When you move from kegs to bottles, you need to decide where to price them.  For retail placements it is pretty straightforward, you do a little market research, decide how much you want your bottles to cost, and then set the wholesale price accordingly.  In Washington it is illegal to sell to different wholesale accounts at different prices, so there is not much else to do.  But when it comes to your in-house pricing for bottles to go there are some options.

The basic question I have is, do you price the bottles differently in the taproom vs. in stores, and if so is it higher or lower?  I can think of several reasons to go one way or the other.

On the one hand, you get to keep more per bottle by cutting out the middle man and selling them yourself, so you could sell them for less and make the same amount of (or even more) money.  This could also drive traffic to your taproom, increasing the pints sold over the bar which have the highest margin.

On the other hand, if people are buying the bottles in your taproom they are not buying them at the store nearby.  If the bottles are not selling in the local store they are not going to carry them for long, and having them at the store puts them in front of more eyes and raises brand awareness in your area.  Not to mention the store may not appreciate being undercut by you.  I had a brewery explain this concept to me about 15 years ago, that was their philosophy and they charged more for bottles at the brewery, about $1 more per 6-pack.

All of this without considering the impact to your cold storage for inventory on hand and, as at most breweries, we are running out of room.

I am torn on what to do here.  The easiest thing to do is just to price them the same, but I am wondering if we should adopt a strategy to push sales one way or the other.

We have ordered labels and will be bottling soon, so I need to figure this out in the next week or two.  Thanks in advance for any comments, I would appreciate hearing how others have handled this.