by ericdickerson4life » Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:51 am
After having spent a lot of time looking at launching a brewery, Texas is NO WAY near the saturation point. As others have pointed out look to Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, etc. We (Texas) have one of the lowest breweries per capita in the US (when I was doing my research we were in the high 40s). Some laws have changed recently in Texas that will help the expansion of micro breweries, but we as a state have a long way to go.
As for the distribution. You can make a hell of a profit margin just selling food and having people come to your place to drink. Assumption is that you can get people to come in. Distribution actually starts eating a lot of margin for you, better to self distribute early (again some laws come into play when you start doing this) until you get big enough to be picked up by a large distributor. Karbach in Houston ran this model beautifully (they use to be a distributor so that help them self distribute early on) and they will soon be Houston's largest brewer, IMHO. They also make the best beer in Houston.
Love me some beer talk!