Small distillery / craft breweryNew

What gets pre-loaded

• preferenceimportance 9/10

  Channel-mix discipline — taproom and distribution carry different margins; track them separately every week

  Taproom (direct-to-consumer at the distillery / brewery) and distribution (wholesale to bars, restaurants, retail) operate at fundamentally different margins — taproom typically clears 65-75% gross margin, distribution 25-40% after distributor + retailer take. Treating them as one revenue line obscures the channel-economic story and leads to bad capacity decisions (e.g. expanding distribution when taproom is under-utilised, or vice versa). Track unit volume + revenue + gross margin separately for each channel weekly, and surface a watch item if the channel mix shifts >10% in either direction over a rolling 4-week window without an explicit operator decision driving it.

• preferenceimportance 9/10

  TTB + state reporting cadence — never miss a federal excise tax filing or state production report deadline

  TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) requires federal excise tax filings on a strict semi-monthly or quarterly cadence depending on the producer's tax-rated volume bracket; missing a filing triggers automatic penalties + interest that compound + a permit-review flag. State production reports (volume, removals, transfers) often run on a separate state-specific cadence (typically monthly). The right operator practice is a calendar lock with hard reminders 5 business days before every deadline — not 'I'll get to it'. Surface a watch item on any filing that's within 3 days of the deadline without a 'filed' confirmation logged, and on any filing that's been silently skipped (missed deadline, no late-filing record).

• lessonimportance 9/10

  Tied-house red flag — any distributor or retailer 'incentive' that could be construed as inducement

  Federal + state tied-house rules prohibit producers from giving distributors or retailers anything of meaningful value in exchange for shelf space, tap placement, or distribution priority. The line between 'normal business' and 'inducement' is narrower than most small producers realise — branded glassware over a state-specific dollar threshold, paid 'feature pour' programmes, free draft system maintenance, custom-engraved tap handles given (not sold) to retailers — all of these have triggered TTB or state-board enforcement in the last 5 years. The right rule of thumb is: if the value flows from producer → retailer/distributor and isn't a sale at fair market value, document it and treat it as inducement-risk until cleared by counsel. Surface a watch item on any operator-flagged exchange of 'free' or 'incentive' goods with a downstream-channel partner, no matter how routine it feels.

• lessonimportance 8/10

  Production-yield red flag — any batch yielding >15% below the historical average for that recipe

  A batch yielding more than 15% below the rolling 12-month historical average for the same recipe (whether mash bill, hop bill, or fermentation yield) is a structural production problem that compounds — typically a contaminated yeast pitch, a temperature-control failure on fermentation, a stuck mash, or a measurement-calibration drift. The right response is to log the deviation, hold the affected batch from packaging until QA-tested, and walk every input back through the production log to identify the root cause before the next pitch. Surface a watch item on any batch yield that crosses the 15% deviation threshold, prompting the operator to flag the batch and pull the production log before the next session.