By: Jerry Beaudion, Petainer VP Sales, North America - East

As breweries grow and build their brands, many seek to open new revenue streams by entering new markets, either domestic or internationally. However, taking beer from one market to another often presents a number of challenges with marketing and supply chain. By following some simple guidelines, you can avoid common pitfalls and make new market penetration a success.

Here's my top 5 tips for a successful expansion:

1. Know your new market - it is vital that you understand the market you are entering and that there is genuine consumer demand for your product. This can be achieved by visits or market research, by working with someone, such as a distributor, or importer/exporter who understands the local beer market and has a track-record of successfully launching new brands.

2. Stay true to your brand - some breweries are tempted to radically change their products to fit into a new market. Those that stay true to their brand and heritage are often more successful even if they make minor adjustments to ensure they are locally relevant. Remember: customers enjoy and demand high quality, distinctive products.

3. Start small - the other lesson learned from brewers who have successfully entered new markets is to start small. Choose a region or country which doesn’t require huge initial investment or product, and be patient as there will challenges along the way!

4. Read the fine print – make sure you understand the fine print before shipping beer to a new market. Every state and country has unique rules and regulations when it comes to beer. If there is failure to comply, the beer will simply be stopped from entering the market, and will never reach its destination. An expensive mistake to make, especially when shipping a non-pasteurized or sterile filtered beer.

5. Seek more cost-effective solutions - the complexities of transporting beer over longer distances may mean that you must look at alternative options to steel keg fleets. Disposable kegs have helped many smaller breweries overcome the challenges of long distances, as well as saving the cost of transporting empty containers back to the brewery. They can also be used on existing brewery filling lines designed for steel kegs which means there is no additional investment. Typically, twice as much beer can be transported by truck and it reduces freight costs by 50 percent.