Green Brew Engineering
I decided to focus on a company that my husband dreams of
starting. If he ever decides to do it, I
will be helping him as much as I can and he wants, so it will be good to start
thinking about all of this now! My
husband is a mechanical engineer, home brewer, beer enthusiast, and
environmentalist. He wants to start an
engineering firm that helps breweries become sustainable operations, especially
in terms of energy efficiency and water use.
He already designs heating and cooling systems for buildings, he has
previously designed commercial refrigeration systems, and he is LEED certified-
which basically means that he can assess a building and assign it an energy
efficiency rating. He has also done
reports for companies that outline what they would need to do to reach higher
levels of LEED ratings than they already have.
There are already some companies that have invested a lot
into the environmental sustainability and energy efficiency of their own operations,
but I don’t know if there are already engineering firms or consultants out
there that specialize in helping breweries achieve greater efficiency and environmental
sustainability. This
company would help breweries engineer or re-engineer their brewing spaces and systems
for maximum environmental sustainability and maximum efficiency of resource
use.
This requires a business-to-business communications
model. The initial target market would
be people who are somewhat high up within craft breweries in California, especially
San Diego. We would target breweries
that are not too large - a brewery of the scale of Stone would be the largest
initially as the company would not have the expertise or bandwidth to take on
larger projects. The expectation would
be that smaller commercial breweries would make up the majority of the initial
clients, and that the company’s services would be focused specifically on the
brewing side and would not initially extend to engineering for restaurants
associated with breweries.
Even though there are only something like 80 craft breweries
in San Diego (which is a lot!), we could still segment further. Also, in thinking about craft breweries
outside of San Diego it is good to have a sense of which breweries are most
likely to go for this sort of service.
Here are some thoughts…
1)
Any company that is already trying to do
something environmentally friendly is a good audience. This could mean that they are using local
ingredients, are already implementing some energy or water-saving practices,
have environmentally-friendly packaging, or in some other way have shown that
they care about their environmental impact.
2)
Any company that is a leader in their local
brewing community might be more interested in championing this kind of effort
so as not to be behind the times, and they might have more money to make it
happen.
3)
There are some brewing companies for whom their
brand identity might be bolstered by something like this, either because they’ve
had problems with environmental or other issues in the past, they live in a
community that places a high value on the environment, or they could generally get
some marketing boost from becoming a green brewery.
4)
I think it’s important to remember that
breweries are run by people, and people have their own interests. Getting to know the interests of the people
behind the breweries might reveal that they have personally been involved in
environmentally-friendly types of work before or might want to get involved in
something like that. Those people can
become champions of this type of effort within their companies.
5)
It might be good to look at who different
breweries distribute to. If there are
some breweries whose beers are served at bars and restaurants that are either
more upscale or more environmentally forward-thinking, they might be more
willing to invest in greening their business as a point of promotion among
their upscale or enviro-friendly business-level customers.
6)
It might be worthwhile to determine where there
could tax credits available for businesses that invest in this type of
effort. If they can get a discount on
the service, it might be more appealing.
7)
Determining locations where electricity and
water are especially expensive or volatile commodities might help us figure out
good locations were people will be more open to the upfront cost of greening a
brewery based on the long-term savings and stability.
8)
Breweries that have close relationships or
collaborations with other breweries that have done some greening efforts already
might have a greater openness to going green themselves.
9)
New breweries might be more open to starting out
green rather than converting to more sustainable processes later. If we can catch them before they are built,
we can help them build in an environmentally friendly way.
So, those are my initial thoughts on audience. This is exciting!!
No comments:
Post a Comment