In 2015, Pulkit K. Agrawal (pictured above, far right) brought an analytic, inventive mind and a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree from Harvard University to the local beer industry as a process engineer for Ballast Point Brewing. During his two-and-a-half years there, he focused on the company’s packaging operations at its facilities in Miramar, Scripps Ranch and Daleville, Virginia. That experience provided Agrawal with insight into the challenges breweries face where process control and optimization are concerned, as well as the lack of software and systems industry professionals had to turn to. It also sparked an entrepreneurial fire, which led to him establishing his own business. That entity’s moniker, The 5th Ingredient, refers to a crucial “ingredient” going beyond hops, grain, water and yeast…data. The latter is integral for brewing companies looking to optimize efficiency, maximize profits and avoid making costly errors or oversights. Looking to give brewery personnel an alternative to hand-written, manually keyed and other outdated methods for managing their data, Agrawal developed a software system called Beer30, which is now used by more than 450 breweries in 20-plus countries. A key to its success has been consistent updating and advancement. In the past eight years, Agrawal and his team have added countless easy-to-use features, along with innovations like a free-to-use educational platform and network of suppliers offering discounts on everyday items that are vital to brewery operations. And there’s even more to come. We decided to get in touch with this entrepreneur to see how his San Diego-born business is doing and what’s next as it continues to grow and evolve.
How would you describe Beer30?
After my time at Ballast Point, I really wanted to consult for breweries. As I started traveling the world, I found out most brewing companies were on paper logs, whiteboards and spreadsheets while also using some sort of brewery-management software. I realized there was a need in the market for the production side. I began building out Beer30 with the main idea of having an all-in-one system that can do production, inventory and accounting. Beer30 is a modular system, so you can pick and choose what you need for your facility. Offerings go from supply-chain process to purchasing, brewhouse, fermenter, filter, bright tank and packaging, including yeast management, quality control, sales, distribution, accounting integration and resource planning. Every brewery has different needs, so we designed Beer30 to be as customizable as possible for businesses of all sizes, from 70 barrels per year to over 100,000 barrels annually. We provide the flexibility to allow people to pick and choose what they need.
What makes Beer30 different from similar brewery software programs?
Most other brewery-management software packages are focused on the inventory side. Beer30 focuses on the production side first. The core fundamentals are about consistency in a company’s beer and making sure each day-to-day action is documented by different users and compared to what is the ideal profile for that beer. Beer quality is a driving fundamental. In a competitive industry as craft beer, Beer30 also focuses on helping breweries understand profitability. Our proprietary algorithms are much different than other softwares in the industry, where we include every beer split batch, merge, and production loss into the beer’s COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) value. Finally, there’s usability. Everything we build is mobile, tablet and laptop-friendly. This makes it as easy as possible for users to enter data in real time. Another unique value proposition is that we also never lock people out from brewing and production, just because inventory doesn’t exist. This provides real-time data with unlimited users and full supply chain visibility – a functionality that other systems can’t offer. And when breweries sign-up for Beer30, they are usually up and running in a few days, sometimes as early as 24 hours. The return on investment is five-to-ten times of what they pay for a year of Beer30. A great example of the ROI that can be achieved with us can be found in this case study from Pelican Brewing. We’ve also had great success with a number of San Diego County companies, including North Park Beer Co., Hodad’s Brewing and All Things Agave, plus SoCal operations such as Smog City Brewing and Trademark Brewing.
What are some of the new initiatives you’ve launched of late?
Craft University is designed as an educational platform for the brewing community. It’s completely free, anyone can join and we have monthly webinars on very timely topics led by industry experts. It allows us to get thought leadership out there so people can have vetted sources. Some of the topics we’ve covered are “AI at Your Brewery”, “Scaling Up Without Burning Out” and “Paychecks at a Brewery: How to Retain Employees”. We’ve also set up Beer30 Marketplace, a membership program allowing brewing companies to save money on producers and services they rely on every day. We’ve negotiated discounts with suppliers of ingredients, equipment and software. Our customers get free access, but even if you’re not a Beer30 user, you can join the program for a monthly fee we set at a small enough rate that the Marketplace easily pays for itself. This week, we’re launching Beer30 Lite, a low-cost solution focused purely on the production side. Breweries can get in there and track everything from the brew day to packaging, and get self-service essentials at a low price. They can also opt in on additional chats and other features versus investing in the full suite. It’s an affordable introductory product that’s streamlined, providing data analysis while eliminating the need for paper logs, whiteboards and spreadsheets. And finally, we just launched Beer30 NetSuite in collaboration with Kona Brewing in Hawaii. As breweries scale their ops, at some point they outgrow QuickBooks or Xero and need a true financial system that’s as robust as NetSuite. Beer30 works with NetSuite to provide that needed backbone. Beer30 acts as a source of truth for demand, plus material- and resource-planning for production and operational efficiencies. This allows a brewery that’s scaled to get the best of all worlds – production, quality and efficiency integrated directly with NetSuite.
What are you excited to share at next week’s Craft Brewers Conference?
There are some new updates I’m really excited to share, the first of which is our gold standard project. For every beer your brewery produces, you can set your gold-standard fermentation – gravity, pH, temperature – and as fermentation progresses, you can monitor how a batch is deviating from the gold standard so you can implement proactive predictive process improvement. Next up is just-in-time forecasting. The biggest supply-chain challenge is trying to manage cash flow with items you need and when you’ll need them. We’re building out a unique tool to understand the just-in-time for raw materials, packaging supplies and finished goods, so users can understand when they actually need particular items in order to optimize the timing of that purchase versus ordering something that sits on a shelf for 12 months taking up room and cash. These things have never mattered as much as they do now. Lastly, there’s our Beer30 Command Center, which integrates production, sales and inventory with Tableau for visualizations. This allows for real-time insights and graphic views of what’s happening throughout one’s brewery, including how many days tanks are sitting empty. Nobody knows unless they graph it out to figure out excess capacity that’s being wasted. We call these actionable insights and a multitude of them are easy to identify and do something about using our Command Center. All of these updates are creating our brand new The 5th Ingredient ecosystem that we are super excited about.
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