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A brewery rep stands on the building site, mid-renovation, and offers to pay for the entire tap installation. All you have to do is pour their beer exclusively. It feels like a favour. It is a loan — and the length of that loan is rarely the same as the length of the exclusivity you just agreed to.
A brewery loan — a Brauereidarlehen in Germany, a prêt brasseur in France, simply 'the brewery deal' in Belgium and the Netherlands — is one of the most common ways an independent café, brasserie or bar in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Austria finances its opening. Cash, or more often 'free' equipment — a tap installation, glassware, a set of terrace furniture, sometimes a full kitchen fit-out — in exchange for buying that one brewery's beer exclusively, for a fixed term.
It's also one of the least understood documents an owner ever signs. EU competition law — the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/720), read together with Article 101(1) TFEU — caps an exclusivity or non-compete tie at 5 years. Beyond that, the exclusivity loses its competition-law protection. But the LOAN itself is a separate financial obligation, with its own repayment schedule, that often stretches to 10 or even 20 years.
And Belgian practice has a fully legal way to sidestep that 5-year cap entirely: link the exclusivity not to the loan, but to the commercial lease. Belgian commercial leases run in fixed 9-year cycles — 9, 18 or even 27 years. Almost nobody who signs one of these deals at 24, mid-renovation, with a brewery rep who just offered to cover the €40,000 tap system, reads it closely enough to separate those two clocks.
This is not legal advice — it's a map of what is currently, verifiably known about these contracts in the EU, based on the EU legislation itself and on legal sources from Belgium and Germany. Terms vary by country and by contract; have any offer you receive checked by your own lawyer before you sign. The calculator further down runs entirely in your own browser: nothing is sent or stored.
Why 'free equipment' is the wrong question
The question most owners ask is 'what does this cost me?' — and the answer they usually hear is '€0, as long as you pour our beer.' That answer isn't wrong, it's incomplete: it answers the question about the loan, and says nothing at all about the question of exclusivity. Those are two separate clocks that both start ticking on day one, but don't necessarily stop at the same moment.
The first clock is the loan: a financial debt with a repayment schedule, usually 5 to 10 years, sometimes longer. The second clock is the exclusivity: the promise to buy only from that one brewery. Under EU competition law, that second clock can never run longer than 5 years without losing its legal protection — regardless of what the contract you signed actually says.
The problem is that both clocks live on the same piece of paper, often in the same paragraph, and a brewery rep has no incentive to spell out the difference. This article walks through seven numbers that together lay that difference bare — from the EU ceiling to the Belgian loophole around it, from what a tied café pays extra per keg to what happens if you ever want to sell or switch.
The ultimate guide Restaurant Finance: 6 Numbers That Decide Your Profit From equity to bank credit: every financing option for your restaurant, in one guide. Open the guideThe 7 numbers behind your brewery contract
Every number below comes from a verified source — the EU legislation itself, Belgian and German legal literature, and independently published UK price research. Together they form the full picture a brewery rep will never give you in one conversation.
1. 5 years — the EU ceiling on exclusivity
The Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/720, in force since 1 June 2022) excludes from its safe harbour any non-compete obligation — including a beer-purchase exclusivity — that is indefinite or exceeds 5 years. Beyond that term, the exclusivity loses its protection under Article 101(1) TFEU, the foundational article of EU competition law.
That doesn't mean an 8- or 10-year exclusivity contract is automatically void as a whole — it means the exclusivity clause itself, past year 5, is no longer enforceable if a brewery were to take you to court for buying elsewhere. The rest of the contract — including the loan — simply carries on.
This is the number to anchor everything else in this article to: 5 years is not a guideline or a common practice, it is the hard limit set by EU competition law. Every other arrangement covered here — the Belgian lease structure, the German 20-year loan term — has to be weighed against this figure.
2. €10,000–€150,000 — the typical German brewery loan
In Germany, a typical Brauereidarlehen falls between €10,000 and €150,000, with terms usually quoted at 5 to 10 years — though longer periods aren't unusual. That amount covers exactly what most owners associate with a 'free' start: the full tap installation, glassware, sometimes terrace furniture or even part of a kitchen fit-out.
The spread is wide because the loan scales with what's being asked for. A small neighbourhood café with two taps sits at the low end of that range; a brasserie financing a full reopening with furniture, lighting and an elaborate tap wall sits closer to the top.
The figure itself matters less than what it implies for the rest of the contract: the larger the loan, the longer a brewery wants the repayment to run — and the greater the temptation to match the exclusivity term to it, even though, as number one showed, the two are legally separate.
3. 9 / 18 / 27 years — the Belgian loophole around the ceiling
A loan on its own — or a borrowed tap installation — is not rent, and so cannot by itself justify exclusivity beyond the 5-year cap from number one. But there is a fully legal exception: if the brewery is also your landlord, the exclusivity can be linked to the commercial lease term instead of the loan.
Belgian commercial leases run in fixed 9-year cycles. A brewery that both rents you the premises and finances the tap installation can therefore tie the exclusivity to a lease term of 9, 18 or even 27 years — well past the 5-year competition-law ceiling, and still fully legal, because the legal anchor is no longer the loan but the lease.
This is the structure that makes the biggest difference between 'on paper, this looks like a normal brewery loan' and 'in practice, I'm tied here for 27 years.' Always ask explicitly: is the brewery also my landlord, and if so, is my exclusivity linked to the loan or to the lease?
The exclusivity legally expires at year 5. The loan just keeps running — often to year 10, sometimes to Germany's 20-year ceiling.
Illustrative timeline based on the EU 5-year cap and the German loan terms above — the exact figures in your own contract may differ.
4. 55–77% — what a tied café pays extra per keg
Independent, CAMRA-published UK price research found tied licensees paying up to 77% more for Fosters, 67% more for San Miguel and 55% more for Heineken than free-trade buyers of the same brands. These are UK figures — the sharpest publicly documented illustration of what 'free' financing can ultimately cost per keg once you can no longer shop around for the best price.
The mechanism is simple: once you're contractually required to buy from one brewery, all negotiating pressure on that brewery disappears. A café that can buy freely can put a competitor's quote on the table; a tied café has no such leverage, and the brewery knows it.
Translate that percentage to your own volume: at 120 hectolitres a year and a realistic price gap of 40 to 55%, that adds up to thousands of euros a year — every year, for as long as the exclusivity holds. That is exactly what the calculator further down this article works out for you.
Independent UK price research (CAMRA) compared what tied licensees paid to the free-market price for the same brands.
Source: CAMRA-published UK price research, cited by BBC News and smartpubtools.com (2026). These are UK figures, not an EU-wide legal norm — they illustrate the scale of the price gap, not a guaranteed percentage for every country or contract.
The brewery names are the brands from the original research — the percentages above are what tied licensees in that research actually paid extra.
5. The minimum number of hectolitres you must buy each year
Almost every brewery contract of this kind bundles, alongside the exclusivity, a minimum annual off-take volume — expressed in hectolitres. That clause stands apart from the loan repayment: even if you're perfectly on schedule with repayments, falling short of the minimum volume is itself a breach of contract.
That makes the contract doubly binding. You're not just required to buy exclusively from one brewery — you're also required to buy enough, regardless of whether your business has a slow year. A quiet season, roadworks blocking your terrace, or simply a shift in what your guests are drinking can be enough to fall under that minimum.
Always check this minimum against your realistic — not your optimistic — sales forecast, and ask exactly what the penalty is if you fall short. Some contracts recalculate the remaining term, others charge an immediate penalty, separate from whatever happens with the loan itself.
6. The outstanding balance that falls due on sale or switch
Sell the business, or switch supplier, before the loan is fully repaid, and the outstanding balance standardly falls immediately due. That is a purely financial obligation — separate from the exclusivity clause — and it survives even once that exclusivity, as number one showed, has already lost its legal enforceability.
In practice that means a buyer taking over your business doesn't automatically inherit a clean slate. Either the remaining balance gets deducted from the sale price, or the selling owner has to settle it out of pocket at the point of sale. Owners who don't ask about this in advance find out only once the sale has already been negotiated.
The same applies to switching supplier without a sale: moving to a different brewery because it offers a better price doesn't clear the old loan's outstanding balance — it makes it immediately due. Anyone considering a switch needs to know that balance first, not discover it afterwards.
7. 20 years — valid on paper, unenforceable past year 5
This is the number everything above builds toward. German courts (the Bundesgerichtshof) have upheld terms up to 20 years as contractually valid for the loan itself — it's a real, enforceable debt you simply have to repay on the agreed schedule, however long those 20 years run.
But the exclusivity clause inside that same contract becomes unenforceable under competition law (§2(2) GWB, read with Article 101(1) TFEU) the moment it runs past year 5 — regardless of what the contract itself says. A brewery legally cannot force you to keep buying from it after year 5, while you're still on the hook for the full 20-year loan.
This is the most valuable, least-known conclusion in this whole article: a contract can be entirely valid on paper and, at the exact same time, in precisely the clause that matters most to you, legally unenforceable. The loan clock and the exclusivity clock are not the same clock — and it's on you to tell them apart, because the contract itself will rarely name them separately.
Work out what your brewery deal really costs
Enter the value of the loan or the 'free' equipment, the contract term, how many hectolitres you buy a year, a realistic free-market price per hectolitre, and the premium you suspect you're paying because of the exclusivity. You'll get the extra cost per year, the total extra cost over the whole term, and whether the 'free' equipment actually offsets it.
The fields start with plausible figures for a mid-sized café, so you can see straight away how it reads — overwrite them with your own numbers. This is a simple, illustrative estimate, not an exact financial analysis of your own specific contract.
Brewery loan calculator
What the exclusivity costs you each year, and whether the 'free' equipment offsets that cost.
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Everything runs in your own browser: nothing is sent or stored. This is a simplified estimate, not financial or legal advice — the premium% and price per hectolitre are your own estimates, not legal figures.
The simplified annual cost rate is not a real interest rate — there's no repayment schedule or compounding built in, unlike a bank's own calculator. It's one simple number: how much the premium, spread across the whole term, effectively costs you each year against the value of what you got 'free'.
Importantly, this rate says nothing about the enforceability of the exclusivity itself. As number 7 above showed, that exclusivity can legally lapse after year 5, while the premium — if you keep buying from that brewery out of habit or contract pressure anyway — can keep costing you for years longer.
And if you've already signed?
If you already have a brewery contract running, the first step is simple: pull out the contract and find two dates — when the loan is fully repaid, and when the exclusivity clause itself ends according to the contract. Compare that second date against the 5-year cap from number one: if it runs further than 5 years past signing, that clause may no longer be enforceable, regardless of what the paper says.
Next, ask explicitly whether your exclusivity is linked to the loan or to a commercial lease — that distinction, as number three showed, can be the difference between 5 years and 27 years. And check the minimum volume: know exactly how many hectolitres you're required to buy, and what the penalty is if your business doesn't hit it that year.
If you're unsure what your own contract actually says, this is the moment to have it reviewed by a lawyer familiar with hospitality and competition law in your country — this article is a map, not legal advice for your specific situation.
One signature, two clocks
A brewery loan feels, at the moment of signing, like one decision: 'free' equipment in exchange for loyalty to one brewery. In reality you're signing two separate obligations at once, with two separate terms, that rarely run in step — and only one of which is legally capped at 5 years.
The loan itself is a real debt you have to repay, potentially for 20 years, regardless of what happens to the exclusivity. The exclusivity is a promise that legally loses its enforceability after year 5 — unless, as is possible in Belgium, it was linked to a commercial lease that runs far longer.
Before you sign — or before you let an existing contract run on without looking at it — check the seven numbers in this article against your own paperwork. Read on about leasing versus buying equipment as an ordinary alternative with no exclusivity attached, about negotiating with suppliers in general, and about how drinks margin shows exactly what a tied price does to your profit.