Fort Point Beer Co. Scales Multi-Location Beer & Cider Operations with Crafted ERP
The Customer
Fort Point Beer Co. needed a proven ERP system to manage the complexities of its rapidly growing, multi-site, multi-category operations. Crafted ERP provides a modern, user-friendly, and highly functional platform built to support all of Fort Point’s strategic priorities — from expanding production capabilities to creating new product types to managing inventory and financial data — in one unified system.
About Fort Point Beer Co.
With a love for beer and a passion for building businesses, brothers Tyler and Justin Catalana founded a small brewery in Mill Valley, a small town just north of San Francisco. As it quickly expanded, the idea of scaling up manufacturing and going regional forced a relocation. In 2014, Fort Point Beer Co. was launched in San Francisco, employing 200 people and rapidly gaining fans in California and beyond.
The Challenges
The intricacies of a small, three-barrel brewery moving to a production brewery — while operating from spreadsheets — were unsustainable. Fort Point Beer Co. was using OBeer (now Encompass) and QuickBooks, but found itself in the market for another solution within a year due to integration and usability issues.
Fort Point also made a key decision to forgo traditional distributors and distribute itself. It was very apparent that the brewery’s current mix of software solutions could not meet its needs. Key issues included limited visibility into financial data as well as difficulties managing inventory, tracking available resources, and ultimately developing new products.
We’re a manufacturing company but we’re also a hospitality company and a distribution company. Crafted just had a more modern approach to ERP than anything else we evaluated.
Justin Catalana | Co-Founder & CEO
Fort Point Beer Co
The Solutions
A proven, end-to-end platform
Crafted ERP is built in NetSuite, the world’s #1 AI cloud ERP, giving Fort Point a single, cloud-based system that supports both day-to-day operations and long-term strategy. For a company managing multiple categories, multiple locations, and self-distribution, that meant finally having a platform flexible enough to keep pace.
One system, multiple license types, unlimited scalability
“As Fort Point was branching out into cider, it was really great to be able to keep all of the same compliance, production, and workflows within Crafted,” says Mike Schnebeck, CFO and director of innovation for Fort Point. This allowed the company to focus on getting the recipes right, with confidence that the back-end was set up correctly.
Easy integration
While happy to move forward from the majority of its previous systems, Fort Point did have existing, customized internal software and programs and found it very easy to integrate them into Crafted. “The integration options and how open the API is with Crafted and NetSuite was one reason we implemented Crafted,” explains Justin.
Seamless transition between production models
As the brewery grew, so too did the demand for its beers. When Fort Point decided to outsource some of its production to a contract brewing facility, it found that Crafted could support the additional complexities with ease. Leaders reported a seamless operational transition, including inventory and tax management.
Accurate data across locations
Clear visibility and tools within Crafted help schedule production across internal and external locations. The solution facilitates the movement and transfer of items, all while maintaining accurate costing and financial records. Priceless!
For every step within the company – from shipping to production to finance – Crafted does a really good job of tying all the aspects of the business together. Having that big picture approach is very helpful to my role.
Mike Schnebeck | CFO & Director of Innovation
Fort Point Beer Co.
Working with Doozy Solutions
With a wealth of industry experience, Doozy Solutions offers hands-on support for both the software implementation and training. “Since we’d had a pretty rough implementation prior, they addressed our concerns and how the transition and rollout would work,” explains Justin. “We worked with the Doozy team to get all of our data synced up and out of our old platform. In doing that, we had an opportunity to look at our systems and make sure everything was in the right place moving forward. Doozy not only helped build solutions, they shared ideas they thought might benefit us,” he adds.
With Doozy Solutions, Fort Point Beer Co.’s employees trust the system, and the company has improved financial reporting, production, and inventory controls. It’s now looking to expand beyond its distribution and three taprooms outside the San Francisco Bay Area into Southern California and the greater United States.
