Price the three doors before choosing between them
Channel mix is the biggest financial decision a brewery makes, on purpose or by accident. A pint over your own bar captures the full retail price but pays for the room it is poured in; an LCBO listing buys reach while the markup and retail programs take their share before your deposit arrives; a licensee keg sits between the two, paying for delivery runs, a keg fleet and the ongoing fight for tap handles. The first artifact of our Fractional CFO engagement is a monthly contribution per hectolitre by channel, with each door carrying its own costs instead of borrowing from the others.
| Door | What it tends to earn | What it demands | Its job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taproom draught | The most per litre in the building | Seats, staff, hours and a neighbourhood | The margin anchor |
| LCBO cans | The least per litre, after markup and programs | Packaging capacity, lead times, patience on payment | Reach and brand proof |
| Licensee kegs | The middle of the range | Delivery routes, keg steel, handles that churn | Presence where people drink |
| Contract brewing for others | Thin, priced against empty tanks | Spare capacity and disciplined scheduling | Utilization, not profit |
Once each door has its own line, the mix stops being a matter of taste. The plan sets a target share for each channel, the monthly report says whether the beer is flowing toward or away from it, and pricing conversations start from what a door nets rather than what a competitor charges.
Contract brewing is a capacity price, in either direction
Brewing for someone else fills tanks that were going to sit empty, and it is worth doing only above the marginal cost of the batch — ingredients, packaging, labour hours and the scheduling disruption — because the margin is thin by design. Having someone else brew your brand runs the same logic backwards: volume growth without buying tanks, paid for in margin and control. Either contract must also say plainly whose excise licence the packaging runs under, because duty follows the licensed brewhouse that packages, and the invoicing has to match that answer.
The deciding input is tank utilization: the share of your cellar weeks actually fermenting something. A brewery bumping against full capacity is genuinely shopping for fermenters or a contract partner; one with idle weeks has cheaper growth sitting in its own building than anywhere else, and should sell those weeks before it borrows for new steel.
The cash cycle runs ahead of the revenue
A brewery pays for its beer long before anyone drinks it: malt and hops on order, cans and printed labels in minimum runs, excise duty the month packaging happens — while the taproom pays back daily, licensees pay on terms and the LCBO pays on its own cycle. Layer the seasonal curve on top, patio months carrying the winter, and the bank balance stops being a readable signal. Distillers carry the hardest version of this, with whisky tying up cash in barrels for years before a single bottle sells, even with duty deferred until packaging.
We run a rolling 13-week cash forecast that turns the brew schedule into a cash schedule, so a large canning run for a fall LCBO program is funded on purpose months ahead instead of squeezed out of the float. An operating line sized from the forecast's deepest week — rather than from a guess — is the difference between drawing planned debt and arranging rushed debt.
The next tank goes to the lender as a package
Growth questions in a brewery are capital questions: another pair of fermenters, a faster canning line, a bigger cellar, or none of the above because contracting out wins the math this year. We model the options against your utilization and channel numbers first, then build the case a lender will actually approve — channel-level projections with the LCBO payment lag built in, utilization before and after the new steel, and covenant headroom through the slow season.
Business Financing Advisory is led by Walla Assaf, CPA, whose pre-practice career was banking and corporate finance, so the package reaches the credit desk in the shape credit desks approve; when the lender wants year-end statements with a CPA behind them, Compilation and Review Engagements cover that requirement. The engagement itself runs monthly for breweries across Mississauga and the GTA — channel report, utilization, cash forecast and a standing meeting where the next decision gets a number — with scope and fee quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
