How a consultant models visitation, club and membership retention, and channel mix into a lender-grade projection for SBA, USDA, and conventional brewery and winery financing — in two sectors where the direct-to-consumer model that built them is eroding, and where the gap between the best and worst operators has nothing to do with the market.

Two sectors, one structural problem

Breweries and wineries are different businesses with different production cycles, different regulation and different customers. They share one dominant feature that determines how both should be underwritten: the largest share of margin comes from selling directly to a consumer who physically visits.

And visitation is falling.

Wine

The numbers are stark. US wine industry revenue fell to $74.3 billion in 2025 from $75.5 billion in 2024 — and from roughly $94 billion in 2020, a decline of nearly $19.7 billion, or almost 21%, over five years. Volume dropped to 329 million cases from 335.9 million.

Direct-to-consumer, which accounts for roughly 70% of premium winery revenue, is under specific strain. Shipment revenue fell 6% in 2025 while shipment volume fell 15% — the gap being price increases, with average shipment bottle prices up 11% in 2025 and roughly 40% since 2019.

Active wine club membership fell 10%, driven by higher attrition and lower acquisition. Tasting room visitation dropped 6% across the West Coast. Reservation data tracking 363 wineries showed a consistent year-over-year decline of roughly 2% into early 2026 with no sustained recovery.

The demographic driver is not cyclical. As one industry economist put it, older cohorts are drinking less and there are fewer of them, while the consumers replacing them are less attached to wine — and the current under-30 cohort drinks less than any similarly aged group on record.

Closures have followed. Major producers have shuttered production facilities and tasting rooms, and vineyard operations have exited citing grape oversupply relative to demand.

Beer

Craft brewing is contracting more gently but in the same direction. There were 9,344 operating breweries in June 2026, down from 9,515 a year earlier. Craft volume fell roughly 4% in the first half of 2026 after a 5.1% production decline in 2025. Closures have outpaced openings for a second consecutive year.

But the channel picture inverts the wine one in a useful way. Taprooms were the best-performing brewery type by volume in the first half of 2026, ahead of other models by one to two percentage points, while distributed packaged product lost channel share and distributed draught gained.

For beer, onsite is holding up better than distribution. For wine, onsite is the thing that is eroding. A consultant needs to know which dynamic applies before writing a revenue build.

The finding that should govern the analysis

The most useful research on this sector in 2026 is not about the market at all.

Survey data across 450 family wineries found top-quartile operators grew revenue 22% while the median winery was flat and the bottom quartile declined 13%. Same market, same demographic headwinds, same visitation decline — a 35-point spread in outcomes.

The report's conclusion is that the variability comes from how operators build and maintain customer relationships, not from market conditions.

And there is a specific, quantified diagnostic error attached to it: lower-performing wineries cite tasting room renovations as their primary growth strategy at 2.3 times the rate of top performers. The analysis argues this is a misdiagnosis — fewer people are choosing wine country as a destination, and upgraded facilities do not change that. Separately, of the 15.5% of wineries that lowered tasting fees, only 25% reported improved visitation.

This matters enormously for a feasibility consultant, because a substantial share of brewery and winery financing requests are capital projects justified by exactly this reasoning: build or expand the tasting room, and visitation will follow.

The evidence says it frequently does not. A study supporting a hospitality build-out has to establish demand for visitation independently, not assume the facility creates it.

That is an uncomfortable finding to deliver to a sponsor. It is also the single most valuable thing an independent consultant can contribute to this asset class.

What the consultant actually does

Establishes visitation demand independently of the facility

For any concept where onsite revenue carries the model:

Resident population within the drive-time catchment, and its trajectory
Visitor and tourism volume, from the actual traffic generators — a wine trail, a recreation area, a highway corridor, a nearby destination town
Seasonality of that visitation, which in most wine and many brewery markets is pronounced
Competing venues drawing the same visits, including those with no beverage connection at all
Whether regional visitation is growing, flat or declining — because in several established wine regions it is declining, and a project assuming otherwise is assuming against the evidence

A concept in an established region with falling visitation is competing for a shrinking pool. That is not disqualifying, but it changes the share assumption entirely, and it should be stated.

Models club and membership retention as its own system

Wine clubs account for roughly 39% of all DTC revenue and, for many premium wineries, nearly two-thirds. Roughly 75% of club members are acquired through the tasting room. Tasting room and club together represent around 72% of DTC channel performance.

That chain has a clear implication: falling visitation reduces club acquisition, which reduces recurring revenue with a lag. A model showing flat club revenue against declining visitation has broken the causal link.

The analysis needs acquisition rate, attrition rate, average member value and net membership trajectory — modelled separately, not as a single revenue line. Industry data shows acquisition rates roughly stable while cancellations rise, which is why net club growth has flattened or turned negative.

For breweries, the equivalent structures — mug clubs, membership programmes, subscription releases — should be treated the same way where material.

Builds revenue by channel with separate economics

Onsite direct. Highest margin, capacity-constrained by visitation rather than by production. Tasting room, taproom, by-the-glass, retail-to-go.
Club and shipping. Recurring, higher margin than wholesale, constrained by acquisition and retention, and subject to state-by-state direct shipping regulation that varies substantially.
Wholesale and distribution. Lower margin, competing for shelf and tap space in a market where both beer and wine have been losing placements. Distributor consolidation and retailer SKU rationalisation are real constraints, and assuming distribution growth requires evidence.
Events and hospitality. Weddings, private hire, tours. High margin, capacity-constrained, seasonal — and where material, it converts the asset from a production facility into a hospitality venue with production attached, which changes staffing, parking, zoning and insurance.
Contract and custom crush. Fills capacity at lower margin.

A study modelling "revenue per case" or "revenue per barrel" without separating these has not described the business, because the margin difference between onsite and wholesale is the difference between viable and not.

Sizes capacity to evidenced demand

Overbuilding is the most common and most damaging technical error in both sectors, and in a contracting market it cannot be grown into.

The analysis should derive production capacity from the channel-by-channel revenue build, not the reverse. Where the sponsor proposes capacity materially above what the demand analysis supports, the study should say so and quantify the fixed cost consequence.

What differs between the two

Winery-specific

Fruit sourcing. Estate vineyard, purchased fruit, or both. Estate production carries vineyard capital, farming cost and vintage risk. Purchased fruit carries price exposure and supply relationships — and the grape market has been in oversupply, which currently favours purchasers and pressures growers.
Vintage and inventory. Wine ties up capital between harvest and sale, with white wines turning faster than reds and reserve programmes slower still. This is a working capital question before it is a coverage question, though it is far less severe than the multi-year ageing cycle that defines distilling.
Allocation and pricing structure. Premium segments are holding up materially better than value segments. Dollar sales at higher price points are stable or growing while lower price points decline in both volume and revenue. Where a project's positioning is value-led, that is a headwind the analysis should name.
Emerging categories. Sparkling wine and low- or no-alcohol and wine-based ready-to-drink products have been growing at roughly 20% and 26% respectively, from small bases. These are genuine pockets of growth rather than a rescue, and a project addressing them should be credited for it without overstating the volume available.

Brewery-specific

Fast inventory turn. Beer moves quickly, which makes working capital far less demanding than wine or spirits — a genuine structural advantage.
Taproom-led economics. Given that taprooms are currently the best-performing segment, a concept weighted toward onsite consumption is positioned with the channel rather than against it.
Distribution realism. If the plan includes packaging and wholesale, the analysis must address the actual distributor landscape, current consolidation and what shelf or tap access is realistically obtainable.
Wastewater. Brewery effluent carries high organic loading, and small municipal treatment systems frequently cannot accept it without upgrade. This constraint surfaces late in many projects and belongs in site selection.
Local market saturation. In a sector where closures outpace openings, how many producers already operate in the catchment, and what has opened and closed there in the last three years, is the central competitive question.

Cost structure and reserves

Both sectors are capital-intensive relative to revenue, with substantial fixed cost.

Production labour and hospitality labour are different cost centres with different skills, wages and seasonality. Where a tasting room or taproom operates, that is a hospitality business inside a production business, and it should be staffed and costed as one.
Occupancy or debt service on what is frequently a purpose-built facility.
Cost of goods — fruit or malt, packaging, barrels — with packaging costs having risen materially.
Compliance, including federal TTB permitting and state licensing, with the rules governing onsite sales, self-distribution, events and direct shipping varying enormously by state and directly determining which revenue lines are even permitted.
Marketing and club acquisition, which cannot be a one-time launch cost given the retention dynamics above.
Replacement reserves. Tanks, chillers, glycol systems, bottling and canning lines, barrels, and hospitality fit-out all have finite lives. Where financing is USDA-guaranteed this is a regulatory requirement, since 7 CFR Part 5001 defines coverage as EBITDA less reasonably expected replacement capital expenditures.

Sensitivity that matters here

Visitation. Coverage at 85% and 75% of projected visits, given documented regional declines.
Club retention. Coverage if attrition runs five points above assumption, with the acquisition consequence of lower visitation modelled through.
Channel mix shift. Coverage if the wholesale share the plan assumes does not materialise.
Price realisation, particularly for value-positioned concepts.
Capacity utilisation, given the fixed cost of overbuilt production.

How the programmes differ

SBA 7(a). The dominant route. Breweries show roughly 860 originations over five fiscal years at an average approval near $663,000, with about a third being startups; wineries roughly 250 originations at around $676,000 average, with a notably lower startup share reflecting more acquisition activity. SOP 50 10 8's feasibility expectation covers startups, construction and change of ownership — which is most of this sector.
SBA 504. Where real estate is included, which for purpose-built production and hospitality facilities is common.
USDA B&I. For rural projects in communities of 50,000 or fewer, up to $25 million, with fiscal 2026 guarantees at 85% below $5 million and 80% at or above. This is genuinely well-suited territory: craft beverage production is value-added agriculture in rural places, which is the programme's purpose almost verbatim, and the economic impact argument is strong.
USDA REAP. Breweries and wineries are energy-intensive — boilers, chillers, refrigeration, heat recovery — and efficiency projects have real payback. REAP guaranteed loans are accepted on a continuous cycle at up to 75% of eligible project costs, and most applications require tiered technical reports rather than a full feasibility study. REAP grant awards are currently paused pending a regulatory rewrite.
USDA Value-Added Producer Grants. Available where the sponsor is an agricultural producer — which describes an estate winery whose owner farms the vineyard. Planning grants can fund the feasibility study itself and are restricted to paying qualified third-party consultants.

In all cases the study must be prepared by an independent third party with no financial interest in the transaction.

What the lender is reading for

Where does onsite revenue come from, and is that visitation growing or shrinking? Not whether the facility is attractive.
Is club or membership retention modelled as a system, with acquisition tied to visitation?
Is capacity sized to evidenced demand, or to ambition? Because overbuilt capacity is permanent fixed cost in a contracting market.
Is the distribution assumption evidenced? In a market losing shelf and tap placements, assuming wholesale growth requires more than optimism.
What distinguishes this operator? Given a 35-point spread between top and bottom quartile performance in the same market, this is not a soft question — it is the one the data says determines the outcome.

Both sectors remain financeable, and well-run operators are growing while the market contracts around them. But the model that built these businesses — visitors arrive, taste, join a club, buy for years — is under genuine strain, and a feasibility study that assumes it still works as it did in 2018 is describing a business that the evidence no longer supports.

Prepared by feasibility-study-consultant.com. Industry data reflects published sources at the date of writing and moves quickly in these sectors. Alcohol beverage licensing, direct shipping and self-distribution rules vary substantially by state. Programme requirements should be verified against current SBA and USDA guidance. Last updated: July 30, 2026.

The Feasibility Study Consultant's Role in Brewery and Winery Feasibility Studies