23rd May, 2018
What happens when you go from being a little brewer that could to one of the largest craft brewers in New Zealand?
It’s an issue which has been faced down by Carl Vasta and the team at Tuatara Brewing, a craft beer brewer renowned for funky flavours.
It was started by Vasta, his wife, Fraser McInnes and Sean Murrie from a 600 litre kit at the end of 2000.
Initially, their only customers were family and friends. Most pubs didn’t have the capacity or the willingness to take a shot on Tuatara’s range of bold flavours.
The demand for craft beer like Tuatara was producing just wasn’t there.
But, eventually, they managed to worm their way into a few bars and the craft beer revolution was born.
It became so popular that it needed to move simply to manage logistics and an expanding production line, so it packed up and moved to Tuatara’s Paraparaumu brewery.
Keen to expand even further, Vasta chased further investment and eventually private money started to flow into the company.
But, with private money comes growth and profitability targets – and Vasta knew that it needed to change from being the little brewer that could from being a big fish.
Enter new management with a new focus.
By 2014, Tuatara was suffering from growing pains.
Tuatara was handling distribution in the same way as it was when it was a smaller company – and those processes simply don’t scale.
“We just didn’t have the right tools to make the improvements we needed,” said Tuatara Brewery finance manager Annemaree Deed.
“We also wanted something to integrate with our logistics provider to streamline the distribution process and ensure the products got to our customers as efficiently as they could.”
In MYOB Advanced, it got a tool which not only helped the company streamline distribution processes but also one which gave them greater insight into unit cost, and ultimately, into its bottom line.
It made the switch to MYOB Advanced in 2015, and immediately recognized the ability to track a lot more data – which was increasingly important for the company.
As the company grew, so did its product line.
Its beer is stored as both raw beer and finished beer – in both keg or bottle format. Add to that the sheer number of flavours it was producing, it became clear the status quo wasn’t working.
“We can now isolate what stock we have and see what stage it’s at,” said Deed.
“Is it finished or in the tank? In the past this was really manual and time consuming which meant it was open to errors. Now we are more confident in the numbers we produce.”
READ: What is ERP?
Having more visibility over the numbers extended to input inventory – so when it came time to order more stock they could look at the numbers at a glance and be sure they weren’t over-ordering.
The company uses bill of materials functionality to do batch control for brewing and to calculate gross profit margins – and predict the possible cost of new flavours before they commit to using them.
At the end of the day, that means better unit economics and flows through to the bottom line.
They can also make sure their logistics are running as smoothly as possible, as MYOB Advanced integrates with Toll Holdings’ systems – which means new orders, big or small, are shared between both systems at the same time.
“We can now distribute with confidence, it’s something we just don’t have to worry about,” said Deed.
Want to find out more about how taking the next step on the ERP journey helped Tuatara Brewery? Click here to get the full story.