When Mountain Ridge Brewing came to us, they were producing roughly 500 cases a month out of a single taproom location. Eighteen months later, they were shipping 50,000 cases a month across three states. Here’s what changed on the packaging side to make that possible.
Starting point: stock bottles, manual case-packing
At 500 cases a month, Mountain Ridge was buying stock longneck bottles in small pallet quantities and hand-packing cases in-house. It worked, but it wouldn’t scale — lead times were unpredictable, and every new distributor relationship meant renegotiating minimum order quantities from scratch.
Locking in supply before demand hit
The first move was securing a standing purchase agreement for their core SKU a full production cycle ahead of projected demand, so a spike in orders never meant a bottle shortage. We also moved their inventory into a regional warehouse closer to their growing distribution footprint, cutting delivery times to new markets significantly.
Standardizing before customizing
Rather than jumping straight to custom bottle molds, Mountain Ridge stuck with a stock bottle shape through their first two states of expansion — keeping costs predictable while the brand itself did the differentiating. Custom packaging came later, once volume justified the mold investment.
The result
Eighteen months in, Mountain Ridge is packaging 50,000 cases a month with predictable lead times, a warehousing footprint that matches their actual distribution map, and a custom bottle now in development for their flagship release. Growth didn’t require a packaging overhaul on day one — it required a supply chain that could grow with them.
