Craft distilleries search like consumers, but pay like operators

THE EVIDENCE

distillery" — 201,000 monthly searches

QUESTION

What defines a craft brewery?

REVIEW

App not working / crashes

THE MARKET

The cluster is huge at the top of funnel: "distillery" has 201,000 monthly searches, "distillery near me" has 135,000, and "craft distillery excise" appears with 1,560 total mentions. Average keyword volume is 31,514 with average CPC of $1.23, and the dataset shows low average competition at 0.25.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"What defines a craft brewery?","Why are craft breweries shutting down?","How much does it cost to tour Buffalo Trace?"

THE GAP

Existing software is either too generic ERP or too broad for small spirits producers. The pain here is specific: batch logs, excise calculations, filing reminders, and audit trails that won’t break under compliance pressure.

THE BUILD

Build a compliance-first distillery ops tool for small U.S. craft producers: batch tracking, excise reporting, inventory, and margin visibility. Start with operators in states with complex reporting, and sell the product as a way to avoid filing mistakes rather than as an all-in-one ERP.

WEEKEND MVP

A batch log + excise calculator that exports a ready-to-file report.