Rendering of a tasting room with an efficiently sized production area.
The tank that is used to transport the wort from our facility to breweries and restaurants that use the Project Hummingbird program.
New Opportunity:
Building a small factory to produce craft beer that will be sold by a distributor isn’t necessary. You can sell directly to your consumer out of your tasting room, which is the most profitable segment of most small breweries. Project Hummingbird capitalizes on that fact and brings the capital needed to start a brewery into manageable focus by reducing equipment costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lower set-up costs equal higher profits and more business model flexibility.
How Project Hummingbird Works:
New brewers join as owner/members of the co-op and set up a small commercial test-pilot brewhouse along with uni-tank fermenters to suit their market demand. Brewers produce small pilot batches, then dial their recipes in on the “Big Mamma” at Oconee Brewing Company. We ship your wort using your original recipe and production notes. You finish the fermentation and retailing at your facility. Your brewery, your brand, your beer!
Huge Benefits:
More Space. Space is precious in a brewery. Culling out underutilized equipment (such as boilers, grain mills, forklifts, etc.) creates room for revenue producing fun – like an event venue!
Efficient Space. With Project Hummingbird, you only need 500 square feet of production space whether your annual production is 150 bbls or 3,000 bbls. Use your capital to grow your brand rather than expand your building.
Reduction of Equipment Costs. Brewhouse equipment is one of the most cost prohibitive aspects of starting a brewery, and much of the equipment may be in operation only about 10% of the time.
Maximizes Labor Resources. Project Hummingbird allows for part-time labor schedules to be managed more efficiently. A lot of the brewing process through the wort production can be down time; Project Hummingbird stops your payroll meter from ticking until there’s work to be done.
A Game Changer for Seasonal Tourism Markets. Breweries in certain area (i.e. coastal or lake) have high and low seasons based on tourism. Project Hummingbird is perfect for seasonal markets because of the ability to scale production up or down.
Where to Now?
Now that you’ve got a general Idea of the benefits and utility of Project Hummingbird, let’s plan a time for you to visit our site. We think that once we dig into the details, you’ll discover that you are closer to starting a brewery than you thought! 🍻