u/Due_Spring_7005

I’m building a beverage operations platform called CatOps, and I’m looking for some brutally practical feedback from people who actually work in wineries, breweries, distilleries, cideries, meaderies, and other beverage production facilities.

I work in beverage manufacturing myself, and CatOps originally started because I kept running into processes that were being managed through a combination of spreadsheets, paper records, disconnected software, and tribal knowledge.
The goal isn’t to build another generic ERP with 500 features nobody uses, I want to build the things operators, production managers, warehouse teams, compliance people, and owners genuinely wish they had.

Right now CatOps includes, or is actively being built around, things like:

• Raw material & packaging inventory — lot tracking, locations, FIFO, receiving, transfers, adjustments, QR codes, etc.
• Production/batch records — ingredients used, actual vs. planned quantities, lot traceability, yields, losses, timestamps, operator records, approvals, and production history.
• Fermentation tracking — designed to follow a fermentation from initial setup through completion, including things like gravity/Brix, temperature, pH, additions, yeast, nutrients, observations, transfers, and fermentation events.
• Finished goods inventory and production/bottling records.
• Lot traceability from incoming ingredients all the way through finished product.
• Warehousing & location management.
• Production planning/scheduling with upcoming jobs and a 30-day production schedule.
• Cost tracking / COGS and production yield information.
• Audit trails showing who changed what and when.
• Role-based access for operators, managers, administrators, etc.
• Customer/brand management for contract producers and co-packers handling multiple brands.
• Compliance-focused records and reporting, with the long-term goal of making TTB reporting significantly less painful for alcohol producers.
• Support for operations that deal with beer, wine, spirits, RTDs and other beverage types, rather than forcing everyone into the same production workflow.

There are a lot of other things on the roadmap, but before I keep adding features I’d really like to hear from people actually doing this every day.

If you could wave a magic wand and add one feature to the software you use at your facility, what would it be?

It could be something big, but I’m especially interested in the annoying little things:

“What I really wish it would automatically calculate is…”
“I hate having to enter this information twice…”
“We still use a spreadsheet for ___ because our software sucks at it…”
“I wish production could see ___ without calling the office…”
“Tracking ___ is an absolute nightmare…”
“What would save me several hours every week is…”

I’m also interested in things that existing brewery/winery/distillery software does poorly, not just features that are completely missing.

I’m not looking for anyone to buy anything here. I’m trying to collect real-world feedback while I’m still at the stage where I can actually change how the system works.

I’m about 98% complete on my first SaaS. I’m just curious with the community, for anyone who has sold one in the past, how does that work? Is there a place online you go to sell it? Or do you randomly get approached by a buyer online? I’m just trying to understand how it works.

I must say, my productivity has multiplied 10x since learning about hooking up my OC to my Codex account. I used to use Anthropic API and I was paying upwards of $800 a month and still running out of tokens (aka money) about two weeks in. Now I just use codex pro for $100 a month flat rate. Absolute game changer.

I’ve been running thru codex now for about a month and my average is about 400m tokens a day. But to be clear, that’s not all crons. In fact I wouldn’t even say 10% of it is crons. Although I have 59 daily crons running at the moment, 90% of my usage is building things.

I’ve built full scale softwares across multiple platforms that I still am amazed by. Me, someone who knows little to nothing about software development, has fully created a full stack software connected to a database with subscription tiers and next gen abilities in the field I targeted. Now in a matter of weeks, I have turned this project into a possible avenue to make 6-7 figures a year.

Technology is amazing

I need a mentor.

I’m a 30y old male. I’m the most driven, motivated, go getter, “make it work” type of person I know. I am not asking for guidance for free. I understand I must offer something in exchange, whether it be administrative assistance, or other tasks.

The reason I am looking for a mentor is because I need some guidance. 95% of this guidance is in business and the other 5% might be financial planning related. For me, education is not the hold back in what I am seeking. It’s real life experience, something that you can’t put in a book or learn on a YouTube video. Why would I come to this platform and ask you might wonder? Because I need a mentor that is further along than me. I want someone that I can pick their brain on how they got where I want to be. Ideally I want somebody with a similar mindset to me. And what I mean by that is, I want somebody who built their empire from the ground up and not necessarily handed their status. My issue is, I don’t know anybody that is where I want to be in life. My goals are much higher and “unrealistic“ than everyone in my life.

I don’t really know what this all could entail, and I don’t really know if this is the right way to approach the whole thing. But I figure why not? Anything can happen