date so we'll know the shelf dates for every item in the store. Also, a big benefit of this model is that you don't need a large inventory of slower moving items. You may only stock a 12 pack of some items that you sell less frequently but have 40 cases of a higher volume item. Should you run out of a item that is a slow mover in most cases it can be back in stock within 48 hours from your distributor.

Stores that stock old beer are usually not managing their inventory very well or ordering too much of an item and then not tracking it properly. There is no excuse for having old beer on the shelf.

[Brewtopian]

I had problems with the web-site as well, but got it going later on.
Looks interesting, but as you go farther East, the more the laws get complicated.

Goopd Luck,

Tom
ECBC

Clearly there are states that won't be friendly to the concept, states like Utah and Florida come to mind but for the most part we've found that with minimal adjustments in the operation we can tailor a store for virtually anywhere.

Sorry about your difficulty with the site. I'm going to spend some time this weekend trying to decrease the size of some of the images to speed up the load times.

[Brewtopian]

I spent several hours this weekend trying to speed up the site. If any of you happen to the site please let me know if you have any issues or if you notice any improvement.

Thanks

[jl07960]

"The individual laws from state to state are something of a challenge and not all the services may be offered in some states. Here in Idaho for example you can't offer tastings of beer but you can wine. The solution to this dilemma was to get an on premise license. Its an inexpensive fix to the problem."

NJ is a tough one even on the above, I know you aren't planning on coming here, but it is a great market for specialty stores like your concept, we are just often neglected because no one wants to put up with our NJ ABC. We are in the same position too where you can have wine tasting but not beer tasting. Wineries have a lot of rights in NJ and brewer's have one, we have A-B to thankf or that over in Newark. But tasting aside, a store that specializes, and knows their crafts could do extremely well here. But you definitely need some good counsel versed in each states laws, just dealing with my state got confusing.

Site still loaded up fast for me, but I use firefox and didn't realize until someone else posted about it that it might be slow on IE, make sure to check all browsers when designing.

-Jeremy FLounder Lees
Flounder Brewing Co.

[beertje46]

I spent several hours this weekend trying to speed up the site. If any of you happen to the site please let me know if you have any issues or if you notice any improvement.

Thanks
Well, your site still hates IE 7 on my machine. I had the same result as the post below.

After reading all the posts I decided my machine was bad-ass enough to handle anything, wrong. I opened the site in a new tab so I could continue reading ProBrewer. The machine ground to a halt, couldn't even scroll through PB. I am on commericial grade broadband and am connected straight into the modem. I couldn't even log-out.

I am using XP & IE 7 with all the current updates, 1/2 gig RAM, fast Celeron processor.

Once I got rebooted I opened the site with FireFox (3.something beta). Boom, site comes up fast, navigates easily even though it is a graphics hog. There is something about the site that doesn't like Internet Exploder.

Looks like a great concept, good luck in your venture.


Still works great on FireFox.

[Brewtopian]

"The individual laws from state to state are something of a challenge and not all the services may be offered in some states. Here in Idaho for example you can't offer tastings of beer but you can wine. The solution to this dilemma was to get an on premise license. Its an inexpensive fix to the problem."

NJ is a tough one even on the above, I know you aren't planning on coming here, but it is a great market for specialty stores like your concept, we are just often neglected because no one wants to put up with our NJ ABC. We are in the same position too where you can have wine tasting but not beer tasting. Wineries have a lot of rights in NJ and brewer's have one, we have A-B to thankf or that over in Newark. But tasting aside, a store that specializes, and knows their crafts could do extremely well here. But you definitely need some good counsel versed in each states laws, just dealing with my state got confusing.

Site still loaded up fast for me, but I use firefox and didn't realize until someone else posted about it that it might be slow on IE, make sure to check all browsers when designing.

-Jeremy FLounder Lees
Flounder Brewing Co.

I don’t know if any of you have read Brewing Up A Business by Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery. He tells a very interesting story about when he was trying to get the first Dogfish Head brewpub open. He had picked out his site in DE, signed the lease and started renovations, he built his brewing facility and then decided to tackle the state law that at the time said it was illegal to operate a brewpub in DE. He and his lawyer drew up a bill and got it before the state legislature. He personally lobbied for his bill at the state house and the it was overwhelmingly approved making it legal for brewpubs to operate in the state.

Now I don’t advocate spending the money before making sure the laws support your venture but I think many on this board feel that the laws can’t be changed. If a responsible operator were to approach the state legislature in most states he would stand a good chance of getting the laws changed to support his model.

I don’t believe that Brewtopia has to be or will be in all 50 states but the fact remains that better than 50% of the states already have laws that approve of the model I’ve built. Some may require a different license than another but at the end of the day the model works in better than half the states and should the concept be as successful as I anticipate that number will grow as municipalities begin to demand access to quality beer. We’ve seen this exact scenario play out in the last 20 years as states have changed their laws to allow brewpubs and breweries to operate. For Christ sake even Utah has microbreweries now.

I'm not overly concerned with the issues of law at this point as there is no shortage of opportunity here in the West but don't be surprised if you see that big red sign on a building near you in the not to distant future.

[Carpeiem]

Your site works well with firefox and loads well on my 4 y/o Compaq laptop.

Just want to throw out how it is not likely to get laws changed or even make a viable business out here in Utah. The supermarkets sell approximately half of the craft beers legally available for sale. Everything over 4.0 ABV must be sold in the state run liquor store. We just have to get crafty with how to make a great tasting beer. (pun intended)

These stores are great though; I used to frequent a store on 85th and Aurora in Seattle when I used to go to school up there. It looked like crap from the outside, but upon entering it felt like heaven. Large selection of beers from everywhere. Don't know if it is still there, but could get behind the idea of another.

Good luck!

[Brewtopian]

Your site works well with firefox and loads well on my 4 y/o Compaq laptop.

Just want to throw out how it is not likely to get laws changed or even make a viable business out here in Utah. The supermarkets sell approximately half of the craft beers legally available for sale. Everything over 4.0 ABV must be sold in the state run liquor store. We just have to get crafty with how to make a great tasting beer. (pun intended)

These stores are great though; I used to frequent a store on 85th and Aurora in Seattle when I used to go to school up there. It looked like crap from the outside, but upon entering it felt like heaven. Large selection of beers from everywhere. Don't know if it is still there, but could get behind the idea of another.

Good luck!

Thanks for the good wishes. I agree Utah is a real uphill battle but its not a lost cause as the changes in the laws allowing brewpubs show. Honestly though I haven't counted on Utah being a friendly market anytime soon but SLC and Park City are growing less Mormon every day. I'm in Idaho so I know exactly what you mean though.

[Brewtopian]

Your site works well with firefox and loads well on my 4 y/o Compaq laptop.

Just want to throw out how it is not likely to get laws changed or even make a viable business out here in Utah. The supermarkets sell approximately half of the craft beers legally available for sale. Everything over 4.0 ABV must be sold in the state run liquor store. We just have to get crafty with how to make a great tasting beer. (pun intended)

These stores are great though; I used to frequent a store on 85th and Aurora in Seattle when I used to go to school up there. It looked like crap from the outside, but upon entering it felt like heaven. Large selection of beers from everywhere. Don't know if it is still there, but could get behind the idea of another.

Good luck!

By the way, how long until your brewery is up and running? I'm in SLC all the time and would love to visit.

[knock]

seems a little heavyhanded on the R&D though. Who is this website meant for at this point - investors? I'd be pretty convinced, but a small store already operating would be even more convincing. best of luck.

[Brewtopian]

seems a little heavyhanded on the R&D though. Who is this website meant for at this point - investors? I'd be pretty convinced, but a small store already operating would be even more convincing. best of luck.

Thanks.

I set the site up as both a mental exercise for myself as well as a a physical presence of the business while in the development process. I really wanted to have something other than just my business plan and executive summary to direct potential investors to so the site was what I came up with.

Thanks for your feedback and for the good wishes.

[Brewtopian]

I've updated the site and added a blog page to keep everyone apprised of my progress with getting the first store open as well as my random thoughts on the beer in front of me. Check it out and pass it along to your friends.

Prost,
Rick