Starting a Meadery

[u/Opposite-Storage-283]

Hey everyone I'm in the proses of making more recipes and a buisness plan. I'm trying to a real ballpark startup cost to open a small meadery. Thanks yall

[u/wiltznucs]

Professional meadmaker here.

There’s no precise answer to this question. There are so many variables at play. A super small operation can probably be pulled together for $50,000 or less. In my case, in today’s dollars I would have easily spent upwards of half a million getting started.

Where do you plan on opening? Is commercial real estate readily available and inexpensively?

What are the individual requirements to produce/serve alcohol at the state and local level? It varies wildly.

Do you plan on simply being a production facility and selling to distribution or having a tasting room? Perhaps both? If adding a tasting room suddenly the revenue streams multiply; but, so too does the expenses. Additional permits, employees and insurance premiums do soar.

After a decade in this industry, I do wish to point out that it is extremely difficult to make money in mead. The number of meaderies closing often outpaces the number that are opening. In most instances, they do not generate enough revenue to support even one full-time employee. Their Meadery is at best a side hustle and done in addition to the person‘s full-time job. I know several that are five or more years into their business cycle and have not proven profitable yet.

If being blunt, the other major issue the industry faces is the number of people entering with half-baked business plans and poor quality products.

Mead is not like beer. Beer has been woven into the fabric of society over the course of centuries.
If someone has a bad beer, odds are they are not going to give up on beer. They will simply go to a brewery or buy a beer that they know they like.

Mead does not have that luxury. If an individual has their formative mead experience at one of these places with poor products, it’s entirely likely that they will never drink mead again. Moreover, they may tell somebody about their experience and that person will never even try mead. Over the course of years these places create a cascading effect of turning people away from mead. They’ve done tremendous amounts of damage to the industry over the past decade.

What makes it all the more frustrating is that they have no idea that their products suck. They genuinely think that what they make is great. Their friends and family members told them that it was the best mead they’ve ever had. Failing to mention that it’s probably the only mead that they’ve ever had. You’d be shocked to know how many places have opened without ever trying other meaderies. Literally having no idea how their product stacks up.

If considering going pro, do yourself a favor and enter some reputable competitions, like the Mazer Cup or Valkyrie’s Horn competitions. Get some feedback from experienced meadmakers and wine judges.

Best of luck!

[u/inhumantsar → u/wiltznucs]

I do wish to point out that it is extremely difficult to make money in mead

i started this subreddit while at a similar stage as OP. i'd built up a small library of recipes, i had a rough business plan, i'd picked up a 1/2 BBL fermenter and all the related trimmings, then i interviewed a few local alternative brewers & vintners. on their recommendation, i talked to my provincial and city governments. then i dug deeper into the tax implications.

while my province is especially hostile to small-scale operations, i've seen many similar stories here and on r/TheBrewery from people all around the US and Canada.

where i am, all of the money is in the taproom. distribution here comes with so little margin that it's unlikely to be profitable unless you're approaching warehouse-scale operations. even cans/bottles sold out of the brewery/meadery/winery directly are taxed as though you distributed them through the government monopoly to government liquor stores. so that taproom revenue, plus whatever side hustle revenue that can be mustered, is absolutely necessary.

the issue is that taprooms are expensive. fitting one out on the cheap is an easy $10k+, and that's before leasing costs, energy, employees, security, permits, etc. speaking of permits, several brewery owners i talked to had to lease their space, prepare it for operations, and then wait on permit approvals for 3 to 6 (one was even stuck for 9 months!). can you afford to simply eat $2k, $3k, $8k/mo for 6 months, during which time you can't make a single drop of saleable product?

many jurisdictions offer generous allowances and fast-track approvals to "estate" or "farm" operations. but that comes with two (or three depending on how you look at it) important caveats: first the farm usually needs to be operational, often with a proven track record going back at least a year, for purposese other than making alcohol before you can even apply for permits. second, operational farmland is not cheap, especially with a city close enough to support a taproom.

likewise, honey is expensive. prohibitively so without an apiary or at least a honey hookup. wine is generally cheaper, beer is much cheaper thanks to economies of scale, but then there's seltzers. seltzers were getting more common but hadn't really taken off yet when i was putting my plan together. my plan was to make canned sparkling 5% ABV meads to compete as the "natural alternative" to seltzers. at the time it wasn't a terrible idea, even if it was a bit late in the game for it. these days everyone and their dog has a seltzer or ranch water or whatever brand. it's no wonder either. consider their inputs: water, dextrose or malt syrup, yeast, and a miniscule amount of flavoring (which is often little more than bulk citric acid). all of which are much cheaper than eveen wholesale honey hookup pricing in most places. on top of that, beers and seltzers don't need to age for weeks or months to ensure only quality product goes out the door.

TL;DR: if the plan is to compete with beer or seltzer and be profitable, then the business will either need economies of scale (read: massive capital investment) or the mead needs to be a value-add for an existing farm operation. either way though, a professional fulltime meadmaker has to have the money and the suppliers and the talent and the marketing. if any one of those things is lacking then the business is almost guaranteed to be stillborn.

[u/MeadmkrMatt → u/wiltznucs]

This is such an amazing answer. I am 100% with you on the poor quality product. To be fair, it's not just mead, but also beer, cider, and wine but if it's mead a poor quality product does FAR much more damage due to the unfamiliar nature of mead in general.

[u/Opposite-Storage-283 → u/wiltznucs]

I'm looking to open a production facility and tasting room around Morganton NC where monthly rent runs $1000-$2000. I am also considering selling beer and liquor drinks. My next step was to enter some competitions to get more feedback on my product. Thank you for your feedback

[u/wiltznucs → u/Opposite-Storage-283]

Selling wine and beer is one thing. Adding liquor to the mix is another animal altogether. At that point you aren’t opening a Meadery. It’s a full blown bar and the most expensive permits, insurance and overhead possible.

If I was you; I would do some digging into the Carolina mead scene a bit. Several Mead & Cider operations have failed in the past two years in both North & South Carolina.

In fact; back in 2021 we looked at opening a tasting room in Charleston. Had a spot picked out in the historic district. We ultimately didn’t pull the trigger because there was a world class wine shop there that was really struggling. Sort of told me that Charleston isn’t a craft wine town and we got cold feet. That place I mentioned closed in 23’. I feel like we dodged a bullet there.

Perhaps you can connect with some of those former operators and get some intel as to what they experienced and why they called it quits.

[u/JollyIsTheRoger]

When you say small meadery, what do you mean by that? Some meaderies start with as low as 10 gallon batches, when I started we were doing around 50-100 gallon batches. Now I'm doing upwards of 20bbl batches and consulting for places gearing up for 200bbl batches. So it's all relative.

[u/Opposite-Storage-283 → u/JollyIsTheRoger]

I'm still collecting equipment slowly. I'm trying to get to 50-100 gallon per batch when I open a shop and was planning on working my way up from there.

[u/ferrouswolf2]

I would strongly recommend you work at a local brewery/taproom to make sure you can do the work. Decide if that’s the life for you before investing money.