Somewhere to Put It: Premises

You've got your kit sorted. Now you need somewhere to put it. And this is where the budget starts haemorrhaging.

Industrial units are not cheap. Depending on where you are in the country, you could be looking at anything from a few hundred to several thousand pounds a month in rent. Location matters more than people think — you need somewhere accessible for deliveries, ideally with decent road links, and if you're planning a taproom (see Chapter 6 for why that's its own minefield), you need somewhere customers can actually get to.

But the monthly rent is only the start. Before you move in, you'll typically need to pay a deposit — often two to three months' rent — plus rent upfront. On a unit costing £1,500 a month, that's potentially £6,000 or more before you've even unlocked the door. That's a significant chunk of your startup capital gone on an empty building.

There is one genuine lifeline: Small Business Rate Relief. In England, if your property's rateable value is below a certain threshold, you can get significant relief on your business rates — potentially paying nothing at all. This saves thousands of pounds a year and can be the difference between viability and bankruptcy. If you're choosing a premises, understanding where the SBRR thresholds sit and choosing accordingly is one of the smartest financial decisions you can make.

But be careful — taking a smaller unit just to qualify for rate relief might mean you don't have enough space. We cover the storage squeeze in Chapter 15, but the short version is: you will need more space than you think, and running out of space is one of the most common operational problems in small breweries.