Concrete= Progress
They’re pouring concrete in what used to be our conference room today. For those of you who have visited the Abbey in the last few months, you might have noticed, we’re running out of places to put all of our beers. As such, it was decided that we didn’t “need” the conference room so much as we “needed” a place to put more beer. So, three weeks ago we started demolishing our once cool meeting room and our signature logo pint glass was lost forever. (sorry Sean!)
Today, at 8:30, they backed up the dumptruck and opened the gate as wet concrete flowed through our front door. It was quite the site to see from my office window as loads went by. All in the name of progress I tell you. These days at The Lost Abbey, bottled beer accounts for about 80% of our sales. As such, we can’t afford to shut down the bottling line during the brewing or keg cleaning process. This means that in two weeks time, we’ll be able to accomplish all three tasks simulaneously on any given day. This will mean an increase in our efficiencies and ultimately lead to a greater output of beer. Which as we all know is VERY important.
It’s important as we just came off our busiest two month period in the history of the company. We expect this trend to continue as we begin to brew larger batches of beer and reach out to new territories. Last month we launched in Colorado and it’s looking pretty certain we’ll have beer in Illinois (Chicago to start) by mid November if all goes well. The last month has been stressful beyond belief but that’s what happens when you’re multi-tasking all the time.
Next week, we’re going to turn the screws back up on the brewing side of things. My guys will love the fact that they get to brew again. Lately it seems we have been on a packaging binge. Now that most of the beer is out of the way, we can go back to brewing and bottling bigger batches of beer. With the new packaging area finished, I may even get to start looking at a real bottling line. I have my eye on one. Just don’t tell Jim about it!
That’s about it for now. For those of you in our far reaching territories, we would like you to know that we are currently in conversations with Microstar about a keg contract. If we get this sorted out, we would be able to finally ship draft beer outside of our region. This would be a major bonus. Keep your fingers crossed. I know what I’ve asked Santa to bring me this year. Would a new keg contract and bottling line be sweet? Little Boys can dream don’t you know?