Ways around that Booze Licensing Barrier
Published on May 11th, 2012
People who know me are aware that my office is seconded as a mead production zone; I generally have 5 demijohns (they are 5 litre glass jars) of various mead fermenting at any given time. Experimenting. Perfecting. However, I can’t be licensed to manufacture or sell, or be a person of influence within an organisation that does so.
My previous post – Commercial Quality Apple & Cinnamon Melomel – covered that ground. And for the life of me I don’t see how it serves the Tasmanian economy to lock my business venture out based on those constraints. I either make high quality local product, or I don’t.
Licensing, in this instance, is an insurmountable barrier that prevents me from capitalising on my core capabilities and it prevents the Tasmanian economy from becoming that little more sustainable.
The MBA in my head has been scrumming around for ways to circumvent this limitation. It’s what MBAs are trained to do – add up the numbers, figure the value and profits of a business and circumvent apparently insurmountable barriers to getting our products to market. Refinements to the business plan:
- Option A: Pass the business plan and product to a third party who would employ me as a mead maker. They carry the business licensing, they deal with the business finances and risk. I work solely as an employee with no say in the direction of the business. Sadly, mead makers are probably as replacable as infrastructure.
- Option B: Pass the business plan and product to a third party and finance them to achieve these outcomes. However, the limitation as an investor would be that I don’t join the industry but remain on the financial side as a shadow interest. This would give me no input into controls for quality, branding or product evolution.
- Option C: Move away from the licensing restriction and produce the mead overseas. This would mean importing the Tasmanian honey into that country and it trades off against losing the Tasmanian hand-produced product branding advantage that I would be interested in pursuing. This would in turn influence my ability in several years to market the mead – melomels and cysers – into the growing middle class of Asia, particularly India and China.
While I can’t currently move forward as a mead producer it suits me fine to continue experimentation and product evolution. However, as my issue now is replication of the product we are coming to the stage of choices about those three options. Within 2 years I will be at the stage where biting at the bit is a standardised high quality low-volume production that could be expanded.
There are always ways around insurmountable business obstacles. Usually with trade-offs. And there are probably more ways to skin that cat than Options A-C.
It would be nice in 5 years to be producing commercial quantities of exportable product from a Tasmanian property. But that’s probably a dream. And it’s a dream that would take a lot of external financing.
