Getting started with beer shipping

Looking to get started with shipping beer on your shop? Here's a great to help get the ball rolling.

Contact a shipping carrier

• Create a business account with UPS

• Contact UPS to connect with a dedicated account representative and start working out shipping details. Some topics to discuss with your rep:
  • Which states you can or plan to ship to. 
  • Negotiated rates for using the carrier.
  • Signing an agreement/contract establishing these details.

Packaging

Start thinking about what formats you want to ship (just cans, bottles, a mix of both). This will inform the kind of packaging you will need. We recommend:

• Considering a small, medium and/or large box size to handle all of your shipping needs. We tend to see the sweet spot for shipping rates to be a box that can hold up to 3 or 4 x 4packs, with some room to squeeze a shirt or a hat in
• Whale Pod shippers for their balance of quality and cost. https://www.whalepodshipper.com
• Some kind of poly-mailers, typically 9x13, which can fit lighter weight orders containing merchandise products such as tee shirts, hoodies, stickers, etc.

Licensing

• You must have a direct shipper license for each state you intend to ship to. Consult this guide for more information.

Taxes

• Taxes vary greatly from state-to-state. Here's a link to view the tax rates, payment, and filing requirements for legal DtC beer states.
• The majority of states require you to remit taxes if you have Economic Nexus in that state. This is commonly:
  • A physical presence (e.g. where your taproom is located).
  • A minimum dollar amount sold to customers in the state within a time range.
  • A minimum amount of orders shipped to the state within a time range.
  • A combination of the last two
• Here's a guide to Economic Nexus laws for each state.

Fulfillment

• If you aren’t already using a shipping fulfillment service, now’s the time to start considering one. Once an order is placed in the shop, you need to calculate the required shipping, pay for the postage/labels, print the purchased label and eventually track the order in real time on both yours and the customers end. This can all be done manually either at an actual shipping carrier's location or through their website, but can be a very tedious and time consuming process. 
  • We recommend ShipStation https://www.shipstation.com/ as it integrates directly with our online shop to gather orders, pulls shipping rates, bills you automatically for postage, prints the shipping labels, automates tracking info in an email to the customers, and can even schedule daily or weekly pickups with your local carrier. All this automation saves a ton of time.

• Though not a requirement, we do recommend getting a dedicated printer for label printing to speed up the label process (https://www.shipstation.com/blog/recommended-thermal-printers/)

Other Recommendations

• Shipping charges: Consider whether you'd like to offer a flat rate cost or integrate a shipping calculator on our shop. The latter will require all products to be weighed and measured on the shop. Feel free to use our Standard Product Weights & Dimensions guideline for reference!
• Soft-launch your program: We recommend “soft-launching” your shipping so you can work through the details and refine the fulfillment process. You could start by shipping to a limited area or single state, keeping the initial marketing promotions to a controlled minimum until you are ready for the full launch.
• Have a dedicated shipping manager: You will also need to think about who on your team will be handling this. A dedicated team member (or members) is needed to monitor orders, package them up, print the labels, and ensure they are either dropped off at a UPS hub for shipping or a UPS pickup is scheduled.

Please note, our team will be happy to roll through this guideline together and answer any questions or concerns you may have along the way.