Beyond the Bottle: Biebod Distillery’s Blueprint for Growth and Resilience
Biebod Distillery was thriving. We had made spirit, nurtured it, bottled it, sold it, and shipped it out. Anya, the CEO, knew that continued growth meant leaning into what was working, but also exploring new frontiers. Ben, the Operations Lead, was focused on expanding production capabilities and ensuring everything ran smoothly, including the crucial aspect of maintenance as kit starts to age and creak but cashflow remains super tight.
How do we hit our ambitious growth targets? Perhaps our gin numbers were lagging, and we needed to adapt to consumer demand for tequila, or Anya’s long-held dream of creating a historical Armagnac. This could mean a second distillery, a second brand, or even venturing into Ready-To-Drink (RTD) formats. Each path presented unique operational and reporting challenges. Could we centralize resources while empowering local teams? Could we track multiple spirit types under one roof? And what about uncovering new revenue streams like contract distilling or third-party bottling? All this, while ensuring our valuable equipment was well-maintained.
MasterDistiller x Odoo proved its flexibility. For multi-site operations, it helped Anya with flexible, configurable warehouse locations and spirit producers to manage multiple distilleries or spirit types under one consistent reporting framework, while giving local operations teams the day-to-day know-how to manage their casks, production configuration, and tasks. Multi-warehouse regulatory reporting could easily be managed with filtering by spirit producer and location.
For new brands or spirit types, configurable Spirit Producer and Spirit Types allowed us to develop that nascent rum brand or branch out into up-and-coming spirits. Odoo’s robust manufacturing framework, used by clients as complex as aerospace manufacturing (like Junkers), allowed us to add and track new manufacturing processes efficiently for RTDs or other formats, all under one roof.
New revenue streams also became viable. Contract distilling leaned on the EMCS integration to dispatch once produced, and honed in on production metrics as well as overhead allocations to ensure suitable recharges as well as client requirements being captured, monitored, and reportable on spirit quality and process.
And while it was all running, Ben ensured our preventative maintenance schedule was keeping the lights on. Any reactive maintenance outages were tracked allowing downtime calculations – all within our connected maintenance module. This proactive approach reduced unexpected downtime by 20% with monitored, costed preventative maintenance programs.
Early Wins that Compound :: The early wins in comprehensive data capture (Part 1), detailed production metrics (Part 1), and integrated inventory (Part 4) now compounded to support complex and flexible expansion. The ability to track multiple spirit types and locations from day one meant that adding new distilleries or brands was a configuration change, not a system overhaul. The consistent data flow also made it easy to calculate accurate recharges for contract work, turning spare capacity into profitable new ventures.
We are growing, innovating, and adapting. But with so many moving parts, so much data, and so many stakeholders, how does Biebod Distillery turn this wealth of information into crystal-clear insights and actionable decisions for everyone, from the bank to the bottle line? That’s the focus of our next chapter…
Ready to explore how MasterDistiller x Odoo can help your distillery navigate the future?