overview
Summit Seltzer was founded in 2020 in Charlotte, NC, as one of the world’s first craft seltzeries. Founder and owner Kristin Cagney wanted to create a brewery-type experience that served something other than beer. With hard seltzer on the rise, she decided to go full force in creating a craft beverage business that specializes in seltzer of all varieties. During her MBA program, she conducted research and put together a business plan that helped her get funding to make Summit Seltzer a reality. In less than one year, Summit has significantly increased their production volume and secured distribution deals with nearly 50 local restaurants and retailers.
challenge
From the beginning, the Summit Seltzer team knew they needed a business management software to help manage production, inventory, sales invoicing, and more. Kristin, along with Summit’s head brewer, Ben Quinones, both had experience working in breweries and knew that manually tracking this information would be time consuming, stressful, and difficult. So, they reached out to Ekos prior to their official opening to get their system set up right from the start.
results
As Summit Seltzer approaches their one year anniversary, they are fully onboarded with Ekos and seeing huge benefits of the software. The brewing and production team use Ekos for managing inventory, tracking production, and understanding costs and margins. “Ekos has helped us get visibility into our COGS so we can price our kegs appropriately,” said Ben Quinones, head brewer. “It’s really important to see how our costs fluctuate. Ekos helps us get a better look on our margins and make decisions on where to buy our raw ingredients based on costs. I get to see how much the entire batch costs, and even break it down to how much it costs per gallon.”
Beyond production, the team uses Ekos to manage the restaurant and retail customers that serve Summit Seltzer. As they look to expand distribution across the state in the future, they can use Ekos to create and send invoices and stay on top of customer information. Owner Kristin also sees the value of Ekos for managing the business overall. “Ekos houses all the information that is important to me as an owner — sales, production, inventory. Every part of the business sees the benefits of using Ekos. Ekos is our CRM, our inventory house, our production hub – it’s where we pull all of our information from. I couldn’t imagine doing anything without it.”
Take a tour to see how Ekos can help your business just like Summit Seltzer.