I know someone with a brewery - it's a pretty small operation with a small bar. It's not a trendy location or operation but he has been going for years.
The biggest problem is governments. Either the local government, which decided to arbitarily start charging commercial premises 90% of the metered incoming water as wastewater, on the assumption that 90% of what comes out the tap goes down the drain. Breweries use a lot of water, so that added costs.
Then the federal government decided that young people were drinking too many strong pre-mixed drinks (alcopops), so they added a massive alcopops tax (a 70% increase) to try and stop young people drinking (yeah, as if that was going to work [1]). While the young people switched to spirits, wine and cider, his business got smashed because one of his big product lines was ginger beer, and for whatever reason some politician or bureaucrat decided that ginger beer counted as an alcopop.
Most of us in the software industry don't realise how much freedom we have. We can start pretty much any type of software company we like, where we like, when we like. Most of us don't even have to tell a single layer of government what we are doing, save for reporting the income to the taxman. The horror stories of random regulation changes on small businesses like breweries and restaurants is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, imagine if a government somewhere decided to arbitrarily add a 70% tax to mobile-app sales. Lots of small developers would go under. But governments routinely do this sort of thing all the time to lots of other small businesses.
Alcohol has to be one of the most over-regulated things in existence. It seems like every state and municipality has it's own laws saying that you can't sell it at certain times or places, or that you can't drink it in certain places, or that you have to sell a certain amount of food in addition to it.
The biggest problem is governments. Either the local government, which decided to arbitarily start charging commercial premises 90% of the metered incoming water as wastewater, on the assumption that 90% of what comes out the tap goes down the drain. Breweries use a lot of water, so that added costs.
Then the federal government decided that young people were drinking too many strong pre-mixed drinks (alcopops), so they added a massive alcopops tax (a 70% increase) to try and stop young people drinking (yeah, as if that was going to work [1]). While the young people switched to spirits, wine and cider, his business got smashed because one of his big product lines was ginger beer, and for whatever reason some politician or bureaucrat decided that ginger beer counted as an alcopop.
Most of us in the software industry don't realise how much freedom we have. We can start pretty much any type of software company we like, where we like, when we like. Most of us don't even have to tell a single layer of government what we are doing, save for reporting the income to the taxman. The horror stories of random regulation changes on small businesses like breweries and restaurants is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, imagine if a government somewhere decided to arbitrarily add a 70% tax to mobile-app sales. Lots of small developers would go under. But governments routinely do this sort of thing all the time to lots of other small businesses.
[1] http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/alcopop-tax-fails-to-d...