Phil Meddings from Bintani Australia on growing a family business and the craft brewing industry

@philmeddings  is joint #ChiefExecutive of @BintaniAustralia - a leading Australian supplier of #craftbrewing #ingredients. He's also #co-owner and/or #nonexecutivedirector of other #businesses #familybusinesses including @bentspokebrewing @bay13brewery @konvoykegs

Phil left @kpmg in 2010 to join Bintani which had been started by his father in 1995. Since then he's become immersed in the #craftbrewing industry in Australia, and more recently, via @bay13brewery the #USA

In our discussion Phil talks about;

• leaving the #charteredaccounting profession for what really drove him - the #businessworld
• his approach to starting #newbusinesses
• #businesspartnerships
• the critical importance of #sharedvalues and #sharedunderstanding
• operating as a #familybusiness
• where to for the #australiancraftbrewing industry
• in partnership launching an @aussiebrewpub in the #USA and how they plan to differentiate in a #competitivemarket with many great #craftbrewers ("less cheese" is a big clue)
• how you can't wind back #taste #beermoments and  why that will continue to drive the craftbrewing industry 

Below is a full transcript of our discussion. 

Hi there, it's @MichaelKerr and I'm presenting @smallbusinessbanter.

A healthy #micro and #smallbusiness sector means a successful economy and a way more vibrant society. @smallbusinessbanter is about helping #regionalbusinessowners to better prepare for the current challenges, but also for the next stage of business success. I'm @MichaelKerr. The founder of @KerrCapital and we advise business owners.

Each week, I interview a fellow #smallbusinessowner or an #expert and they share their stories, their lived experiences, including the wins, and the losses and overall their best advice to help you, the listener, get the most you can from your own #small business. @smallbusinessbanter is brought to you from the Studio's of 104.7 @GippslandFM and is heard right across Australia on the #communityradionetwork. Thanks also to @KerrCapital supporters of the show.

Kerr: Good morning and welcome to another edition of @smallbusinessbanter. I'm @MichaelKerr, the host of @smallbusinessbanter. In the house with me today is @PhilMeddings, the Joint #ChiefExecutive of @BintaniAustralia. He's going to explain what Bintani does, but it's in and around the craft of the brewing industry. He's also co-owner of @BentSpokeBrewingCompany in #Canberra. He's a #nonexecutivedirector of another couple of entities and he's also a #cofounder of @Bay13Brewery in #Miami #Florida. So it's fantastic to have you in Phil. Firstly, welcome.

Phil Meddings: Thanks for having us some. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this

Kerr: Same, yeah. Look, do you want to give us a couple of minutes? You've got a pretty extensive CV and but a heavy involvement in the #craftbrewingindustry, which has been going ballistic for the last five to 10 years. So, if you could just give us a couple of minutes on the portfolio. 

Meddings: Yeah, no problem. Look, I started with the #familybusiness in 2010. But it's a business my dad started in '95 called Bintani. When he started it, even up until the point when I joined in 2010, it was a fairly small sort of business, supplying #ingredients into the #breweries, into #craft breweries, so that was in 2010. Since that time, quite a bit has happened including an explosion in #craftbeer. My dad's #retired and along the way in between we've sort of started a whole lot of other, and become involved in a lot of other, a lot of other businesses, most have sort of got a relationship with craft brewing and #beverage and #alcohol, I guess. But they're not all, they're not all ingredients or they're not all production. So, it's been an interesting few years. 

Kerr: Yes. Oh, that you’ve gone up and down the #supplychain, I guess, because you're in retail with BentSpoke as an example and maybe right back to supplying and #servicingkegs as another.

Meddings: Yeah, I can give you a bit of a timeline on it. If you like it, 

Kerr: Yeah, please do.

Meddings: We started with the ingredients and they really weren't many breweries. But as the breweries increased, we supplied more and more and my dad really put together a fantastic business built around #simplicity and I guess #transparency and #honesty with the #customers. So- 

Kerr: And off the back of a pretty strong #passion for #homebrewing.

Meddings: Exactly. He was passionate about brewing, which meant that he explored different ingredients. He had his eyes open for different products to sell. Then he'd looked after the customers and it was kind of a simple as that. As the industry grew the business grew and then other suppliers started coming to us to say, "Can you sell our ingredients?" But, probably in around 2011-2012, we come into the business from 10 or 11 years in #charteredaccounting at @KPMG. And I came into the business and the accounting side of work. It didn't really take up very much time because it was so small. I think we only had obviously six employees, I'd be six. 

So, we're just left a little bit of free time to kind of consider other opportunities and we always get excited about these opportunities. And one day, we were talking with a really good brewer up in Canberra called @RichWatkins, and he was working as an #employee brewer. The conversation just started about setting up our own thing and that took a bit of time to get going. But the #BrewPub @BentSpoke opened in 2014 and has just grown enormously since that time in that partnership. We were still running our ingredients business, but we were heavily involved in the sort of the back office in the strategy side of growing Bentspoke with Rich and his partner Tracy. 

Kerr: And Rich was a really highly regarded brewer in his own right?

Meddings: He was. He'd been brewing for a long time and he'd been a longtime customer of ours. We had a great relationship and a lot of #sharedvalues and knowledge. It was a kind of an easy decision to start this thing together. We didn't really know where it would go. It wasn't about a vision of a company of a certain size. It was really just about the excitement of #startingsomethingnew. And there's a few other businesses that we started around the same time. 

We started a company, #leasingequipment, #leasingbeerkegs, stainless steel beer kegs. So, we started that one in 2012. that business had a requirement to actually repair kegs as well because a brewery would lease kegs for a while. They would send them back and we would need to do a bit of refurbishment, changing some of the seals and cleaning it up. It kind of led to starting another company in servicing the kegs. So I guess if that's-

Kerr: You're seeing opportunities and you really, rather than letting them go, you're capturing them and going after them. 

Meddings: Yeah, we did. I mean, @BentSpoke made sense, it was in #Canberra and it was always going to be a separate entity with another partner. But the keg businesses, was sort of different from the ingredients business. So we always treated those separately and they grew life on their own as well. We #sold both of those keg businesses now but that has lead to an involvement with the @Konvoykegs business, which you mentioned in the introduction. 

Kerr: I think the newest venture is @Bay13 in which is an #AustralianBrewpub in #Florida. 

Meddings: Yeah. So, Bay 13 is pretty awesome. 

Kerr: Iconic name. 

Meddings: Yeah, you know, it's the #Larrikin element isn't it? It kind of goes well with the concept, the idea of drinking beer, and summer I guess, warm weather. I worked with a guy called @NickSharp at @KPMG and he ended up in Miami through another job and we just stayed mates from 2005 onwards. And at one point, it just came up about a #Brewpub. So, we firstly taking a step back, we travel to #America all the time with work and we obviously spent a lot of time in the brewpubs over there. 

I just sort of felt that there was a bit of a gap for an #Australianstyle #BrewPub. I've had this question asked a few times, like what is an Australian-style Brewpub and what ways an Australian-style Brew Pub and why it's different to an American, it's because we feel we're offering customers a better food experience, high-quality beer, and #Americanbrewpubs have very high-quality be generally as well, so that's not a differentiator, but we want to do beers showcasing #Australianingredients. We want to have a better food offering, so less burgers and more Australian sort of café, a little bit healthier, bit less cheese, maybe.

Kerr: That's it. Australia's highly regarded for isn't food? 

Meddings: Yeah. It is more into café and coffee. I think if you look around #Melbournecafes and you look at sort of the quality of the #fitouts, the quality of the #menudesign, and the experience for someone going out for breakfast is a mix of really informal but high-quality experience. That's kind of what we wanted to do at Bay 13 in America, it is to bring the Australian fun informality but at a high-quality level. And see whether it resonated, and actually does provide something different- 

Kerr: Yeah. So it's a little combination of offerings, not just beers pretty competitive and pretty personal, I guess. And so the food offering is something that you say is a differentiator. It looks like it's also that in partnering again with someone on the ground, as you did with Rich in Canberra, that seems to be a part of your model. 

Meddings: It's ended up that way. I guess it's kind of how you can, I mean we're all the same in that, we literally can't do everything ourselves. So, partnering with somebody is the way we've been able to #expand and #grow. It's not about growing, it's about pursuing interests really. We've been able to pursue things that we think a fun and good opportunities by #partnering with people. It wasn't always that way but that's how we've ended up. 

Kerr: Yeah. So in between @Bay13 what was the last “great” #aussiebeer? Was it all the way back to #Fosters?

Meddings: In the U.S.? 

Kerr: Yeah. Like there's been some really high in #coffeepioneers from Australia going to America and paved the way. But are you out there on your own in terms of an Australian led owned business in the U.S.

Meddings: I would say we are, definitely. I'm not aware of anyone doing what we're doing. The only sort of person or whatever that comes close is #LittleCreatures. Little Creatures opened a Brewpub in #SanFrancisco in around 2019. But, I think Little Creatures is owned by @Lion, obviously. @Lion purchased a really big craft brewery in U.S. called @New Belgium. They've rebranded their # littlecreatures Brewpub. 

Kerr: Let's say Bay 13 remains the carrying the flag. Because we're pretty, we're pretty pro Aussie aren't we?. I just want to go back on a couple of things Phil. I could say it's an amazing mix of businesses. And you know, up and down the supply chain, craft brewing has been going ballistic for the last five or ten years. But for you personally, I think you left @KPMG, you know, a successful career in chartered accounting with one of the #bigfour firms KPMG. For you personally, what was the motivation in going into the #familybusiness? And what did you bring from that professional experience to a small business that was maybe good and maybe not so good? 

Meddings: Yeah. In hindsight, when I look back on it, being at KPMG was probably the mismatch for me. I ended up being chartered accounting by following. I did #commerce at University because I like business. From then on, it was really about kind of taking the steps that are put in front of you. So, not really thinking it through too much. So I ended up, commerce, kept things general, and did accounting. And then went into a big four. 

I was lucky enough to sort of getting taken on into a Big Four firm with pretty average Uni results. Then I kind of got into this vortex of doing chartered accounting and it wasn't really was my passion or what drove, what I got excited about. What I was excited about always was being in business, and just the kind of enjoyment that comes out of #plantingtheseed and watching something #grow. I know it's a bad cliché but that's exactly how I feel about businesses. So-

Kerr: It's a lesson there for a lot of younger professionals or younger people, generally, that it's pretty hard to say whether that experience is invaluable, but, you know, maybe earlier might have been better for you, just to get out of there.

Meddings: I mean, I had business ideas. I was messing around with a couple of people doing. The funny one is when I was probably 18, there used to be a #Gilbeysgindistillery in #Moorabbin and they close this big beautiful sight, and we saw an opportunity to do a #ClimbingGym. So, these 18-year-old guys ringing up landlords and trying to sort of get their climbing gym together and I wasn't really built for rock climbing, but I could see it as a growing sport, a good opportunity and we never got it off the ground. But I mean that was pretty-

Kerr: That's an indicator of your real inner passion for business and opportunities to see that. Just by the way, on today's edition of @smallbusinessbanter we're talking with @PhilMeddings, who amongst other things is the joint Chief Executive of Bintani Australia. 

Sorry, Phil. I cut you off there about that potential business opportunity around climbing. 

Meddings: Yeah. Well, you talked about KPMG and what I got out of it, there's no doubt that working in an environment like KPMG or a chartered firm kind of #changesyourhorizons. It shows you what's possible, and in those firms work with so many interesting businesses that all have a different story. They have a different starting point and different endpoint. Some go well, some go poorly. You meet different people. But sort of, when I came to Bintani, the thing that was very helpful was two things. 

Probably the horizon, like seeing what you can do and what can be done and not having a low approach, not having a low ambition, but having quite big ambition where you can take something. Secondly, it's sort of dealing with #banks. You've got that degree of familiarity, with #banks, #lawyers, #financiers, those sorts of things, that just make it a lot easier. You've read #leaseagreements, you've read #bankingdocuments. Some of those things can be quite a barrier. Once their second nature, once some of the fear factors taken away, that, you don't even think about it again. I have seen people that are quite intimidating and quite a barrier to get through some of those structural things. 

Kerr: Yeah, and you become familiar. The big difference, of course, is that you're putting your or your family's money into a venture. And so, maybe you read those documents with a little bit more intensity when you're personally on the line. 

Meddings: Yeah, I think you do. I think you definitely do. I think you do everything. We certainly didn't start with any money at all and just cautiously and carefully went from one thing to another. We've never taken, I mean that's probably another part of now. Now, I see I look at how other people #startbusinesses and how they go from step one to step three, to step five. I feel as though in my pathways have been a lot more incremental. It's been step one step, step 1.5, step 2. 

It's been a little bit of a slower build. It's one of the things I think about now, quite a bit, is that the different approaches to business. Some people are very bold and I think what I'm talking about really is being prepared to incur operating losses and to fund the losses for a period of time to grow scale and to get their business going. My experience wasn't, and my   kind of natural inclination, was a lot more "Start smaller, prove the growth, see revenue growth, see profitability and grow more slowly and more cautiously." I don't think either approach is wrong. I think there is pitfalls and strengths to both. So now, I try to learn a bit from taking a few more #calculatedrisks, I guess. 

Kerr: Yeah, and you're still operating as a family. Your work, you said your dad's retired from the business only quite recently. Your brother works operate in the business to some degree in these ventures as a family unit who runs a couple of businesses. Does that-

Meddings: Yeah. I don't know whether, probably every family business is unique in the way they run. I certainly think and feel that the way we run is unique. From daydot I was talking to my dad about business, I don’t know how far to go back but even before any of the ingredients business even started, there was a business opportunity in China that never came up. That was when I was midway through high school. It's always been about that. But, joining the family business in 2010 really kind of put us all together, and the three of us, my dad, my brother, and myself. 

My brother's very close in age to me. We all had complementary but different skills. Importantly, all sort of shared a very common set of values and understanding. We've got very different approaches to things. And as I said, different skill sets. But that shared understanding and value set meant that we were like some sort of Three-Headed Beast. We could handle a lot more breadth of undertakings because there were the three of us working together. 

Kerr: It is, as you said, family businesses or small businesses, generally all, can have different ways of operating. You talk about values and I think that's so critically important that you have a shared set of values to guide you with the decisions you make. But to operate now for that length of period and go through the ups and downs,  no doubt of building out those businesses kind of means that you've got a formula that works pretty well for yourselves. 

Meddings: Well, just interestingly on that. My dad retired probably a year ago. But with #COVID, he wasn't in the office really at all from early last year. So, it's getting on more towards 18 months. With his retirement and not having a contact with the business it's kind of shown a need for my brother and I to reinforce the values and keep them, because we do have different approaches and my old man he's older than me, obviously. So, he's got a different presence in the office from what my brother and I do. 

So, I think some of those sorts of changes mean that you might have shared values, but you actually have to be conscious of the need to have them flowing through your business at different times and push them through at different times. Sometimes they're very obvious and everybody's on board. But other times you can either hire a couple of people that don't quite get it or you can take your foot, sort of losing focus on making sure people are living the values that have got the business to where it is. So, yeah, so we kind of had a bit of that lately. 

Kerr: Yeah. It's never set, right? You've got to constantly evolve and pushing it into America's is an incredibly fascinating step for you. I just wanted to cover off a couple of things where we could definitely continue to chat for many more minutes, but I just personally, you take on a lot as co-chief executive. How do you look at the outside of the business? Who do you admire as Business Leaders? And why? To guide you through a fast-growing group of businesses and in a fast-paced industry.

Meddings: It was very #strongleaders at KPMG, both probably more external to the business than at KPMG, since I started in the craft and small business and family business area in 2010 there's been less of that type of mentor leader that I really learn or consciously listen to and learn from. 

But probably, recently, I've been on a very interesting board. I think the #board that I'm on is teaching me a lot because there's different personalities on there, and there's different ways of the board's themselves work. One of the guys who runs a company runs his keg business, and he's probably got that different approach that I was talking about with a bit more risk-taking. Amongst other things, I think I do admire the way his grown businesses and learn a bit from him. 

Kerr: We recently interviewed @LouiseBroekman from @TheAdvisoryBoardCenter and we're just talking about the critical importance, particularly at the smaller end of small business to engage with people outside of the family, or outside of the day-to-day business management team. To bring in some #externaladvice or #counsel or #perspective. I think the growth and use of #advisoryboards for small businesses is a real area that I'd encourage if you've got an eye to grow your business. 

Some businesses are happy just being where they are and that's wonderful. But the use of boards, and for you personally, it really does give you a range of new experiences in meeting new people. I guess, I'm also was keen to just close out with a little bit of a commentary from you on where to, for the craft brewing industry in Australia and maybe America because it's been explosive. Where to Phil? Is it gangbusters or is it may be starting to top out? 

Meddings: It's an irreversible trend. It'll keep growing for some time. I think people want to know where their products coming from. I think the taste is something that you generally don't wind back, once you've explored broader flavors and work them into your lifestyle. It doesn't mean that a basic lager is going to go out of fashion or not exist but it does mean that with the breadth of beers that the craft industry is producing, there's more and more beers that fit moments in your life, #winterstouts, and #porters, and #sourbeers for refreshment. And I think that doesn't go backwards.

Kerr: Right? Just to start to parallel wine and #foodmatching. You talked about that in Bay 13. It is going to be the next evolution if you like because there's so many. If you walk into a brewpub or a bottle shop that it is an extraordinary range of beer. All growth, the head for craft beer. Hey Phil, we have unfortunately run out of time. I really appreciate you, the very busy business life that you have, experienced some time for us. It was a great chat. Thank you very much. Phil Meddings from Bintani Australia, amongst other things. 

Meddings: No problem at all Mike, really enjoyed the chat. 

Kerr: All right, Phil. You take care. Thank you.

Meddings: All right. Thanks.

Kerr: So, that's all for today's episode of small business banter. I continue to be inspired by bringing you small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories and their experiences.

For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today or just to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com or find small business banter on Facebook or Instagram. It'd be really great to have you tuned in at the same time next week for another episode of small business banter.

[END]

Thanks for listening.  Visit the Owner To Owner Podcast website to subscribe, listen back, or check out any resources or information mentioned on the show.

Search @ownertoownerpodcast on your favourite podcast player to subscribe and listen to the episodes.

Reach out to Michael Kerr via the website if you need personal assistance or advice for your small business.

michael.kerr@kerrcapital.com.au

www.ownertoownerpodcast.com.au