Coronavirus Diaries (3/25): A Report on Deliveries
In this ongoing series, I have been posting the reflections of brewers and cidermakers as they deal with the unfolding COVID-19 coronavirus. In today’s post, Nat West of Reverend Nat’s offers a report on his new home delivery service.
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The following is a message Nat sent me via email, edited slightly for length.
Time is a bit of a blur. I’ve been hearing and reading that it’s important to establish a routine when your life is in upheaval. But since about a week ago I haven’t been able to do that.
Photo: Reverend Nat’s.
We had a weird beginning to the covid-19 outbreak in the US. On March 9, we had our TTB license temporarily revoked due to some missing filings. We knew that shut-down was coming since we’ve been under a TTB audit for the last two months, so we spent the preceding two weeks building a bunch of inventory and shipping a lot to our distributors and developing a special projects plan to keep our staff busy for the two weeks we expected to be closed.
Two weeks to the day, we re-opened. In the interim, the worldwide Covid-19 outbreak landed in Oregon.
My Taproom staff was already effectively laid off due to the TTB shut-down so they were able to get on unemployment insurance rapidly when the order came down to close all bars.
In the beginning of the week of March 16, I was mostly in a waiting mode since we had already been slow the previous week. After seeing Charles Porter of Little Beast start a delivery service, I thought that was a great idea to implement as soon as our license came back from the TTB. So I spent the majority of Thursday the 19th developing a website using the Weebly add-on to our existing Square register system. While talking with Adam Milne, the owner of Old Town Brewing, about the closure of our respective premises, I jumped at the opportunity to include his beer in my delivery service. That’s one of the benefits of being a cider guy: There’s no competition from beer and a lot of shared opportunities.
A growing number of breweries, taprooms, and cideries are beginning home delivery in Oregon. I am keeping a running list here. As Nat’s case illustrates, buying direct from the producer may make the difference over the next few months. Please buy from the brewery/cidery! And if you don’t see your company’s name on my list, shoot me the details and I’ll add it.
Our snafu with the TTB was cleared up on Friday the 20th and I immediately began a social media blitz to promote our delivery service of cider and beer. That first night, I completed 11 deliveries—but my phone kept dinging with new orders the whole time.
Saturday was more of the same. I hit the road at 4pm and did 19 deliveries. But I couldn’t get ahead, ending my route with almost 30 orders unfilled. The next day, Sunday, I made an expanded route including deep Gresham and Happy Valley. I was excited to offer free same-day delivery on orders but about halfway through, I realized I was never going to get ahead. So I called up my two full-time salespeople who each ran a route late into the evening on Sunday.
By the end of the three day weekend, we had brought in about twice the revenue of a typical weekend in the Taproom. I felt that if the order volume could be sustained, we had a real business.
On Monday I ran the numbers with my CEO to see how the finances of the delivery service looked. It was highly profitable, despite running three routes per day and not making as much margin on the beer. We decided to spend some significant money on social media ads to keep the volume up.
Now that five days of delivery have passed, I feel a little more in control of the system. Routing is getting easier. I’m better at customer service. We are delivering to so many different kinds of people all over the metro area. A lot of people just want to support small businesses, some folks are just buying Old Town Beer from me (which is A-OK), and many customers are people I know well, showing their continued support. I spent a long time today developing policies for the safety of our drivers by researching best practices and listening to complaints from other delivery drivers. I feel confident that we can provide a little bit of normality during these tough times, while doing so safely.
My business is historically 50% on-premise bars and restaurants so we are preparing for that massive cut to our revenue. But the delivery service looks like it might offset about 50% of that decline, which will greatly soften the blow.