Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast
Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast
Talking Beer, Numbers, and Distribution Strategy with Doug Veliky
A CFO who became a head of marketing, eliminated millions in debt, and then built a company to fix distribution blind spots—Doug Veliky’s journey is a masterclass in making beer businesses sturdier and smarter.
We dig into the decisions that actually move the needle: building an internal audit team at Reyes that focused on real compliance risk, redesigning systems at Revolution to produce market-level P&Ls, and consolidating a spaghetti bowl of loans into a revolving line that turned heavy debt into daily cash efficiency.
That financial clarity paved the way for a bold move—buying the production facility—and gave the brewery control over the investments that shape its future.
We also get honest about how teams work.
Doug shows how finance, sales, and marketing can stop talking past each other by aligning on the data each team needs: shipments, depletions, pull-through.
The result?
Better forecasts, fewer surprises, and programs that actually show up on the shelf and in the tap list.
Doug's Beer Crunchers platform ties it all together, translating the mechanics of distributors, portfolios, and pricing into stories and tactics people at every level can use.
And when the world flipped, Doug brought a finance brain to digital marketing—prioritizing audience, cadence, and measurable impact.
Looking forward, Doug sees moderation evolving beyond non-alcoholic beer into “small beers” and right-sized formats that meet the moment—2.8–3.8% ABV cores and 8.4-ounce packs that fit weekday occasions without losing the ritual.
The catch is prioritization: make it a pillar or skip it.
We close with BrightBev, where Doug helps emerging brands choose the right distributors, set expectations, and invest alongside partners to win velocity, not just placements.
If you care about brewery finance, route-to-market strategy, and building brands that last, this conversation will sharpen your plan for the next four quarters.
Subscribe, share with a brewery friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—what will you prioritize next?
And don't forget to sign up for the Brewery Financial Newsletter - tips, tactics, and strategies to help you build a more profitable brewery business.
Ready to transform financial results in your beer business? Learn more about the Beer Business Finance Association, a network of owners and managers working together to build more profitable companies.
Today on the podcast, we welcome in Doug Velicki from Beer Crunchers and Breitbev. We talk through Doug's journey in the beer industry starting at Reyes and then Revolution and currently at Breitbev and writing for his creation Beer Crunchers. So we're gonna talk about first his time at Reyes. He worked in public and forensic accounting at a big four accounting firm prior to spending eight years building the internal audit department at Reyes Holdings. And we talked about the areas that he would audit, recommendations that he would make for wholesalers to to look more closely at, and issues that tend to crop up and systems that you can put in to mitigate certain risks. When Doug moved to Revolution, he talked about what led to that change and what he learned there and what were the things that he learned at Reyes that he took to Revolution and advice and lessons learned that he can share with breweries and wholesalers after having the experience and perspective of working for both wholesaler and a brewery. And then Doug's shift into marketing. It's an interesting combination for me to see a finance or analytical person also exploring their creative side with marketing. But Doug has a real passion for the marketing side of the business. And now to present day, uh Doug working at Bright Bev, a co-founder, it's a platform that helps emerging beverage brands navigate the often overlooked challenge that can make or break a business, that route to market and distribution. So we cover a lot of ground, really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will too. So for now, please enjoy this conversation with Doug Veliky from Beer Crunchers and Bright Bev. Welcome to the Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers to provide you with tips, tactics, and strategies so that you can improve financial results in your brewery. I'm your host, Carrie Shemway, a CPA, CFO for a brewery, and a former CFO for a beer distributor. I've spent the last 20 years using finance to improve financial results in our beer business. Now I'm helping other craft breweries to do the same. Are you ready to take your brewery financial results to the next level? Okay, let's get started. Just a quick note, and we'll be right back to the podcast. I want to let you know about a new network for beer industry professionals. It's called the Beer Business Finance Association. It's an organization of financial pros, just like you, looking to improve financial results, increase profitability, connect with your peers, and share best practices. So I'd love to tell you a little bit more about this. If you are interested in learning more, please email me, Carrie at beer businessfinance.com. That's K-A-R-Y at beer businessfinance.com, or you can visit BBFassociation.org. That's BBFassociation.org to learn more. Hey Doug, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me, Carrie.
SPEAKER_01:Excited to be here. I'm excited to have you here too. So for people who might not be familiar with you and your background, why don't you give them uh a little bit of information about you?
SPEAKER_00:Sure, Doug Velicki. So I live in Chicago, Illinois, born and raised in Pittsburgh. Went to school in Richmond, Virginia, found my way to Chicago in 2006. I was uh studied accounting and economics. That led me to a kind of traditional Big Four accounting job. Um, after doing that for a few years, I got my I moved to Chicago and uh soon after that found my first job in the industry at Reyes Holdings. So the biggest uh beer distributor in the country, as well as the biggest distributor of McDonald's. At the time, they owned a broadline food distribution company called Reinhardt Food Service. And then uh later in my tenure there, they uh became the largest distributor of Coca-Cola and bottler as well. So um got exposure to a lot there. They were looking to start up an internal audit department for the first time. So they were a huge company, but were private, so didn't have to uh have an internal audit department. But in 2009, they were looking to start one up. So I was the second hire into that and uh worked at Reyes Holdings from 2009 to 2016. In that time, that's when craft beer, especially in Chicago, went from barely anything other than a few, you know, local brew pubs to becoming the complete phenomenon that it became. That's where I fell in love with the industry. Um, through my time there, you know, craft beer became more part of the company's culture and more what the beer distribution side of their business um, you know, was embracing. And that was, you know, where a lot of hype and excitement and new brands were popping up at their distributors that they owned all around the country. And um during my time there, I, you know, loved beer so much. I got to spend about a quarter of my time there because again, part of it would be on the food service business, some would be on the McDonald's side. So I'd only get to spend some of my time uh looking into the beer side. And that's what I wanted to do full time. So um would try to get over to the beer side of the business. You know, hiring the auditor wasn't exactly the most uh the the place they were dying to pluck people from. Um, so I just felt always felt this need to add something to my resume that wasn't so black and white that kind of showed my passion for beer. So I started, um, that's right, this is called 2013 at this point. This is when Instagram was heating up. So I started challenging myself to make an interesting beer-centric Instagram account. And that started taking off and generating, you know, thousands of followers. Um, but that being a very short form platform, that eventually led to you know, me studying the industry more and wanting to have a long-form layer to it. So I started a beer blog called Beer Crunchers um toward the end of my tenure at Reyes, again, as something that was, I was just trying to use it to showcase my knowledge, you know, from the middle tier of the industry, um, but as a fan of this, you know, phenomenon of craft beer. And that led to Revolution Brewing, the largest brewery in Chicago and in Illinois, um, tapping me on the shoulder when they were looking to hire their first first ever CFO. So um that led to me getting that job, thanks in part to my experience at Ray's. Of course, they were the biggest distributor of Revolution Brewing. Um, so they liked that experience, but it sounded they they kind of explained they liked the way I was the information I was sharing on my blog. So that um was a big reason I was able to get that very cool opportunity for someone with a finance background that loved craft beer, biggest brewery in the state, first time hiring that a position like that. So that was 2016. I moved over to Revolution. But through this making content about beer, you know, it started very much as a just a beer fan page, but showing off knowledge about the actual product itself. But as I got to know the industry more in those uh later years where I eventually got to run this, what we grew to a department of about 12 people. Um, my last three years at Res, I was running the internal audit department and it was a lot larger than when I had first started. Um, I had a lot, I knew a lot more. I was able to share more about the mechanics of the industry and just slowly started working that into my content. So it became much uh more of an industry insider instead of a beer enthusiast, but always trying to kind of blend the two so that uh people interested in one side versus the other could kind of see the marriage of where the two come together. So um started at Revolution as the CFO in 2016, but with this background and content, couldn't help but always get involved in more marketing-related conversations, uh, helping out the social media team there. I became, you know, pretty good at photography and so would just chip in ideas or photos here and there just because I was so excited to work at a craft brewery. It had taken me like many, many years to get that one. So, you know, it didn't feel like work to spend extra hours there helping out the social team, put put content ideas together. So marketing became this kind of like side hobby of being the company's CFO, which is an unusual mix. And uh, you know, that led to we fast forward all the way to when the pandemic happened. That's when, you know, ever anything was especially possible. We were working from home, our head of marketing left the company, our owner needed extra, you know, set of arms and legs, someone to kind of lead that department at least temporarily. I started filling in on the marketing side. That eventually led to him saying, I like what you're doing here. I like the kind of organization finance brain behind what we're doing in marketing, especially during those times where marketing was limited. It was less activation out in the market and more digital, um, which was, you know, where I kind of developed another specialty. And uh that led to me leading marketing. And I did that all the way up until uh April of this year when I decided to leave the company because of an uh opportunity to join a friend and neighbor of mine who left Molson Coors and uh started a business that is called Brightbev. And I joined as his partner, and it's just the two of us right now, and we have this uh two-person business that's designed to help new emerging beverage brands with their route to market strategy. So we find that, you know, as um, it's never been, there's never been uh fewer barriers to start a beverage company these days from all the contract opportunities that are available right now, the democratization of um branding and all the, you know, uh great experts out there to help get a brand launched faster than ever. But there's really not a lot of help out there in succeeding on the distribution side and preparing brands on everything from how the distribution landscape works, how to select a distributor that aligns with their long-term goals, and just how to work with a beer distributor, what your expectations should be, how to invest alongside of them, how to treat it as a partnership. And there's just not a lot of information, there's not a lot of help out there. So we've started this business that um is now coming close to its first year. Again, I joined in April. And so it's been uh, you know, a chance to live out my dream of uh being an entrepreneur, you know, going from a giant company or a big four accounting firm to a giant company like Reyes, then getting to step into a much more uh mid-sized business where I could get more hands-on, but always having this dream of something of my own and with a with an awesome partner like my partner Jeff. So um that's where we are now. And uh how's that for a uh summary?
SPEAKER_01:That's a pretty good summary. That's a great, you've had a lot of great experiences. There's so much to dig into. We're probably gonna need like five hours to cover everything. So we'll try to compress it into our usual podcast time slot here. But no, that's great. I mean, you've got you've got experience obviously on the on the wholesaler side with Reyes and then the brewery side with Revolution, and meanwhile, sort of organizing your thoughts and sharing it through beer crunchers and now kind of coming full circle with with Bright Bev. So let's let's maybe retrace our steps a little and talk about um not your CPA time because nobody nobody wants to hear about that, but let's talk about your time at Reyes. You know, this is sort of a granular question, and it's really more curiosity for me, I think, is you know, one of the things in your bias is that you'd worked in public and forensic accounting, which I I kind of like those words forensic accounting before spending eight years building the internal audit department at Reyes. So what areas would you audit? Like I know it's been a while, but if you kind of think back on what does that even mean? Like, because I know I know a lot of like bigger companies, beer wholesalers in particular, are always looking for continuous improvement and ways to so what what would you audit? Like, what would that look like?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so you have to picture it as a, you know, and at the time, probably uh call it a$15 billion company with no almost no audit department. And you know, my uh boss at the time, they hired him and him in as the first hire. And then about I think a year later, he they let him hire me as number two, with distribution centers all across the country, a huge broadline food distributor that they had just bought a handful of years prior. Again, the largest distributor of McDonald's and the largest distributor of beer. And there was just two of us. Each of those companies has their own kind of corporate functions, and then there's a holding company level that has its own corporate functions that it could do for all three of the businesses. So there was all these layers, and there was only two of us. So we would kind of go where the fires were uh in those early days with our you know sights set on slowly but surely not wanting to move too fast and having it you know be unorganized. But we're pretty much hiring someone new every call it six months for a while, but just trying to methodically build the right team and bring in the right skill sets and not try to do it too fast, knowing that we didn't have the same um requirements that a public company would, we could kind of go where the action was. And with Ray as being an aggressive acquirer of companies, the fires would just be like a new acquisition, somewhere that needed to still be integrated into the company, where the control environment might not match up at all with the standards that were set by the by the parents. So we would spend a lot of time going to where the company's most recent acquisitions were and serving as the eyes and ears for the owners to get comfort over the acquisition that they had just made in the prior six or call it three to six months. So, because of how often they were acquiring new companies, that tended to be what would get prioritized. Um, and then as we would show value over time, we would get to do things that would be uncustomary for a normal internal audits apartment. So we would start to get sent out to companies they were considering acquiring and wanted one last check to go in, count inventory, make sure the books looked good, look at their processes, give them one kind of like extra thumbs up before you know they went through with an acquisition. Um we would also serve as the audit liaisons as a result. So, you know, a good month of the year when they were their big four auditors would come in and do the audit, we would then be the people to say, Hey, could you facilitate all their needs and make this out, make sure this audit went smoothly? So you can quickly see that like there was a lot more to do than what two of us could handle. So prioritization was just like a massive part of our job and figuring out and always presenting to leadership like, here's everything we could do, and we know all this is important. Here's what we we think we have time to do. And uh constantly making sure they agreed with that, and just you know, like any job, you know, communication was key. Always explaining like, here's here's everything we really need to do. And this was how we would always rationalize the additional hires that they wasn't hard to convince them that we needed more than just the two of us. Um, but uh showing, you know, what we could offer when we would do a distribution center audit. We'd go in for a week and we would do a balance sheet audit, a controls audit, and just do a complete crash course on a distribution center. We put together an audit report. We were very focused on not being the people that these distribution centers would dread showing up because we weren't there to get people in trouble, get people fired. We wanted to educate them on why we were there. And so we would spend a lot of time on the, I guess I'd say the soft skills of being an auditor and make sure from the get-go that they knew what our mission was. And then it was not, it was not to evaluate the leader of that distribution center on his leadership skills. It was truly to give the owners um comfort that the controls that they find important were put in place. And if they weren't, that's okay. We were there to help them learn how to do it, how to use the systems that they've just been handed. A lot of these companies that they would acquire were now being forced onto a different ERP system and had a lot of learning. So we were also there almost in a in a bit of a training role. And so we would put a lot of effort forth into um getting the folks we were auditing very comfortable early that we were not the bobs from office space, that we were truly there to help. And um that took time, but um I think we did a really good job on it and were generally well liked at the company because of that approach. And boy, did that go a long way. And that's how that led to us eventually being people that they would come to because they trusted us on a more sensitive topic that was less audit and more of just, hey, we need people with a finance background to look at this opportunity here. Would you guys be willing to take a trip to you know the city and go look at this company? They know you're coming, they know you'll be coming and for what reasons. But and so that that that kind of partnership approach was huge to audit and was something that we just both my boss at the time, who's still a good friend to this day, we're kind of learning on the fly that at this private company to really do well here, we needed to not be the enemy, we needed to be the the kind of help that that was often needed.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. It's easy to slip into that role too, to try to play gotcha and justify what you're out there doing and bring back a you know somebody's problems so that you can say, look what we found. And so good, good on you guys for that. The bedside manner is super important. If you look back, and again, I know it was a long time, but were there any themes, any trends, any issues that tended to kind of crop up that um you could spot? And and I and I asked this question largely for maybe the folks listening that need to think about, let's say maybe it's uh you you said you did a control audit, like those internal controls, which in my time and audit were were were pretty leaky. You know, there were there were there anything, any trends that you that you found that um maybe there were some themes there that people can learn from?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, even though the beer broadline food and a McDonald's distributor might feel the same, moving boxes from a distribution center to two accounts, they each kind of had their own set of risks. And so I I guess just to keep it more narrow and given the audience, I could stick to the beer side. You know, beer, a beer distribution center from a control standpoint, I wouldn't call one of the riskiest businesses. It's pretty straightforward. So there was there was only so many areas to to really focus in on where sure little stuff could go, it could walk away here and there. But um, you know, we would focus on where, you know, what could what could really unintentionally like harm the company. And so when you think about all, you know, what does the company have to lose most, you know, one of those would be their kind of license to distribute beer. Like that is the most important thing. And there's a lot of um rules that that they're expected to follow as a result on what you can and can't do in selling beer out in the market. And so you had to kind of pay attention to where the incentives were for um, you know, people on the team, like the sales team, and knowing where uh the system could be gamed um by someone at a lower level, unknowingly um putting the company at risk because of something they were doing. You know, in certain states, you can't offer an account credit, like they have to pay um on delivery. So we would find ways to look at credits that were being made, you know, any kind of manual entries, basically any way around skirting the system to whether it was because of commission pay, because of, you know, an account that was a high volume account that you know you wanted to take care of, but was also probably not a great run business and was still, you know, in their own terms, paycheck to paycheck, and was something being done to an account that you legally can't do. And was someone doing it because they're so focused on pleasing the customer, but they're not thinking about um how this is putting the company at risk. So we would focus around areas like that, and it's not to say that these would come up often, but they were kind of the things that could have the biggest consequences. So those were areas we would look for, and we would look for ways that we could keep an eye on them when we weren't on site. So anything systematically like that, and that it would never be, or I'd say rarely it would come up as something that like a leader would do. It would be someone at you know, a lower level might uh have access to be able to make a manual entry that could skirt a law or a regulation. And so a lot of this is around uh a lot of work that would be done on the prevention side is just more education to everyone on the team of you know, the the the bigger, um, the bigger prize, which is what we're trying to do here and what you know what could happen if uh there was ever an investigation and something came up where you had all the right intentions, but here's what could actually go wrong by doing this. So we would we would long story short, we would focus a lot on compliance risks, especially on the the beer side.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I like that a lot because you're right, uh you talk about prioritization, like what's what's more important than keeping your license? Not much.
SPEAKER_00:You're out of business without that, you know, versus you know, yeah, I don't know, kind of chasing down other maybe lesser like those breakage rooms where you know someone dropped a case and only three bottles break, they take the case there. And do you have the best controls over could a six-pack walk away? Sure. Uh, but is this really worth spending uh if we're there on site for four days, is it worth spending half of our day looking at controls over sign outs in a breakage room where what's the worst that could happen? A case here or a taste case, uh a case or two of beer could walk away. It's not that we don't want to make some suggestions there, but it's not worth, you know, compared to what I just described. Like that's why we would we would go where the the biggest risks were.
SPEAKER_01:Mountains and molehills focus on the mountains. And you know, I think you had mentioned in passing sort of incentives and maybe incentivizing behaviors that could contribute to these increased risks. And you know, I've heard this term called pervasive incentives, whether it's intentional or unintentional. And so I kind of like that too, thinking about what how are you paying your people, what are you incentivizing them to do, and are you inadvertently creating an additional risk that could lead to some of these compliance issues that you're trying to avoid? Um yeah, so let's let's and I appreciate you going through that. That's that's helpful for me, and it it's a little bit of memory lane for me as well, going back to my beer wholesaler days. Um so uh you made the move to revolution. So maybe take us through like what led to the change, and I think broadly speaking, you know, what what did you learn there?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Um when I joined Revolution, the uh the owner who acted as the CEO, his wife had an accounting background and she had managed the books until this point, but was looking to not be part of the day-to-day of the company anymore. So that was why this was a first hire. Revolution started in 2010 as a brew pub. In 2012, they went big and kind of rode the wave at you had perfect timing of when you know the industry took off in Chicago, at least. And um, you know, we're very early. 2012 invested in a large production brewery that is a mile down the street from where I'm sitting right now. And um, so owner's wife, Krista, managed the finances up until 2016, and that's when they were looking to uh bring someone in. And I was able to come in and, you know, the the company was in a in a great spot, had been growing like crazy, but you could feel that the industry 2016 was where the, you know, some of the hype was beginning to show, some chinks in the armor, and uh was gonna um things were about to get harder. And I knew that, and that's what kind of excited me um about the opportunity is I I like a challenge, and I knew that it wasn't gonna be, you know, uh explosive growth forever. And then I could see start to see the writing on the wall, and the the shift was gonna be come, you know, setting the company up to run a sustainable business. So um it was a fun time to step in. Like I said, it was it was challenging, but um, you know, I I inherited um uh, you know, they were on orchestrated beer, which is like a light version of SAP that I'm sure many listeners are are familiar with. And so a complex financial system that could allow you to do a lot, and just um immediately I went in and just had to like reorganize the chart of accounts in a way that kind of made sense to me and would set the company up well to track their progress on in different ways. So um, you know, the company was uh exploring a lot of new markets and we didn't have a good way to pull out information at the time, for example, on just, you know, we're an Illinois company, but in how are we doing in Ohio? How can we pull out just our sales and expenses and everything related to Ohio and be able to run like market-specific PLs? And so, you know, being a big fan of like setting up systems so that you can run, you know, uh dynamic reporting out of it. That was like a big part of what I did, and just like kind of going in and uh coding things differently and um had a lot of fun with that, kind of redid the company's budget process and and just having an appreciation from a company like Re is on how early they start a budget process, you know, that's starting almost like halfway through the year prior, and just having that ingrained in my head was just how I went about it. So even though nobody at Revolution would want to talk about a budget in July for the following year, just like kind of beginning to take some of that big company discipline and apply it to a small business to help get the company more ahead. I think if you asked the owner of Revolution, one thing I brought to the table over my nine years there, I'd say he would probably tell you one of the first things that I was very good at thinking six to 12 months, at least down the road, and not just about the weeks and months ahead. So budget process was a big one. And then I just always had this big goal. You know, when I stepped in, I inherited, I think this is very common in craft beer, 10 different loans. Because like companies would do individual equipment loans. Um, the company had expanded and then expanded again at different points. The company had something like$10 million of debt, which may sound like a lot, which was but was not unreasonable given their size. And but I looked at it and every loan was structured differently on different terms, worked different. The way interest was calculated was different from every loan. And I was just like, what a mess we would spend just booking uh interest entries at the end of every month. So I just always had this dream of a getting rid of the debt and also restructuring it into uh one simple way. So a big goal of mine of being the CFO was to uh make a banking change and structurally change everything we did. And so we changed to Wells Fargo and um brought all the company's debt into a revolving line of credit. So we were paying the minimal possible interest, putting all of our available cash to work on every given day by zeroing out our cash at the end of every day. Simultaneously, we were able to take advantage of a lot of tools they have like automated check writing. We could uh put a check into orchestrated beer that needed to be issued. It would send a daily file to Wells Fargo and they would mail out those checks for us. Whereas we were creating manual checks every day and putting those into the post office box. Um, now all of a sudden it's part of this major change. So that was just something I was proud of because that move made$10 million of debt turn into zero debt a few years later. And so through my time there as CFO, that was one of my biggest points of pride was through this restructuring and seeing a better way to do it, um, was able to eliminate the company's debt that then put them in position to buy the brewery. One of the biggest challenges we had was a constant need to invest in a brewery that we were not the owners of. And with every investment we made, we also made it harder for us to buy because we were increasing the value of the property we were trying to convince a landlord uh to sell us. And so it got to a point where we would pass on capital investments that we needed to make because we didn't own the building. And it came time to just pay, uh pay up, overpay just for the sake of getting out of this situation. And so um Post-pandemic, I want to say it was like spring 2021. Um, because we had no debt at the time, we were able to acquire the building and uh put the company in a position going forward where they controlled their own destiny, you know, perhaps paying too much at the time, but knowing that in a year or two, we'd be thanking ourselves for doing this. And sure enough, that's what ended up happening.
SPEAKER_01:That's that's amazing. Wow, that's a really great success story. And I do see that a lot too, working with breweries. You get this hodgepodge of loans and they're all over the place, and it's hard to manage, you know, let alone improve your cash flow situation. So that's I think that's a great lesson and takeaway. And I was gonna ask you that like what are what were some of the things it's interesting, like you and I have a similar trajectory in that work for you know, kind of corporate beer wholesaler, very structured, button-down, and you go to a brewery and and and there's sort of this um ethos, if you will, that it's like, ah, we don't want to be corporate, you know, we want to, you know, we want to be creative, and which is great, but there has to be guardrails too. So what were you had mentioned a few of the things that maybe you learned maybe at the CPA firm and at Reyes relative to sort of financial disciplines and systems, um, i.e., looking six to 12 months ahead and you know, organizing the chart of accounts. Were there any other things that you maybe took from Reyes and and fit into revolution so that it would it would be good for the company, but also maybe fit the culture as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um, great question. I think you know, being an internal audit, you have to you pretty much talk to everybody. You you there's a reason you need to get to know everybody at the company and understand what they do, have empathy for their challenges. And so at a craft brewery, there's um there's obviously I I like to joke about the tension between marketing and brewers, but there's also a tension between the accountants and sales and marketing. Um, they want to spend money, they know they need to invest for many reasons to help them sell more beer, to show their wholesalers who they are um very much tied at the hip to that the company is investing in the brand, whereas the you know, the the accountants want to, you know, manage how much we're spending and um could stereotypically not have as much of an appreciation for what having lunch at an account could mean if you have time with the buyer and the buyer sees you eating lunch there and what that could mean for you know showing an appreciation of their business to future beer sales. So I would focus um to answer your question on really getting to know the sales and marketing team, appreciating what they do. Again, I had this little bit of tie-in through my blog and where I would kind of touch on stuff like this, but really spending time with them to understand what they were up against so that I could explain to them what I'm up against, trying to manage our finances and find common ground. And that way I would always be bringing up when it came time to budget conversations of how much do you think you reasonably need over a course of a quarter, a year to spend on account visits where you're it's all about showing up and showing face and supporting their business and choosing rather than having lunch at Chipotle, having it at this place that sells our beer. Um, and by doing that, it's kind of the same thing I mentioned on the audit side of not being viewed as the enemy, being viewed as someone, a partner that you need to find compromises with and always being willing to give a little to get a little as well. And I think that led to you know, just good partnerships between finance, sales, and marketing that can sometimes be um uh have a lot more friction because sometimes the accountants can be way too hard-nosed and way too black and white. And so being much more open to the gray uh and having that mindset. Um, and again, like I said, a lot of compromising uh can go a long way and just have a create a healthier environment. They're gonna be more likely to proactively tell you about a problem if they trust that you know you're you're gonna empathize with them and understand it. Um, if you have that hard-nosed approach, you know, they're gonna be more likely to uh make you find out for yourself and uh keep things to themselves, and it just can create a less healthy environment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's that's great advice. You know, we're in the relationship business, right? Regardless of what industry, but certainly the beer business. And we we don't often think of those internal relationships. It's very often how do we build better relationships with our suppliers and our retailers? But you look internally, and it's always struck me that and this is a big problem in in any organization, but certainly larger ones, where you've got the very name department, you know, is is siloing each of these individual units as if they're independent of and of themselves, right? Whereas not it's not we're one big ecosystem, but we're constantly kind of grinding the gears, whether it's you know, those interpersonal problems, yeah, accountants are all tend to be more no, you've got rigid, you've got to do it this way, whereas sales is much more maybe open and flexible, and and those don't often work well together. But I like your advice of you know, showing I think it comes down to mutual respect and understanding. It's like what do they actually do? Because I'd hear that a lot with say drivers and sales, so like they're just Hatfields and McCoys. But when you really work with each other, you get to know each other, you do the work of the other, um, that that can open up some space where you can say, Yeah, that's actually a hard job. You know, do be doing sales, I thought that was a piece of cake, but I see what it is now. It's some late nights and weekends, and you're always doing this and running around. And the driver, wow, I didn't realize how how tough that is lugging kegs down, you know. So there's a lot there to help break down barriers and and your approach too, of just sort of being available and listening and knowing like I'm an advocate for you. I'm trying to understand first and do what I can to help you, and then demonstrate not just in words but in actions. Um, that's that's super important. So that's great.
SPEAKER_00:There's so much of a connection between finance and the I'll just group together sales and marketing side, with when it comes to like very useful reporting where the two can really help each other. You know, sometimes they want to see reports a little bit different. You know, an accountant cares more about shipments, uh, sales cares much more about depletions, um, marketing might care a little bit more about pull-through. Um, I mean, everybody does, but in terms of like what affects their world the most. But we're all after the same thing. We all want information indicators on how we're doing. And the two are very much using data for different reasons. So there's a lot of collaboration potential there. Um, and the accountants often uh know uh great ways to pull it out. And again, more partnership can be developed there by just and um I guess commiserating over needs and and new solutions can come come up again if they view the each other as you know helpful um partners and not adversaries.
SPEAKER_01:That's true, and you know, the language barrier, right? Different measurements um that can stand in the way too. Because we're to your point, we're all we're all trying to accomplish the same goal, although we're not maybe we're not really generally aware of that. But I think tying that in and saying, all right, these are different ways to measure essentially the same outcomes. We're just using different language. So maybe start with that. I remember when we would do our simple forecast, we'd say, well, the dollars are for the budget and the accountants, you know, the the CEs are for the, you know, then then the barrels are for the, and you get all these different, they're all the same thing, they're just measuring it and communicating it slightly differently.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you know, I shouldn't give away my billion dollar idea uh for free like this, but since I haven't made it to this point, I will. Okay. I always joked that if there was ever gonna be a beer crunchers, that's the name of my blog, if there was ever gonna be a beer crunchers merch item, uh maybe someday I'll get to this. It was gonna be a big coffee cup with all the conversions written around the coffee cup. Because what's all what tends to be near your desk is your coffee cup and every kind of conversion from six, like how to turn a CE into a 16 a case of 16 ounce beer and and gallons for certain state tax to barrels and all of those. It was just gonna be this, it would kind of look like the periodic table, but a little more pleasing to the eyes with every possible conversion that a brewery accountant or sales team member or marketing team member could ever want.
SPEAKER_01:Doug, you got to do it. It's gonna that'll fly off the shelves. I mean, the holidays are coming. I can only imagine the stocking stuffers.
SPEAKER_00:There are dozens of us.
SPEAKER_01:All right, let's just since you you kind of brought up the the creative side of Doug Veliki, I want to talk about what you had mentioned earlier, you know, your passion for marketing, right? So I do think this is an interesting combination. You just I just don't see it very often. So maybe tell me about how did this come to be the passion for the marketing side of the business to kind of fill those gaps that you you know, I know you stepped into that role at Revolution. How did that come to be?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it started in 2013 as I just something inspired me to start an I think I saw someone with an Instagram account that wasn't of their like family and travel, it was just about their beer journey. And I was like, Oh, that's a good idea. I should do that. And then my wife uh had developed a passion for photography and invested in a really nice camera. So I was like, Oh, I'll learn how to use this as well. So I started taking photos that just popped. If you think about uh picture quality in 2013 on Instagram, it was a lot different than it was now, it's a lot harder to have a picture that stood out. So I would make the photos be something kind of like entertaining, something going on that matched what was on the label of the beer, and and it would be high quality because it was taken on a DSLR camera. And so the pictures popped, and then I would have a caption that was either kind of witty dad, dad humor, or some some kind of review, or just something about it that kind of complemented the label in this photo, and just not a lot of people were putting much effort into beer and Instagram at the time, so it was easy to stand out. So that's why you know people were looking. There was a land grab for followers on Instagram. So anybody who liked beer, and there was a lot of people in 2013 that liked beer, it's just an easy time to get followers. So that was motivating, and I just kept doing it, and then all of a sudden, people at Raise Holdings started would find my account and be like, Hey, I think I just followed you on Instagram. That's cool that you're doing that. You just do that for fun. I'm like, Yeah, I'm just kind of showing off my love of beer. And um, like you said, over those last next three years where I was still at the company running this Instagram account, that it's nothing crazy. We're talking getting it up to at the time, probably like 5,000 followers, which felt like a lot these days, not really. But through that time is when I really started digging into understanding all the nuances of craft beer industry, where it was going in the distributor role. I developed a passion for just what it took to be successful as a craft brewery with a big beer distributor, like a Molson Cores distributor, which is what Rez Holdings owned uh throughout the country. And I saw a big like misunderstanding out there of a lot of craft breweries who would sign on with distributors with all the wrong misconceptions of what that meant, what that meant they still needed to do or didn't need to do. And they would just go about it thinking they just inherited a 40-person sales team and no longer had to go sell beer, that it would all just kind of happen magically for them. So I just saw this like wrong approach out there. And it's not that that was the focus of my content, but that was just like one of the things that I always noticed as a misunderstanding between craft beer and big beer distributors, that the big beer distributors could open up a ton of doors and do a lot for a brand and really take it to the next level. But to be successful with them, you had to have the right approach. And so this is just one of many things I would try to write about. And um, you know, as I kind of turned this Instagram account into a long form option, which is now uh called Beer Crunchers, it's now on Substack and it's kind of almost more of a newsletter. But I would just find any kind of industry topics, and as my role would change, as I went to Revolution and was in finance, and then as I evolved to marketing, I would just find the overlaps between my experience from accountant to person who knows how a beer distributor works inside and out because they spend eight years auditing them. How could that be useful to now someone who's running finance at a pretty good sized craft brewery, but can also empathize with breweries much smaller than Revolution was now getting to the marketing side? So my content just has evolved over the last 10 years as my experience has, going from enthusiasts who wants to go into the industry to enthusiasts who now has this beer distributor experience to the finance side and so on. So through it, you know, I love, I have a passion for trying to figure out what's next. You know, I was always I became in charge of what should the company do in their portfolio for the coming year, which again, talk about something you have to be six, nine, twelve months ahead on planning with the way it works, getting into a chain store, you need to be way ahead on that. So I developed this other passion for you know, where's the industry going, predictions, um, but with with high stakes, you know, because I would become part of the decision makers of what revolution should change in their portfolio for the coming year. You always want to have a few new things to reveal. So that's something I also enjoyed writing about. And so I have this um character, uh, I I should say alter ego of mine that I call Noster Douglas. And uh so he likes to appear a few times a year, especially uh at the end of the year making predictions for what's what's to come for the year ahead. And so I just like to have fun with it. And so I like covering trends, what's what's kind of new and industry uh interesting, where the white space might be, where I think a lot of momentum is going to shift. Um, because these are things that are necessary from a finance standpoint, and it's very much the role of marketing and sales to jointly agree on and say where the company should shift their focuses going forward. So um, yeah, my content is just this kind of like hodgepodge of my background with these things I enjoy writing about, which are trying to share knowledge with people in the industry at all levels, you know, from a decision maker who needs just another voice in their air, ear to maybe spark an idea or help connect the dots between ideas of their own. Uh, people that are at much more junior levels at breweries who just don't get as much exposure to the strategy side, trying to put content out there that makes them think, oh yeah, that makes sense. Never thought about it like that. But yeah, we do that at our brewery and never quite thought about it in that respect, but cool. And then just beer fans who are maybe want to work in the industry someday or just think that'd be cool and just want to know a little bit more. I'm always trying to kind of thread the needle between those three audiences, like a true like CEO of Sierra Nevada, a um, you know, sales manager at a mid-sized craft brewery, and just the super fan of craft beer. How can I write about topics in a way where there's a little bit of something for everyone there? And it could, I could not lose, I could get them through a piece and all three of those kind of levels of beer fan to industry worker, um, keep their attention throughout. So that's the kind of fun puzzles I try to put together in my my newsletters. And uh not saying I'm always successful, but that's what I'm at least trying to do. It's a good goal daily, daily basis.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I love that because what's a common denominator? You know, everybody loves beer and they're interested in the industry and want to learn more. And yeah, sure, things are going to hit differently for people, but I love that approach that you try to take to bring so I can't, I gotta you laid down the thread, I gotta pick it up. Uh Nostra Douglas. Yes. So you from time to time he comes out. Could we summon him now? And and I'm really interested in what Nostra Douglas thinks about maybe the next six to twelve months. You mentioned white space, like what's what's common, Nostra Douglas? Tell us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, do you have any mute like mute aura music you could play in the background?
SPEAKER_01:I'll see what I can do.
SPEAKER_00:Um I always say that nowadays no trend just like goes from, you know, it's it's early October, nothing goes from not existing to all of a sudden in January. It's just like everywhere. Like that's just not how things work. Anything that we're gonna see in 2026 is probably already begun to show its face in 2025. We can read the tea leaves and see something coming. So these trends happen over the course of years. But one that is starting to pop up in different ways that I think we're gonna see more of is, you know, there's been a ton of talk about non-alcoholic beer for many years now, as we've watched, you know, the phenomenon of athletic growing company rise to being a top 10 craft brewery by volume, which is extremely impressive. But it's still very small as a category, and I think it is going to run into its limit, you know, of just kind of it's not that I think it won't always be able to grow a little bit, but in terms of just like taking a serious percentage of um alcohol's uh volume, I think we're gonna see some limitations there. And I think we're in the process of seeing a little bit of pushback on non-alcoholic beer with products that are more geared toward moderation, still being able to, you know, be in the game, but less so. So, two examples. Um, one that just rolled out would be Sierra Nevada's, I just mentioned them, but them putting their brand new Pilsner into 8.4 ounce cans, selling them in eight packs instead of six so that their pricing can match their six packs. And it's very close to the same amount of volume, but giving you less beer in eight cans instead of more beer in the traditional 12-ounce. That's one example of um uh attacking it by uh serving size. And I think we're we're already seeing this. We're gonna see a lot more brands with a very low ABV products, low being as low as I don't know, two and a half percent, maybe as high as like the high threes, but products that didn't, we didn't really see much of um where a whole brand is built around it. I'm not talking about a mid-sized brewery that makes, you know, 40 new beers a year, just making one one off. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about making like one of your core four beers be something that's like 3% alcohol. Or we're seeing a lot of new startup brands take advantage of all the contract brewing um capacity that's available in creating an entire brand around this idea of, you know, whether it's called mid-strength, I don't think that'll ever be the word the consumers use. That's more of like industry lingo, but um, small beers is what they were always referred to in the UK. Um, that's a name that I like. It's kind of self-explanatory, and I could see a customer um using that term. But I think we're gonna start to see, we're seeing new brands start up that are these small beers. And I think we're gonna see more existing craft breweries say, Oh, we should make a product there. And I think its success is gonna be determined by how high they prioritize it. Um, people I've had people push back on me and say, Well, isn't that just session IPAs all over again? Didn't we do that in 2016? It's a great, great point. Here's what I'd say to that. I think the session IPA of that founders, uh Founders Brewing was kind of like the instigator of. I think that was a very much a brewer-led trend. And Founders sells a ton of all day session IPA, but they made that their number one priority. Their sales team, when they get their marching orders um for a given year or quarter, it always starts with all day IPA. All these other breweries that have since discontinued theirs, that's because they made it their fifth priority. They still kept all these other things ahead of it, and it wasn't getting the promotion, it wasn't getting the social media attention. It was just, they just kind of threw it out there, didn't put enough behind it, and of course it died. That's what happens to anything these days that you make your fifth priority, because the the industry is so crowded right now that you know you really have to um, you know, bet on your winners and anything you make, you just try to throw out there and hope it sticks. It's probably not. You have to decide, are we really going for it with it, with this? So anybody who does that, I think has it has a real chance. And if they make it, you know, easy for the consumer to get it, you know, remind the consumer of the occasions for this, where it might fit into their um habits, create new occasions. I think it's got a got a chance of catching on. So whether it's small sizes, smaller ABVs, or other ways of attacking the moderation problem of not going from drinking beer to drinking zero alcohol, but solutions that um are somewhere in the middle, I think that's what we're gonna see a lot of uh coming up next.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Love that prediction. Thank you, Noster Douglas. That's great. So as we kind of wind down here, um, you know, so I have so many more questions, and uh we're not gonna be able to get to them all today, but maybe we can talk again in the future. Yeah. Why why don't we why don't we close out by telling people maybe people want to connect with you, they want to learn more about beer crunchers, what you got going on in Bright Bev. Um, what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Um they can get in touch with me um through Instagram and TikTok. That's where my handle is beer aficionado. A lot of people misspell that word, but so properly spelled beer aficionado on Instagram and TikTok. And then on Substack, my blog is called Beer Crunchers. And I usually put out about two newsletters a week. And uh you can sign up for those, reply to me there, send me a DM through Instagram or TikTok. I'll I'll see those and uh get back to you. And uh a lot of times that just leads to me uh throwing my email your way and we can uh switch the conversation over to email from there. That's great.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've really enjoyed this, Doug. Thank you so much for the time and sharing your experiences and expertise with with everyone. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, Carrie. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for listening to the Kraft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers so that you can improve financial results in your brewery. For more resources, tools, guides, and online courses, visit Craft Brewery Financial Training.com. And don't forget to sign up for the world famous Craft Brewery Financial Training newsletter. Until next time, get out there and improve financial results in your brewery today.