Don’t Spend That Cash Until You Can Make It to April 2027

The Whole Thing in One Line

Don’t spend the cash in your bank until you have enough in savings to make it through April 2027.

That is the rule.

The cash from this summer is not profit. It is next April’s payroll.

Profitable, well-run seasonal businesses still run out of cash. Not because they lose money over twelve months, but because they spend the peak before pricing the trough.

The rule is easy. The number behind it is the work.

1. You Already Know Most of This Number. Write It Down. 

Operators treat the winter reserve like it requires a crystal ball.

It does not.

You already know what your rent will be. You know your interest expense because it is on an amortization schedule. You know payroll within a ballpark because you have staffed a November before.

Three of the four biggest cash lines in your slow season are knowable today, in August.

A seasonal operator we work with burned a multi six-figure amount of cash from mid-fall to its spring low. In April, the operating account bottomed out at less than one day of sales.

The business was annually profitable the whole time.

Nothing about that winter was a surprise. Nobody had added it up.

That is the trap. Peak-season cash feels like performance. It is actually a float you are holding on behalf of your own off-season.

Build the known column first: rent and NNN, debt service split between principal and interest, payroll at last winter’s headcount plus expected raises, insurance, software, and contracts that renew in Q1.

Then add the estimated column from your own history. Average your operating income across the slow months from the last two years. That helps cover COGS, utilities, and the rest of the variable side.

Then automate the reserve. Set a fixed weekly sweep into high-yield savings while cash is strong, sized so the reserve is funded before the season turns.

Weekly beats monthly because it survives a good month’s temptation.

And treat that reserve as operating capital, not “savings.” It has a job. It has a date. It is not extra money.

2. Your Slow Season Has a Shape, Not a Number 

The winter weeks that actually hurt are not always the lowest-revenue weeks.

They are the weeks where fixed obligations stack.

Rent. NNN. Quarterly sales tax. Three-payday months. Annual insurance renewals. Software contracts. Vendor prepays. Debt service.

That is why a monthly forecast can lie to you.

A month can look survivable while one week inside it breaks the business.

Across the seasonal models we build, the cash crunch usually shows up where revenue troughs and payment timing collide.

That is not a profitability issue. That is a timing issue.

Build a rolling 13-week direct-method forecast. Weekly, not monthly. A monthly view hides the week you cannot make payroll.

Then set a hard cash floor with a trigger. We use two weeks of payroll. When the forward low crosses it, spending decisions happen that week, not at month-end.

Move what you can before the trough. Shift insurance to monthly payments.

Negotiate renewals out of Q1. Schedule large vendor prepays into peak months when cash is actually there.

Your slow season does not just have a total cost. It has a shape.

Map the shape before the bad week arrives.

3. Winter’s Second Leak: Everything You Are Owed

Slow sales weeks are bad enough. Slow collection weeks make them worse.

That is the second cash leak many operators miss, especially when wholesale is growing.

Wholesale is not the problem. In a lot of taprooms right now, it is one of the better growth lines.

Unmeasured collection timing is the problem.

Terms are not cash.

“Net-15” does not mean cash in 15 days if the customer routinely pays after that. A good wholesale month on the P&L does not help your February bank balance if the cash does not arrive until March.

In client models, we have seen distributor and wholesale collection timing stretch well past stated terms, with some accounts running more than a month behind.

That matters because your slowest sales weeks can also become your slowest collection weeks. The two compound.

Measure actual payment lag by customer. Invoice date to payment date. Do not use the stated terms.

Bill weekly, not at month-end. Every day of billing delay is a day of winter cash you chose not to collect.

Chase receivables hardest in October, while your customers still have their own season behind them.

And do not confuse stretching vendors with a plan.

Stretching payables may buy a few weeks, but it often costs you visibility, vendor trust, and clean forecasting.

It is a symptom, not a strategy.

4. R&M and Capex Are the Two Lines You Actually Control. Plan Them Now. 

You cannot negotiate your rent down in January.

You cannot un-hire your winter crew in December.

But repairs, maintenance, and capital spending are timing decisions.

August is when you make them, not when the invoice shows up.

We watched operators make significant five-figure investments in outdoor space and equipment ahead of the season. Mostly good decisions. The projects were not wrong. The timing was.

In models where capital projects landed in the same window as the seasonal trough, the forecast went negative for multiple consecutive weeks in December and January.

That is the difference between a good investment and a cash problem.

Pull R&M forward into peak season. Deferred maintenance done in September is a cash choice you made. The same repair in February is a cash emergency someone else scheduled for you.

Set the R&M floor, not just the R&M budget. Know the number below which you are deferring things that will cost more later: glycol, HVAC, walk-in seals, safety issues, and cold-chain risks.

And run the fermenter test.

Before you sign for new equipment, name the cash balance you need on the purchase date: reserve fully funded through April 2027, then the deposit, then the install, then the freight.

If the answer is “we’ll be fine by then,” you do not have a number.

You have a hope.

Quick Hits From the Ledger  

Back-test the forecast before you trust it. If you cannot explain the weekly variance, the model is wrong, not the bank.

Sales tax and tips are not your money. They are easy to accidentally spend and expensive to pay back.

Know your baseline burn. Most operators can name monthly revenue. Fewer can name monthly cash requirement.

Deferred maintenance is a loan at a bad rate. Know which items are deferrable and which ones protect the cold chain.

Owner draws taken in a strong October may be borrowed from March.

Three-payday months are a cash event. Check which slow months have one before you build the plan.

The Season Ahead 

Do not spend it until savings gets you to April 2027.

That is the rule.

The gap between operators who know that number in August and those who find out the hard way is the whole ballgame.

If you are not sure what your business actually costs to run from November to

April, that is a one-call conversation. I would love to share what I am seeing across the breweries and taprooms I work with.

Book a Call Time Here

What We Saw in Q2 2026: Flat Revenue, Real Profit, and the Cash Lessons of Summer

The Quarter in One Line 

Revenue was flat. The profitable operators stopped waiting for it not to be.

That is the Q2 story.

Same-store taproom sales across the operations we work with came in essentially even with last year, even after controlling for the calendar with the same number of Fridays and Saturdays both years.

But underneath that flat line, margins moved a lot in both directions.

Here is what separated the winners.

1. Draft Fell Faster. Total Revenue Didn’t Move. Read That Again. 

In Q1, we told you draft volume was down.

In Q2, the slide accelerated.

Draft beer revenue at the taprooms we work with fell in the double digits percent year over year, worse than the pace of the first half overall.

And yet total taproom revenue held flat.

How?

Everything else on the menu picked up the slack.

Across the first half, liquor was up mid-teens percent, other alcoholic beverages were up nearly 30%, and non-alcoholic beverages were up mid-teens. For every dollar draft gave back, the rest of the menu added slightly more than a dollar.

Guests are still coming to the taproom. They are just not anchoring the visit on a pint.

Three moves are working right now:

Run your cocktail and NA program with the same rigor as your beer program. Cost it, price it, and feature it. The margin on a well-run cocktail program is covering the draft gap at multiple operations we support.

Lean into events and catering.Private event and catering fees were among the fastest-growing revenue lines we saw in Q2, and they may be the most realistic gap-closer for the second half.

Stop building the forecast around draft recovery.The operators who accepted the mix shift early are the ones hitting their numbers.

2. The 10-Point Prime Cost Turnaround

One multi-location operation we work with took prime cost from the low 60s as a percentage of sales in Q1 to the low 50s in Q2.

Same menu. Same locations. Essentially the same revenue.

That is the whole operating turnaround in one number.

Labor dropped from over 30% of sales to under 25%, a swing worth roughly two points of margin versus the same month last year. Operating expenses came in well over 15% lighter year over year on flat sales. 

What it took:

Scheduling to demand, not habit.

The labor savings came from matching hours to traffic patterns. 

Watching food cost like a line item, not a vibe.

Food cost is still running 31–32% at most taprooms we see, stubbornly above high-20s targets. An updated review of food vendors and removing low margin items simplified prep and lowered food costs simultaneously. 

3. The Spring Cash Wake-Up Call 

A seasonal operator we work with burned a multi six-figure amount of cash from mid-fall to its spring low.

In April, the operating account bottomed out at less than one week of sales.

The business was never unprofitable on an annual basis. It is a strong operation in a seasonal market. It simply spent the winter’s burn without a reserve. Q2 is when we fixed it, and the playbook applies to every seasonal operator.

Build the reserve during peak season, likely right now.

Use a fixed weekly sweep into savings, sized so last winter’s burn is fully covered before the season turns.

Set a hard cash floor with a trigger.

We use two weeks of payroll as the action trigger on a rolling 13-week forecast. When the forward low crosses it, spending decisions happen that week.

Know your baseline burn.

Average your operating profit loss across your slow months from the last two years. That number, in addition to your debt service, is what your reserve has to cover.

4. The Crowdfunded Loan That Actually Costs 1.6x

Revenue-share crowdfunding had a moment in food and beverage.

Raise from your fans. Pay it back as a percentage of sales. No bank required.

It sounds simple.

This quarter, we unwound one of these arrangements on a client’s books, and the findings apply to anyone who took this money.

The total obligation came out to nearly 1.6x the amount raised, meaning roughly a third of every payback dollar was interest.

That is not always obvious when the money comes in.

The true cost was hiding in the payback multiple, the platform fees, and the net cash actually received. Platform fees were netted out of the proceeds, and the client received as little as 88 cents on the dollar.

That is the problem with “easy” capital. It may be fast. It may be flexible. But if you do not rebuild the schedule and understand the repayment economics, you may not know what the money actually costs until it is already expensive.

Quick Hits From the Ledger

Mid-year sales tax changes are live.

If your POS is still charging the old rate, you are eating the difference. Audit it this week.

Wholesale remains a growth opportunity.

The taproom may be flat, but the keg business is not. Right-size your wholesale labor to 10% of sales and it can provide profits at any scale.

Summer capex is back.

We watched operators make significant five-figure investments in outdoor space ahead of the season. Last year, we told you outdoor comfort was the strongest predictor of beer sales we track. They were listening. But make sure you have cash set aside for slow season first.

The Second Half

Flat revenue is the new baseline.

The gap between operators who manage prime cost weekly and those who find out at month-end is now the strategic advantage. 

If you want to know where you stand, that is a one-call conversation.

If Q2 raised more questions than it answered about your financials, I would love to share what I am seeing across the breweries and taprooms I work with.

Book a Call Time Here

Owning Your Building Makes Your P&L Weirder

Buying your building sounds like the obvious next step.

No landlord. No rent hikes. More control over the space. Long-term upside. Maybe even a real estate asset sitting underneath the operating business.

For a lot of brewery owners, that logic makes sense. If the taproom is working, production is stable, and the business has survived enough chaos to think about real estate, owning the building can be one of the smartest long-term wealth-building decisions an operator makes, especially when taking advantage of SBA owner-operator 504 loans.

But here is the part that gets missed:

Owning the building makes your P&L statement weird. Property taxes, large asset balances, and large debt liabilities all start showing up unless you properly split the building financials into their own financial statement. 

The Building Does Not Hit the P&L the Way Operators Think

The building itself does not show up on the Profit and Loss statement as an expense when you buy it.

If your brewery buys a $2 million building, that $2 million does not run through the P&L all at once. It goes on the balance sheet as an asset.

The P&L gets impacted over time through interest expense, depreciation, property taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and potentially sub-tenant rent when the building is owned in a separate entity.

That matters because your P&L can start telling a different story from what is actually happening in the bank account.

Before owning the building, rent was simple. Painful, maybe. Expensive, definitely. But simple.

You paid rent. Rent hit the P&L. Everyone knew what it was.

After buying the building, rent may disappear. On paper, EBITDA may improve because that rent expense is gone.

Great, right?

100% Wrong.

Because you may have replaced rent with debt service, and debt service does not flow through the P&L the same way rent does.

So now you have a fun little accounting puzzle: interest hits the P&L and affects cash, depreciation hits the P&L but not current cash, and principal payments affect cash but do not hit the P&L.

This is why building ownership can make the P&L harder to interpret, not easier.

Separate Real Estate Entities Make This Even More Fun

Many operators do not have the brewery itself own the building directly.

Instead, they create a separate real estate holding company. That entity owns the building and leases it back to the brewery operating company.

There are good reasons to do this: liability separation, ownership planning, tax strategy, future exit planning, and keeping the real estate separate from the operating business.

This is where generic bookkeeping starts to fall apart. The numbers may technically be entered in QuickBooks. That does not mean they are useful for making decisions.

The Better Questions to Ask

The question is not, “Did we book the mortgage payment? That is the bare minimum.

The better questions are:

• What is the brewery operation actually producing?

• What is the real estate actually costing?

• How much cash is available after debt service?

• Is EBITDA improving because operations improved, or because rent moved somewhere else?

• Are we looking at the operating company, the real estate company, or the consolidated picture?

Those questions matter when the stakes get real: expansion decisions, equipment financing, refinancing, partner distributions, ownership changes, multi-location planning, and valuation discussions.

What to Watch

If you own your building, or are thinking about buying one, watch for these red flags:

• EBITDA improved, but cash still feels tight.

• The full mortgage payment is being treated like a normal operating expense.

• Principal, interest, depreciation, and operating costs are not clearly separated.

• The brewery pays rent through a separate real estate entity, but nobody is reviewing the consolidated picture.

• You cannot explain whether the brewery itself is profitable without the real estate noise.

  
  

Once you own the walls, your books need to explain what those walls are actually doing to the business.

This week, look at your P&L and ask: ‘Is this reporting on the brewery or the building?’ If you aren't sure, hit reply and tell me what’s confusing you. I answer every email personally.