![]() Night Shift hasn’t completely shut the door on Philadelphia. “Year-to-date in Massachusetts, we’re up just about double digits, even losing that volume so we’re fortunate in that case,” he said, although the loss of taproom margins have left the company growing but “not necessarily as profitable as” it was three months ago. On-premise sales had accounted for about 30% of Night Shift’s business in Massachusetts, but Burns said the company has been able to make up for those losses by increasing sales in off-premise retailers thus far. In late 2018, the company opened a second taproom in Boston with a 10-barrel brewhouse, however that facility has been closed due to the on-premise shutdown. To support this growth, Night Shift has increased capacity at its Everett brewery late last fall by upgrading its 20-barrels brewhouse to a 60-barrel brewhouse. Burns said Night Shift was projecting another 10,000 barrels of growth in 2020, and the potential exists to still hit that target, although it’s still too early to predict given the unstable market conditions. In 2019, the company produced a little more than 39,000 barrels of product, up from 30,700 barrels in 2018 and 18,947 in 2017, according to the Brewers Association. Since Night Shift’s founding in 2012, the company’s volume has known nothing but double-digit growth. ![]() Night Shift has also taken advantage of opportunities as they’ve presented themselves, such as applying for and receiving Paycheck Protection Program funding from the federal government, offering home delivery, fire-selling merchandise at 50% off. The company’s founders also said they would forgo their salaries during the crisis. In mid-March, Night Shift announced that it would not lay off employees but would instead institute a furlough program for every department to reduce “workload/pay for many,” but also to enable its staff to file for unemployment. “I think we could exist, but not necessarily thrive.” “We’ve cut to a point where we’re sustainable,” he said for at least the next 12 months. “And then it’s just like, OK, cut anything that’s putting Night Shift at risk, and unfortunately, this huge project was one of the biggest things that could potentially threaten our overall survival.”Īs of today, Burns said Night Shift is on solid footing, as long as current business conditions do not worsen. “When that happened, I think it was a shift from how do we salvage Philly, to how do we salvage Night Shift?” he said. Oxton added that COVID-19 has presented Night Shift with a “survival crisis,” much like it has many other small and independent craft brewing companies and small businesses. “There’s just too many unknowns at this point to have that same level of confidence,” Burns said. ![]() The company had set a goal of opening the new facility by the end of 2020, but COVID-19 created too much instability. In the proposed Philadelphia facility, Night Shift had planned to install a 100-barrel brewhouse, which would have provided an additional 30,000 barrels of capacity up front, and 200,000 barrels over time. Let’s hit pause and if things go according to plan, maybe we can come back and revisit it.”īefore the pandemic, Burns said the company had viewed the project as a “safe bet,” given its current need for extra brewing capacity, which is currently being filled at Rhode Island’s Isle Brewers Guild. ![]() “Let’s not risk it all with our kind of blind entrepreneur optimism. “If we go forward with this as planned, this could potentially be the nail in the coffin for the Night Shift company,” he explained. In a conversation with Brewbound on Wednesday, Burns said Night Shift’s founders discussed potentially pushing back the project but when it became clear that there was no end in sight to the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., the project had to be shelved. In the long-term, we hope this means we’ll be in a better position than ever to revisit our vision for Philly.” In the short-term, that means our independent, family-owned business needs to focus on core operations to weather this crisis. “That said, we are resilient and scrappy, and have always found a way to make our dreams a reality. “To go from house-hunting in Philly over the 2019 holidays, to almost kick-starting construction in February, to an abrupt end of the project in April has been an emotional whirlwind and completely deflating,” the company’s founders wrote.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |