Starting A Craft Beer Custom Packaging Design
Tags: Marketing, Craft Beer, Designer, Small Business, Beer

We see this a lot: simple, non-custom Beer Packaging that gets the job done.

How can you expect to hit your sales target if you don’t invest in your presentation at the store?

You have a great product, but you left out one thing — your Packaging! Beer Packaging is a great way to grab your customer’s attention at retail and even online.

It’s an easy thing for most brands to overlook, but this is exactly the issue we aim to solve.

The U.S. has more than 3,000 breweries producing about 30,000 unique beer styles — talk about a crowded shelf.

A saturated market with limited marketing dollars, makes your packaging more important than ever!

Design is everything in Beer Packaging.

We help upgrade brands from plain to premium, and take advantage of all the latest technical and marketing innovations to create new designs, and more importantly increase your sales.

Bringing new packaging ideas to life can be a challenging task. That’s why we created this guide to walk you through each step.

Step 1: Determine Your Packaging Needs

What type of Packaging do I need?

Are there new innovations I can implement?

How many units do I need?

How can this be an extension of my brand?

Step 2: Establish Your Budget

There are two types of costs associated with new packaging.

Visible costs: such as the upfront cost of design and the price of the packaging itself. Hidden costs: such as additional filler, breakage, and more.

Your budget should include the cost of Packaging Supplies and Shipping Boxes. If any kind of packaging fillers are required, you need to account for them.

You can also include a Contract Packager to help with fulfilment or assembly.

By using a company like Bennett, you get Turnkey Solutions that help you minimize costs.

Setting a budget or at least a range for your Packaging helps the process not become inefficient or aimless.

A successful Wine Packaging program needs a budget that considers the economics of the entire process. You should consider the price of your product, your profit margin, anticipated sales, and the length of time you expect your Packaging to be in place.

Volume purchasing

As with most printed products, you only really get a good value at high purchase quantities, due to the economics of scale.

If you don’t buy in bulk, each package will add an unreasonable amount of expense to each shipment.

If you do buy in bulk, you will not only be putting more money up front for production, but also for storage, transportation between warehouses and handling. Digital allows you to have complete flexibility for this.

The higher the sales price of your product, the more you should consider investing in your Beer Packaging.

Step 3: Assess The Beer Competition

Because of the competition in the industry, you need to make sure your choices standout in a lineup.

It’s definitely become a growing challenge over the years to penetrate the market — but it can still be done!

What they don’t have is the chance to design with the latest innovations — taking opportunities to connect with your customers in completely new ways and actually create a new level of customer loyalty.

Step 4: Designing Your Beer Packaging

Did you know that 75% of consumers are influenced by package design?

Designing can be a fun process. Whether you’re tackling it or working with our Creative Services team, you need to consider key things about your beer, and your customer.

What style of beer are you selling?

Who is your target customer?

How / where are they buying it?

Next let’s dig into what you need to include:

What brewery made it?

What style it is?

Information about your beer (the name / flavor / ABV)

Now let’s talk about the more brand-focused elements:

Show your personality and brand voice

Tell your brewery story with some stellar copywriting

Use the Billboard Effect: multiple packages together become an eye catching wall

Double down on eco-friendly packaging / elements

We’re thirsty for a good story. Authenticity, community and sustainability are the best keywords to get you started.

Graphics need to be memorable, distinct, easily recognizable, and with easily identifiable shapes

Choose a color palette that fits your label and brand

Be prepared to go through a few iterations — it takes time to land on the “right choice”

Include time to do some market testing with your packaging and labels

Pro Tip: If you’re not a designer, and don’t have a design team — we provide access to our award winning in-house team in Creative Services.

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