You need to pay a lot of attention to food safety issues, when running a wine manufacturing plant. The last thing you want is to end up with a situation where people fall ill, after having consumed wine from your plant. That would be bad for business: for you would certainly begin losing customers, once people start having doubts about the safety of your wine. There could also be legal consequences, if it is ascertained that people fell ill after consuming wine from your plant. So you need to pay a lot of attention to the food safety issues.

In dealing with food safety issues in your wine manufacturing plant, one simple measure you can take is that of ensuring that all your workers have food handling certificates from the relevant authorities. The assumption is that the workers would have gone through the relevant food handling training, and gone through the necessary health tests, before getting the food handling certificates.

Further, you need to ensure that very high standards of hygiene are implemented in the wine manufacturing plant. You need to be consistent in the implementation of the high hygiene standards. Some manufacturers go as far as hiring people whose only role is that of implementing high standards of hygiene. Simple things, like keeping the equipment used in the manufacture of wine, as well as the space used in the manufacture of wine clean, can go a long way towards ensuring food safety. The end-goal is to ensure that you maintain an environment that discourages the growth of potentially harmful pathogens.

You need to go further, and subject the raw materials you use in the manufacture of wine to thorough safety tests, before using them. The system should be set up in such a manner that no raw material goes into the actual manufacture of wine without being tested first. You can have a scheduler application (working in the same manner as the Walmartone schedule application), to help you in scheduling your wine manufacture raw materials to thorough testing before use.

For you to be able to run a wine making business without problems, you need to get a license for it first. This applies, even if yours is a very small-scale venture. You have to understand that even if your wine making venture is very small, the authorities are nonetheless bound to get wind of it – and woe unto you if you are found to be running such a venture without a license. You may subsequently find yourself having to pay a very stiff fine, or even serve time: yet you could quite easily have obtained a license for the venture.

So, what do you need, to get a license for a wine making business?

Well, conditions vary from one jurisdiction to another. Generally though, you need to have three key things in most jurisdictions, to get a wine making business license.

Firstly, to get a wine making business license, you need to have the requisite license fees. You have to understand that in most jurisdictions, licensing regimes are mainly put in place as a revenue collection mechanism. You should therefore expect to be required to fork out quite a bit of money, to get a license for your wine making business (depending on the size of venture you will be setting up).

Secondly, to get a wine making business license, you need to have the wine making facilities ready. These may have to be inspected, before you are awarded the license.

Thirdly, to get a wine making business license, you need to complete the necessary paperwork. Nowadays, you can apply for these sorts of licenses online, meaning that you get to complete the ‘paperwork’ online. The amount of information you need to provide varies, but you should generally expect the exercise to be a bit more taxing than that of filling in the Kroger feedback form. If you are setting up your wine making business as a partnership or a limited liability corporation, the paperwork is bound to be more extensive than would be the case for someone starting out under a sole ownership model.

It is possible to establish a decent wine brewing plant on a shoestring budget. This is to say that one doesn’t need to have millions of dollars in the bank, to establish a wine brewing plant. Of course, if one has more capital, they are likely to end up with a much better wine brewing plant. But even with limited capital, one can still set up a respectable microbrewery – provided one is ready to make a few improvisations here and there.

One major challenge you are likely to encounter, while trying to establish a wine brewing plant on a shoestring budget is that of getting land for the plant. The way to overcome this challenge is by renting or leasing the land, rather than trying to buy the land outright.

Another major challenge you are likely to encounter, while trying to establish a wine brewing plant on a shoestring budget is that of getting machinery for the plant. The way to overcome this challenge is by trying to design and fabricate the necessary brewing equipment components. That is better than attempting to buy ready-made (possibly imported) brewing equipment which is often very costly.

After establishing a wine brewing plant on a shoestring budget, you could face challenges establishing marketing and distribution networks. But as we saw in an earlier blog post, there are certain simple methods you can use to increase wine sales without spending too much money on promotion and advertising.  You could also face challenges getting good workers to man the brewery. To get round this challenge, you may be advised to hire unskilled folks and then train them in-house. This is often much cheaper than trying to hire experienced folks who have already been trained elsewhere — and who tend to uncompromisingly demand top dollar salaries. Of course, the for the more critical functions, you may have no alternative but to hire people who have experience gained from other well-established breweries. But in that regard, you have to appreciate that you are bound to encounter difficulties. Persuading a person who is used to receiving regular and predictable paychecks through, say, the Securitasepay.com system to join your start-up brewery won’t be easy. But you may be lucky. You may encounter an experienced person who has just been fired from an established brewery, and who – out of desperation for a job – may be more than willing to work at your start-up wine brewery at a reasonably affordable wage.

A friend of mine recently approached me, seeking advice on how to increase wine sales. The friend in question had just gotten a job in the marketing department of a wine manufacturing company. And now he was trying to see if I could possibly give him some tips on how to increase wine sales. I previously had a successful stint as a marketer for a wine manufacturer – and it is on the basis of this experience that many people view me as a competent person to give advise on matters to do with wine marketing.

I advised my friend that the key to success in wine marketing lies in proper promotion. I told him to firstly consider running an advertising campaign, in order to create awareness about the wine brands he is trying to sell. I also told him to try to improve the distribution of the wines. The goal there would be to get more and more pubs (as well as wines and sprits outlets) to stock the brands he is trying to push. I told him that there is actually potential for him to benefit personally, in the area of distribution. I told him that, for a start, he could quite easily go to a website like www.sunbiz.org, and register a company there. The ,main business for the company registered at Sunbiz.org would be that of wine distribution. Setting up such a company on the Sunbiz website should be easy enough. Then, through the company in question, he could be undertaking wine distribution on behalf of his distributor. All this is, of course, assuming that his employer (the wine manufacturer) doesn’t view the whole thing as a ‘conflict of interest’.

I also advised my friend to ensure that the wines are reasonably priced – especially if he wants his wine brands to appeal to the mass market. I gave him this particular piece of advice based on my appreciation for the fact that his employer is trying to cut a niche in the market as a manufacturer of cheap wines. I concluded by pointing out the fact that as long as the wines are reasonably priced, and they are of a reasonably good quality, he shouldn’t have difficulties getting buyers. That is, of course, assuming that he is also takes the trouble to promote the wine brands in the right manner.

Are you considering venturing into the manufacture of cheap wines? If the answer is ‘yes’, then there are three key things that you will need to have, in order to be successful in that venture. In today’s blog post, we will be looking at those three things that are necessary in the manufacture of cheap wines.

Firstly, in order to be successful in the manufacture of cheap wines, you need to have cheap raw materials. Thus, when coming up with the manufacturing formula for your wine, you have to ask yourself the question as to what raw material to base it on, for it to be cheap. It can, for instance, be very difficult for you to craft a wine out of high quality grapes, and expect it to be a cheap wine in the real sense of the word. A better alternative may be something like plums (whereby you end up with a plum wine) though in the final analysis, you may realize that high quality plums are actually costlier than low quality grapes… Ultimately, if you can’t figure out a source of a suitable cheap fruit for wine making purposes, you may as well say goodbye to your dreams of manufacturing cheap wines.

Secondly, in order to be successful in the manufacture of cheap wines, you need to have cost-effective manufacturing and distribution systems. It is possible to have a cheap raw material, but still end up with wine that is expensive due to the manufacturing and distribution system used.

Thirdly, in order to be successful in the manufacture of cheap wines, you need to have access to cheap labor, cheap power, cheap land and cheap capital. These are the basic factors of production. It is in pursuit of cheap labor that you see people opting to outsource their production operations to cheaper locations, where land is often also very cheap. Access to cheap capital can also be tricky, seeing that you have to borrow from banks that often demand usurious interests. Access to cheap power is another issue: especially keeping in mind that nations where labor is cheap unfortunately tend to be technologically unsophisticated places, where power is very costly. But if you are diligent in your search for cheap labor, cheap power, cheap land and cheap capital, you should eventually be able to find the best possible compromise.