selling speciality wines and beers

mistress_gi

hi everyone! am thinking of starting a small home business selling speciallity wines and beers. if all goes to plan and the business rows i would considering getting a physical place ti sell my products.
now, i am completely new to business and have no idea where to start from forming the business to licenses etc.
anyone out there with experience that could give advice on where and how to start?

daedal

how would you sell your product? through a web store? what type of beers and wines are we talking about? craft brewery?

mistress_gi

starting off it would a web store. it would be foreign wines and beers, wines up to 15% and beers up to 8% alcohool content

mistress_gi

actually at this stage it would be more selling informally to friends and friends of friends, then the web shop then, eventually a store somewhere.

Dizzyblonde

This subject is better suited to the Entrepreneurial & Business Management forum.

Moved from Beer & Wine & Spirits.

mistress_gi

Dizzyblonde wrote: »

This subject is better suited to the Entrepreneurial & Business Management forum.

Moved from Beer & Wine & Spirits.

thank you!

here2surf

Where will you source your products?
Are you importing or buying from wholesalers in Ireland?
Wine is a very, very tough business.
Craft Beers is a growth area. Are you offering anything not already available?

mistress_gi

it will be imported from another european country. beer also from another european country. i know wine is a tough business but i believe i have an excellent product even exclusive here and i know i have a client base

DubTony

You're gonna need a licence.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/excise/excise-licensing/retailers-licences.html

Whatnuclearsub

I think you need to have a bonded warehouse in order to import and store liquor, you can hire part of a bonded warehouse but I have no idea how much that costs. Basically revenue will be highly involved in any operation like what your talking about and you should call them and get the lie of the land before you start making any big plans.

Lobby Con Shine

Whatnuclearsub wrote: »

I think you need to have a bonded warehouse in order to import and store liquor, you can hire part of a bonded warehouse but I have no idea how much that costs. Basically revenue will be highly involved in any operation like what your talking about and you should call them and get the lie of the land before you start making any big plans.

Good advice.

The OP needs a full publican's off-licence. Steeeeep.

mistress_gi

I thought that for selling wine and beer you don't need a full publican licence. I read in the revenue page that these licences are much cheaper than a full license and only if you plan to sell spirits do you need a full license.

DubTony

mistress_gi wrote: »

I thought that for selling wine and beer you don't need a full publican licence. I read in the revenue page that these licences are much cheaper than a full license and only if you plan to sell spirits do you need a full license.

There's a wine licence and an "everything else" licence. Wine licence is a couple of hundred quid a year and the other one can only be gained by extinguishing an existing licence i.e. buy a pub or a pub licence (unless that law has changed in the last couple of years).

Lobby Con Shine

mistress_gi wrote: »

I thought that for selling wine and beer you don't need a full publican licence. I read in the revenue page that these licences are much cheaper than a full license and only if you plan to sell spirits do you need a full license.

Any time you sell wine, beer and spirits for taking off the premises, then you need a full publican's licence aka an off licence.

You can apply to court for a wine off-licence which is what you see in many retail outlets. But that is for wine only.

Note the difference between the off sales and the sale of liquor in a restaurant. The only licence to sell alcohol without going to court is a wine on-licence in a restaurant. Eveything else needs a court application.

mistress_gi

Ah, ok! Count me slightly more clarified!

mistress_gi

So I do I go about finding out if there is a license for sale out there?

Lobby Con Shine

mistress_gi wrote: »

So I do I go about finding out if there is a license for sale out there?

ah jaysus.

type the words in Google and press return.

Graham

In anticipation of the next question, average price for a license is in or around €70,000.

Whatnuclearsub

mistress_gi wrote: »

So I do I go about finding out if there is a license for sale out there?

Buying a licence is not straight forward, not all licences can be transferred. There are specialist solicitors that deal with it you will find them with a google search. You will need a lot of money, barriers to entry are high. If I was you I would have a chat with my local independent off licence and see if you can come up with some sort of deal with him/her, you might get somewhere that way, but they could just take your idea and cut you out so you would have to be smart on how you approached it. Answer to your question, you can find licences for sale in Newspapers, Done Deal, Adverts.ie and Daft amongst other places!