My LHBS is awesome! First, they do all the right retail stuff; they have a great selection, decent prices, knowledgeable and friendly staff and convenient hours. I only shop there maybe once or twice a month, but they all either know my name or know me by sight. Secondly, they are ardent supporters of brewing in general; they provide fantastic support for our local homebrew club, with 10% discounts to members, hosting meetings and Big Brew days, conducting educational sessions and “meet the brewer” opportunities. They are more than just a store; they are an important part of our brewing community.
There are five shops in our metropolitan area. Two shops are fairly close to me. One is the oldest shop in the area. They have limited ingredients and supplies. They have cheap grain prices but expensive everything else. They run sort of a general shop so it’s questionable how much anybody in the store knows about brewing. If I just need base grain I go there.
The other closest shop is run by one of the members of my homebrew shop. Good variety and most (or all) of the employees are club members. I don’t shop there very often although we get a club discount. The prices are the most expensive in town and with the club discount it’s still more expensive. The prices are a big deterrent unless I have an urgent need for something. I also don’t shop there often because I can’t figure out what grain they have available. They keep all the grains in a back room and only employees can go back there. The website isn’t always accurate to what they have. I need to know what brands and particular options are available. I don’t want American C80 for an English recipe calling for an English medium crystal, even if it is 75 lovibond. I don’t trust the employees enough to know I am getting what I really need. It gets very chaotic when it’s busy. I’d rather buy online and pay a few extra dollars to know I am getting what I need.
There is another shop further away that I sometimes place orders to pick up if I know I am already driving out to that area. Otherwise I try to place orders online once or twice a year for all the beer I intend to brew that year.
My “local” hbs is 45 minutes away and I still use them for 95% of my supplies and equipment. They have a solid selection of all ingredients and a more than solid knowledge base. They offer a discount to our club members and deliver orders to club meetings. Now that’s what I call service. They have supported all of the clubs in our area in every way possible. What I like most about them is that if they are out of an item, they don’t try to talk you into a substitute item they are overstocked with.
Cheers to Jim and Mary
I use to go to a place 5 min from my house, actually got my first kit there, now 3 years later and much wiser I maybe go there 3 to 4 times a year. I now travel 20 miles into to Oregon because of the prices, If you belong to the home brew club here you get a 10 perc. discount at the Ore store, and the other place wont budge on prices, example $40 for a 50lb bag of 2 row or $30 big difference, when I questioned this they said “they only make a buck or two on their bags”. So I buy elsewhere. The people at the first store are very knowledgable but after a few years in, there isnt anything I cant find out online or in a book. So that being said the most important aspect to me is price.
Yeah, same here. Plus I send biz their way.
I have a small bottle shop/LHBS 2 miles from me and a couple of full shops a 45 minute or so drive.
The local shop carries some kits and a random selection of Briess grains. I’ll buy sanitizer and caps there, but they aren’t consistent in their grain stocks, so I don’t count on being able to get anything there.
I go to a shop in the city that has a great selection of everything and they seem to turn things over fast enough that it’s all fresh. I combine visits there with other errands. Their prices might be higher than online suppliers, but I haven’t really compared. Ease of access is more important to me than price, especially with yeast.
To the OP - don’t take this wrong, but one thing to remember, however, is that newbies can be huge time suckers, so make sure when you are busy that you have enough staff to ring up the guy who wants a quick in and out on a brew day! My LHBS is closed on Sundays during the summer (Memorial to Labor days), so going in there on a Saturday knowing that I am burning brewing time (its almost a half hour there from my house) is a bummer if all of the staff are conducting an impromptu “How to Homebrew” class with one customer, rather than checking out the few others waiting to pay.
That being said, when it isn’t busy or staff and time clearly allow, expound all you want and let those customers who want to sit around and do the same join in to answer the startup questions.
Is that sending mixed signals? I hope not - just try to be perceptive. Good hours help a lot, too, because most customers work during the week, so nights and weekends are your best times, I think. Be closed on Mondays and then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings - no one will much care about those times.
I hope this helps and doesn’t sound too much like a griper, because all in all, I like my LHBS and try to favor it with most of my business.
This is a good point. There’s a small shop (actually my first LHBS) that is usually run by 1 guy. Unfortunately, he runs the cash registers, fills extract orders, and loves to talk (and tell you how things are and how they should be done).
Luckily my current LHBS knows me well enough to get my own grains, and I don’t need to take up their time since I usually know what I’m looking for.
This!
Not just homebrew shops, really any shop. Nothing worse than standing there with $200 worth in hand, ready to buy and go, and the shop expert is telling everything he knows to a guy who doesn’t buy anything and is really just killing time while his wife is getting her hair done across the street.
Have everything that I would need on brewday. I live in a city with a population of around 100,000 with no LHBS. I have to mail order everything, or drive 90 min to Toronto. I would be great to have a HB store around here where I can walk in and grab stuff of the shelf. Please don’t store dry yeast on the shelf instead of in the fridge. As soon as I see that I know I am on my own here.
We have a fairly new, very small shop in a nearby town and I’ve helped them figure out what to stock. Its tough as heck to have everything in stock though, even farily large shops don’t stock every specialty grain there is.
That said, if the prices are too much over mail order then you will lose business, plain and simple. The new people started with some pretty high prices and turned off a lot of new customers right off the bat, and I think they’re suffering for it. I would at least start on the low side and ramp up slowly, or run regular sales.
Something our LHBS does is to run regular pallet orders and offer a discount on those, it helps them defray their shipping costs, make a few bucks and not have to store so much stuff at the store. It gives club members (and anyone else) the opportunity to order exactly what they want. This is also how the next closest LHBS runs, and they vary which supplier they go through which gives me access to great variety of malts and products.
You might also find a source for corny kegs and offer them at decent prices. Equipping your customer base properly will make it easier for them to brew more beer.
For me it’s a no brainer. I have one LHBS within 75 miles or so. This guy is fairly new, and since we opened a nano production brewery, we share supply/ingredient orders of many things. It’s much better to pay $100 for a 50lb bucket of PBW, than the $6-7 for each pound. But we are too small to order on our own.
Oddly enough, I just found out our LHBS is going out of business. The guy got a new job and his wife is tired to working 50hr/wk for sub-minimum wage.
Actually, the fellow is supposed to become the brewer at a new brewpub thats going in here in little old Hannibal MO. I expect they’ll be up and running by the spring. So he’s definitely upgrading and staying “in the business”. In fact, maybe he can run the LHBS out of the brewpub, I’ve heard fo this before.
I second that - and a CLEAN shop. I bought all my first stuff at the LHBS - they are actually kind of expensive and the store is dirty - but I try to support the local business. I bought all the stuff for all my brews there until one day I brought a question to the guy I couldn’t figure out on my own (luckily the board helped me out!).
Now, I know people get tired of hearing the same stupid beginning questions all the time, and the guy can be condescending anyway - but that day the owner was so arrogant and discouraging that I’ve ordered stuff from Northern Brewer ever since. In fact, my wife doesn’t want me to give the guy another penny.
So yeah, the customer service stuff and remember that everyone starts a newbie and one really bad experience can mean a loyal customer lost. There’s little or no chance of you turning into comic book guy, though.
Keep all essentials in stock
Do special orders
Keep the website up to date and don’t make people have to call to see if their stuff is in
Make a solid logo so people will want your T-shirt.
All the Best
Please tell your customers if you are out of a certain ingredient. My LHBS didn’t have c60 so they took it upon themselves to “make” c60 by giving me half c20 and half c40 because “its basically the same thing”.
I now only shop there if I’m desperate for time and need something that will take a few days to get from Northern Brewer.
Half c40, half c20 would be c30!
I will never forget the time that a friend and I were touring a fairly well known midwest microbrewery and the tour guide was sharing a story about how they knew exactly how much grain the grist-case held:
“Well, one day, we ran out of Crystal 80, so we decided to just use twice as much Crystal 40, unfortunately it was more than the grist case could support and the chains holding it buckled…”
We slowly looked at each other, didn’t say shit, drank our free sample beers and high-tailed it out of there.
Years ago, a tour guide at a popular Delaware brewery 
told us that their beers are balanced because they contain equal amounts of barley and hops. Yeeaaah…
I’ve heard so many ‘funny’ stories from tour guides I hardly listen anymore. I just look at all the equipment and try to stay near the group.
I think it is quite difficult to run stand alone secesful HBS. Majority of sales are in extract and kit market. Some are going to be in All grain and these customers want specific grain and some can be in bulk grain.
Liquid yeast has so many varieties and limited shelf life that it is hard to satisfy everybody.
Pricing should be in ball park of price point.
Make your own brew kits.
Please do not get the brewers best or another packaged kit.
You will not sell a lot of brew kettles or pH meters so focus on brewing supply. Have recommendations where to buy brewing equipment or buy it for them (take money up front).
Your destiguishing factor is customer service.
You avoid middle men like LD Carlson to get your pricing in control and buy in bulk from brew supply companies like MCMS.
Consider on line sales as well as walk in sales.
Consider having bottle shop or tap room in the shop.
At the end of the day you want to pay yourself.
Good luck.
I hear ya about the tour guides. We’re headed on an Alaska cruise next month, so of course they will have many different types of beer tastings with Alaskan Brewing Co beers. It will be funny to hear what some cruise line guy has to say about the beer.
Winery guides are no better, sometimes worse.