Can you run a distillery by yourself?

Oct 07, 2020

This is a brilliant question to ask and working through all the likely jobs you will need to do once you’re up and going will help.

So what will I be doing once I open my distillery doors?

There are about 10 jobs straight up that you will need to think about doing. Let’s run through them here.

  1. Distillery Director. That’s probably you, the leader of the distillery but if you are thinking of scaling up then in the future it may also need to be someone else.
  2. Distiller. A useful person in a distillery and if its also you, then you may be a bit busy.
  3. Marketing Manager. Our suggestion, unless you are a marketing guru, is to outsource this.
  4. Front of house. This is important once you get to the point of having people visit your distillery. If this is you too, then you will be busy.
  5. Distillery operations. In a small distillery this can be one person, but as you scale this will involve running the distillery, distilling, cleaning, filling barrels, ordering and moving stock.
  6. Accounts Manager. Invoicing and goods in and out. This might be a good job to outsource too unless accounting is your thing.
  7. Sales Manager. Wow you have enough stock to want to sell to bottle shops and hotels. Great news. You’ll need someone to help you with this too.
  8. Business Manager. Usually you until you grow, but when you get to the point of selling, recording, managing excise as well as sales this becomes a busy time.
  9. Stock control.
  10. Bottling, labelling and packaging. Worth thinking about how you will manage this early on because when you get that big order…..

Can you run a distillery by yourself? Yes its possible when you’re small but you also want to look after yourself so making sure your mate, business partner or spouse is on board for when you need the help will be pretty important.

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