Loving the Craft: Lessons from the Brewery Floor

Based on research by Munoz, L., Miller, R. J., & Schetzsle, S

Running a craft brewery is a unique challenge because it requires a combination of substantial financial resources, artisanal skills, and business knowledge for success. Craft breweries, though perhaps a niche business example, offer insights that can be applied far beyond the world of beers and ales. By interviewing craft brewery owners, the researchers identified several themes related to the founding and upkeep of their establishments.

Key Points

• Owning and operating craft breweries can involve competition from other businesses.
• Brewery owners often need to navigate complex sets of priorities in their ventures.
• Part of the entrepreneurial experience involves adopting several roles within the craft brewery.
• Businesspeople sectors outside of the brewing industry can learn from the themes that emerged:
  • Production Versus Artisan Struggle: Quality and Consistency
    • Customers expect to receive quality drinks, which requires brewers to experiment and innovate to create excellent new products.
    • At the same time, once a customer has found a product they like, they don’t want the recipe changed, which demands consistency.
    • Brewers must pay attention to the precision of their production without losing their creativity.
  • Agents of Freedom: It’s Bigger than Beer
    • Monopolization and regulatory constraints spur owners to seek creative ways to reach more customers and remain competitive.
    • Craft brewery owners are passionate about being part of a movement outside of themselves.
    • Craft brewing ventures become avenues for market freedom and self-expression.
  • Inverse Domino Effect: Aggressive and Conservative Growth
    • The business life cycle involves the stages of development, introduction, growth, and maturity.
    • Aggressive distribution and sales approaches are present in the development and introduction phase
    • Conservative strategies are employed once growth and maturity are achieved.

Why This Matters

For those considering launching complex ventures, this study highlights the importance of leveraging prior knowledge and hands-on experience. Entrepreneurs aspiring to cultivate a strong and loyal customer base while embracing the artisan lifestyle should ideally bring substantial prior experience to the table.  In addition to passion and creativity, craft brewers also need a strong grasp of managerial operations, scaling, market landscape, and a healthy balance of caution and ambition.

Business leaders can apply these findings to other ventures in the food and beverage industry and in other areas of the market. Developers should evaluate the costs and benefits involved in encouraging innovation without sacrificing consistency in their goods and services. Market factors and bureaucracy will always constrain businesses to some extent, but these challenges should be viewed as opportunities to exercise creativity in order to reach customers. Finally, entrepreneurs should not be afraid to adopt more aggressive up-front investments into scaling—early expansion prevents undercapitalization.

Craft breweries are microcosms of the complexities and excitement inherent in entrepreneurship. Business leaders in any sector can benefit from pursuing their ventures for the love of the craft.

This text was directly copy-and-pasted from the Managerial Implications section, since it seems to be the most succinct way to convey this information. Happy to come up with something else, but the authors were especially effective in writing this section.

Based upon the following peer-reviewed manuscript: Munoz, L., Miller, R. J., & Schetzsle, S. (2025). Loving the Craft: Exploratory Thematic Reflections of Craft Breweries as Complex Ventures. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 34(2).