This story has been prepared by Three Sisters Brewery and is being published by the New Zealand Herald as advertorial.
Crowdfunding drive set to give Three Sisters Brewery extra boost.
In the beer industry, one thing’s for sure – it’s not 2020 any more. The froth and bubble of craft brewers enjoying pandemic demand has cooled off and remaining players must prove they’re here for the long haul.
Once hailed as recession-proof, rising costs of supplies like carbon dioxide and competition in a crowded beverage market have forced beer to run for its money. Craft brewers relying on novel flavour launches won’t last. Find other ways to stand out or sit the game out altogether.
For Joe Emans of Three Sisters Brewery, standing out comes naturally. After his first recipe won the Taranaki Society of Beer Advocates Home Brew competition, he quit his engineering job to go all in. The brewery has been crowned Champion for 4 consecutive years, winning AIBA’S Champion Small International Brewery twice which, on top of all their other awards, makes them an industry Meryl Streep.
The platitudes aren’t mere vanity: “We’ve tripled our output of beer compared to 2022, currently brewing 100,000 litres a year,” he says, “and have just started production for the largest beer drinker market in the world: China.”
It’s not dumb luck. Joe’s business philosophy includes rejecting industry norms, getting creative, sweaty product iteration, and recognising others who’ve built the business – like the crowdfunding backers whose polaroids adorn the brew bar walls.
Not only does Joe not quit, but he also keeps his cool. Like his first sour attempt. He peered into the fermenter and poured in a bag of fruit puree. One volcanic eruption later, he found himself walking two blocks looking like an axe-wielding killer, boots squelching at other pedestrians. After replacing his fruit salad pants at The Warehouse, he returned to finish getting the puree into the fermenter, only to split his new trousers stepping off the ladder.
There was a little… holiness in the air that day. Or at least, laughter. This breezy immunity to public embarrassment can be seen in his latest crowdfunding video but…no spoilers.
Entrepreneurs don’t get past the startup stage if they care too much about judgment. But what about a business primed to scale? For Joe, it’s being fussy with capital expenditure and imagining creative ways to achieve goals.
If you’ve been to a beer festival recently, you’ll have spotted Joe’s team literally behind bars – an idea not born from a board room, but a question of how to stand out without pouring money into pop-up displays like other brands do.
The “jail” is signed off with a cheeky poke at beer purists who can’t admit that craft beer is good, even the beers that taste like fruit smoothies. Especially those.
But arguing over what constitutes real beer, or whether the market is up, down, or sideways, is for other people. Joe is busy, elbows deep putting systems in place to diversify income, lower costs, and keep up with demand.
And, if his crowdfund is successful, nudging beer into new markets could cement him into a category of his own.
Joe is winning. Be like Joe.
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