Brewbound Podcast: Five Beer Writers Enter a Zoom Meeting …

[00:00:00] Team Jay: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love City Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with the Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head to Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch the Brewbound Team Jay booth 956 during CBC. Five beer writers enter a Zoom meeting. Find out what happens next on the Brewbound Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Brewbound Podcast. My name is Justin Kendall, and I am the editor of Brewbound. And I am joined by Team Jay, Justin Infante and Zoe Licata, who are back from a field trip.

[00:00:55] Justin Fonte: Yeah, we did go on a field trip. So yesterday, Zoe and I joined the annual conference of our home state's Brewers Guild. The Mass Brewers Guild Conference hosted Jax Abbey in Framingham. Zoe, I think this was like your first Guild meeting, right?

[00:01:11] Zoe Licata: It was. What'd you think? It was fun. It was very cool. Nice to see a bunch of local brewers. putting faces to the breweries that I've seen for the past couple of years. So that was really cool. It was a good time. Talked about a lot of pertinent stuff. We talked about supply chain issues. We heard about contract brewing. So definitely a packed but fun day.

[00:01:37] Team Jay: Yes. And, uh, I sat this out. I wish I could have been there eating pizza and wings and listening to some beer biz talk, but the pizza was good. You know, somebody has got to get us ready for brew bound live, which is November 30th and December 1st in Santa Monica, California. You can join us there, head to brew bound.com for information on how to get tickets to that. We've got a lot going on there and we just added a panel.

[00:02:04] Justin Fonte: We did just add a panel. I'm excited about this one.

[00:02:08] Team Jay: Yeah, we're going to talk culture, building culture, maintaining culture and trying to diversify your brewery with Betsy Lay from Lady Justice and Bryant Goulding from Rheingeist and possibly one other person, but that's TBD. We also have another panel that Zoe is intimately involved in or will be focused on Generation Z.

[00:02:32] Zoe Licata: Of course, naturally. I couldn't do my first Brewbound live and not talk about Gen Z. It just wouldn't feel right.

[00:02:38] Team Jay: That's right. And if I'm not running out the door and trying to hop a plane to, you know, be there for the birth of my first child, I'll be there the whole time too.

[00:02:49] Justin Fonte: Do we know what generation the baby is going to be? Oh,

[00:02:54] Team Jay: I don't, but you know, maybe we'll get her a beer wolf onesie or some Elvira hair.

[00:03:01] Justin Fonte: Yes, yes, totally.

[00:03:04] Team Jay: Which leads us to our featured guest this week, Jess's other family members in the beer biz. I know how you love the word family in the beer biz, but you're our family.

[00:03:17] Justin Fonte: I know, but this is a non-toxic version of the use of family.

[00:03:21] Team Jay: Yes.

[00:03:22] Justin Fonte: So our podcast guests today are my good buddies, Kate Bernot, who writes for Good Beer Hunting and Craft Beer and Brewing, and Dave Infante, who writes his own independent newsletter about drinking in America called Fingers, and also writes at Vinepear, covering the beer industry. Yeah, I know Dave and I have the same last name and it's probably a weird last name you don't hear very often, but we are not related as far as I know, but we're both from North Jersey and my dad always used to, you know, somebody would come up in conversation and my dad would always say, Oh, that's our cousin. That's our cousin. So, I mean, I don't know, man, Dave might be our cousin. I have a shit ton of cousins in North Jersey so much so that I never dated Italian boys because I was really afraid to be told like, you know, that's our fourth cousin. So, We really might be, I'm not sure. The other thing that Dave, Kate and I all have in common is that we're all from the same part of the world. And I think that has a lot to do with why the three of us get on so well in addition to doing the same thing for work. We also grew up on a steady diet of pork roll and yoo-hoo and have all moved away.

[00:04:20] Team Jay: And Catholicism.

[00:04:22] Justin Fonte: And Catholicism. Yeah, I go back way more than those guys do, but I'm drivable and my mother lives on the beach, so.

[00:04:30] Team Jay: Yeah, well, let's get to our featured interview and take it away.

[00:04:36] Dave Infante: Yeah, I got to switch it out to the Nog Seltzer soon.

[00:04:39] Justin Fonte: Oh, the Nog, yeah.

[00:04:40] Dave Infante: They have a Nog Seltzer coming out.

[00:04:42] Justin Fonte: I'm perversely curious about the Nog.

[00:04:44] Dave Infante: Yeah, dude, this is all just sweeping us closer to the inevitable singularity of dairy-based hard seltzer. Now, I would say we're within the event horizon. The margin of error is currently where we are. I say, give or take six months, we're just going to see a milk hard seltzer. Who will be first, Smooge? Hard milk. Hard milk. Smooge is a really good bet. I mean, they're located in the heartland in dairy country. They've already figured out how to foist flavored malt beverage of dubious viscosity onto the American drinking public.

[00:05:16] Kate Bernot: It's very frothy.

[00:05:17] Dave Infante: You know what else is frothy? Milk.

[00:05:20] Kate Bernot: Hard milk.

[00:05:21] Dave Infante: Yeah, hard milk. It's like gut milk from Only Murders in the Building.

[00:05:26] Kate Bernot: Yuhu, why is Yuhu not in this space?

[00:05:30] Dave Infante: I don't know why Yuhu isn't in the space, and I don't know why Orangina, however you say it, isn't also making a hard shelter. It's fucking insane. Kahlua and Yuhu.

[00:05:39] Justin Fonte: Did you guys know that Yuhu was like geographically limited to the tri-state area? Because I did not.

[00:05:44] Dave Infante: Really?

[00:05:45] Justin Fonte: I did not know that. Yeah, but Jason Note talks about it on Twitter as though it's like the milk of the gods found only in New Jersey.

[00:05:51] Team Jay: Wow. So welcome to this conversation, but why don't we just bring it in? Like we can use all that shit and we can just start the fucking podcast right now.

[00:06:03] Justin Fonte: This is gold.

[00:06:04] SPEAKER_??: True.

[00:06:04] Justin Fonte: All right, you want me to read the intro that we've got?

[00:06:07] Team Jay: Well, I mean, who needs an intro when we, you know, we've let the folks into this secret conversation of what beer writers actually talk about right before a podcast. I think we should just go introduce our guests.

[00:06:21] Justin Fonte: All right. So joining us today are who Justin calls my other family. We've got Kate Bernot of Good Beer Hunting and Craft Beer and Brewing. Hey, Kate. Hello. How are you?

[00:06:32] Kate Bernot: I'm doing well. I'm extremely excited to rep your other family on your first family podcast.

[00:06:39] Justin Fonte: That's true. Yes, my family is all, all pertains to writing about beer. I have no other family or friends. Our next guest, I could see why you think we might actually be family, but we are not related. As far as we know, we have publisher of independent drinking culture, newsletter fingers and vine pair writer at large, Dave Infante. What's up, bud?

[00:06:59] Dave Infante: Thank you so much for having me. I also have another family, but I'm legally not allowed to discuss them.

[00:07:05] Justin Fonte: So Dave, Kate, and I have an extracurricular activity called Beer Byliners, where we host a Twitter space about every other week or so to talk beer industry news. It's usually a lot of fun. I'm usually a lot more profane over there. I try to keep it together on the Brewbound Podcast. But besides being business-focused beer writers, the three of us also share one very particular experience, surviving the culture of single-sex Catholic high schools of North and Central Jersey. Central Jersey is real. Kate will fight you on this topic. But really how singular this experience is probably can't be overstated. I think it had a lot to do with making us into the depraved individuals that we are. But we're not going to compare war stories from the giant stadium parking lot before Dave Matthews band concerts, at least not today. Although you guys are younger than me, so your reference point might be OAR. Not sure. But today we're talking about some pretty significant beer industry news of late. Justin, you wanna open the floor here as the official host of this podcast?

[00:08:00] Team Jay: Well, I don't wanna stoke your rage, but I feel like Aaron Rodgers probably called in some favors to the Brewers Association, because what was the news of the other day that you reported on was that the BA was gonna require vaccines only, no tests, but I guess the Rodgers rate has come into effect here for the BA, and they've changed a little bit, of course,

[00:08:23] Justin Fonte: I'm still so angry about this.

[00:08:26] Dave Infante: They backpedaled faster than Wile E. Coyote.

[00:08:31] Team Jay: It's sad because you're kind of like, oh, the B.A. made a bold decision. And then it's like, oh, not so fast.

[00:08:40] Justin Fonte: I also like, I fired off that email on Sunday and was like, please don't answer this until you're ready. Like, I know it's Sunday, just cause I always like to be, you know, like, I don't like getting emails on Sunday, but so I gave them an out, don't answer me until you're ready. But we did hear back like right away. And I asked, will negative tests be accepted as an alternative? And the words specifically were said that they were not. So I was like, cool. What a nugget. Wrote the story. publish the story and immediately get an email saying, oh no, no, we're still considering that. It's like, I hate being wrong. And I know this was not my fault, but it feels like my fault. And now I feel like a giant jerk for putting out there to the world, especially like how far this went on Twitter. Like my retweet of my story got a lot of engagement and people were all saying like, yeah, this is great. This is what should be happening. And now I gotta be the jerk that's like, actually, this is not what's happening. So I don't know. What do you guys think?

[00:09:35] Dave Infante: I think, speaking of being raised Catholic, your guilt at feeling like you did something wrong, even though you didn't, is very on brand.

[00:09:45] Justin Fonte: Right. Super on brand. Once I was writing a story for my former newspaper about the sailboats that are indigenous to Ocean County, New Jersey. I mean, that's not the right word, that were invented in Ocean County, New Jersey. And I wrote about the size of the sail. And my newspaper had a copy desk. They used to call me all the time to like, Jess, like you spelled this word wrong. Do you mean this word or that word? So like, I know they're around. Nobody checked the size. And when the story got published, like immediately in the comments, somebody was like, somebody needs to tell Jessica Infante that she's writing about a sale that's the size of a Walmart. So like that's not really my fault either, but it looks like my fault because my name's on the story.

[00:10:24] Kate Bernot: Well, allow me to absolve you on this one, Jess. I feel like the B.A. not misspoke. The B.A. told you something and then changed their mind.

[00:10:31] Justin Fonte: Yeah. Thank you, Sister Kate. Much appreciated. Very welcome. My child.

[00:10:36] Dave Infante: This is unfortunately kind of in line with how we've watched a lot of institutions, both within the beer industry and then just in the greater American commercial landscape, stumble their way through the last 18 months of the pandemic. It's kind of like, all right, we're going to do this. Are you mad? Let us know if you're mad and then we'll do something else immediately or we'll like try to mealy mouth our way through and find some gray area where no one can like technically call us out for being either anti-vaccine or pro-mask or whatever the case may be. I have some sympathy for institutions. You know, maybe six months into the pandemic, 18 months in, I feel like you kind of got to know where you stand. Right. Like and especially like, I don't know, man, like if you see this story getting popular traction, like how much popular press is the B.A. getting these days? Like just take it and run with it, man. People seem to be in support of it.

[00:11:30] Team Jay: Take your win rather than going for the tie.

[00:11:33] Justin Fonte: That might be what we see happen. But yeah, the must show proof of vaccination policy is in effect for all four of the BA's major events, which include Kraft Brewer's Conference, which will be May in Minneapolis. Savor and Homebrew Con, which are both happening over the same weekend in June. Savor is in Washington, DC. It's their annual craft beer and food pairing event. Homebrew Con is their annual gathering of homebrewers. That's happening in Pittsburgh. Those are both going to be like the third-ish weekend of June. And then we'll have the Great American Beer Festival in Denver in October. So get ready to either provide proof of vaccination at the time you buy your ticket or be able to show it when you get there. TBD on whether or not they're accepting negative tests is alternative. So I don't know.

[00:12:15] Dave Infante: Yeah, we have a couple more cycles to go through too. There will be like a lambda wave and then I don't even know how much further the Greek alphabet goes, but presumably... I can sing it for you if you want to hear, but... You can sing the Greek alphabet? Sure can, man!

[00:12:28] Justin Fonte: Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, z, omicron, pyro, sigma, tau, epsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega.

[00:12:37] Team Jay: Holy shit.

[00:12:39] Justin Fonte: Omicron doesn't get enough love. Omicron needs more love, but it doesn't look like a different letter. It just looks like O. So yeah, in addition to an all girls high school, I also joined a women's fraternity. I'm just like a real try hard joiner pick me. I hate me too, but yeah, that's the Greek alphabet. In other news. All right. Well, you guys are here for very specific reasons, so let's get into it. We're gonna talk through some pieces that Dave and Kate have both written recently and get their insights and hear the background story on what it's like to be other beer writers. So Dave, you recently published a piece for VinePair about the disparity and availability of capital for different brewing ventures. I read it, it was fascinating. You did a really great job at breaking down some really complicated stuff. Can you give us like a TLDR rundown for listeners who may not have read it?

[00:13:34] Dave Infante: Yeah, of course. So this story started in a vine pair pitch meeting where we all were just kind of wondering, you know, is anyone still putting money up for new craft brewing ventures after the last 18 months we've had with the pandemic, but also the last five years we've had. as we've seen the industry grow and mature and growth has slowed and hard seltzer has sort of arrived and upended the playing field, so to speak, for these smaller independent artisanal ventures. And my assumption was no, no one's going to be backing these things these days, save your money, go somewhere else. I mean, that's certainly how I would approach it. If I had a lot of money to, if I had that much money, I would not put it into a craft brewery. But you're an ass when you assume or whatever the euphemism is. So I instead got on the phone and started calling around to financial professionals and brewers and brokers, people who work in the financial services industry as it pertains to craft brewing in the US or those craft brewers that are trying to get money from the financial services industry. And what I found is that, shocker, it's a little bit more complicated than a straight yes or no question, or yes or no answer, excuse me. But the folks who line up private capital, who line up small business association or small business administration loans, who are doing specialty loans on brewery equipment purchasing, are actually feeling fairly optimistic about where the industry is right now and expect, you know, a better environment over the course of the next 18 months than we've seen over the course of the previous 18 months with regards to access to capital for breweries. I mean, that obviously doesn't translate directly into better sales for breweries or craft beer reaching its 2015 zenith again in 2022. Those things are not directly correlated to the availability of capital for brewing projects. But generally speaking, those experts are seeing a relatively healthy set of capital markets for breweries.

[00:15:46] Zoe Licata: Did they say anything that surprised you when you were going into it?

[00:15:50] Dave Infante: That certainly was the biggest surprise was just like, oh man, like people are still putting up, you know, money for these things. I think like in the story, I sort of, I spoke with, well, I spoke with a few breweries, but I wound up sort of framing it around these two breweries. One is Jolly Pumpkin based in Michigan. They have about seven brew pubs around Michigan. It's run by Ron Jeffries and his wife, Lori Jeffries, I think is her name. Ron was really terrific and spoke with me at length about their business. They've been in operation for 17 years. They're in process of trying to open a second, not related project, but it's another brewery on the Big Island in Hawaii called Holo Holo Brewing Company. And despite their track record of 17 years of operating successful brew pubs and craft breweries, Kraft brewing with both on-premise and off-premise sales, they have had a fair amount of trouble lining up a small business loan that would work out for, that is the size and scope that HoloHolo needs for them to sort of close the gap between the amount of capital they've raised from their investors and the amount that they think they need to launch the project. And contrast that to the other brewery that I spoke with, which is probably just about now getting ready to open for the first time ever from a group of non-beer folks in Brockton, Massachusetts, at the Boston Beer Company, who just are kind of a classic craft beer upstart story where it's like, you know, they all love beer, they love getting together and hanging out. Brockton, from what I understand, is a city that's kind of seen some better days and is trying to make a comeback. And as part of that, the mayor has a vision for revitalizing the Main Street and the brewery is going to be a big part of that. And so they've been able to line up some development loans through nonprofits, but they have had very little trouble lining up capital. partly because of those loans and grants that I described, but also partly because they turned to a crowdfunding debt platform that a lot of brewers use called Mainvest to finance their debt in small crowdfunding increments rather than from one institutional investor. That's a long way of saying that it is not purely a matter of how much experience you have, what your track record looks like. The factors that go into whether you can line up capital are certainly somewhat predicated on that, but you're also looking at what's the size of your project, how much money are you asking for, where are you, what are your relationships to the local government and the social fabric, et cetera, et cetera. What's your business plan look like is part of it, but not the only thing. And that was surprising to me. I kind of figured that no one would be putting up money for a purely new venture without any track record.

[00:18:38] Team Jay: Did Ron mention whether trying to open on the island was kind of the source of the issue there? Because we've seen issues, as Zoe reported on, with Maui outsourcing production back to the mainland and knowing all the supply chain issues that exist on the islands trying to produce. I wonder if that factors into the money equation there.

[00:19:00] Dave Infante: Yeah, we touched on that in our interview, but very briefly, my understanding is that at least for the beginning of their business, once they get it up and running, the plan is to be mostly on-premise and then big island distribution only. Now, obviously, they'd still be impacted by supply chain input issues, and potentially that's something that they'll face in the future, but in terms of outputs, those would all be relatively localized. And so they wouldn't necessarily face some of the challenges that other companies are seeing as they are maybe moving production over to the mainland or whatever. So I don't think that that was necessarily the issue vis-a-vis lining up the SBA loans. But Ron was saying that SBA approved lenders are just right now having a lot of trouble getting the administration to green light because of a backlog, because they're not sure about the business, you know, it's like, it's a little bit of a black box. And my understanding based on how he's described his experiences, he's not always getting a straight answer. I think that has, that has been exacerbated by the pandemic for sure, because there's just sort of a bottleneck around it. But I'm not sure how much Hawaii is responsible for the loan backup.

[00:20:18] Team Jay: So, Kate, you recently wrote about the Finnish Long Drink for Good Beer Hunting. That's an area that's of interest to us. I mean, it's a longtime offering around since 1952. There are a couple of players that are already in the space, the capital, the Finnish Long Drink and Hartwell, but Boston Beer is getting in and that's where the interest sort of comes in with their bevy. So I guess when you're looking at that story and when you were reporting that story, what's the feeling about Boston Beer getting in? Is this like a rising tide issue or is this like a look how they've co-opted the Finnish Long drink?

[00:21:03] Kate Bernot: Yeah, I like that we're globetrotting on this podcast today. We've got Hawaii, we've got Finland, we are taking you around the world.

[00:21:11] Dave Infante: Got the cosmopolitan metropolis of Brockton, Massachusetts.

[00:21:17] Kate Bernot: So yeah, I was interested in this question as well, Justin, about how the existing players, Hartwell and the Finnish Long drink, perceive Boston Beer's entry into this category, especially given that Boston Beer's bevy product will be malt-based versus the existing two players are spirits-based. So, you know, I put that to one of the co-founders of the Long Drink Company, the parent company of the Finnish Long Drink. And I put it to him, do you think this causes category confusion, especially given that most Americans do not know what a long drink is? Does it confuse drinkers to be introduced to a malt-based version before perhaps they've had a spirits-based version? which would be more authentic to the true cocktail from Finland. And Eri Partinen, who was the co-founder that I spoke to, told me, no, actually, they are really just happy to have more awareness around this category, period. He said, we want to see this grow into an entire category of which we are the leading product. So if Boston Beer wants to spend $10 million, which is what they're planning to spend next year promoting Devi, that's $10 million telling Americans what long drink is. So they are seeing this as more of the rising tide lifting all ships and then they're sort of confident that we are actually Finns. We ourselves are Finnish people who founded this company and our product has a spirit space, which we believe Americans will prefer over the malt base. So sure, Boston Beer, let's all grow awareness of this category. And then their hope is that they will be the leader of that now more robust category.

[00:23:07] Team Jay: But Finns are too nice. They're just being too nice.

[00:23:09] Kate Bernot: They're very polite, extremely polite people. I know 200% more about Finland now than I did when I started reporting the story. They seem great.

[00:23:18] Team Jay: Thanks for the marketing dollars, Boston Beer.

[00:23:21] Dave Infante: Do you think that's true, though, Kate? I mean, obviously, that's a glass half full take. And by the way, I well, two things. One, I drank a bunch of long drink this weekend, this past weekend, and it was quite nice. Definitely. We were like putting like gin floaters in it because it's like a little sweet on its own or at least for my taste. but a great product. So that's really cool. And then I also, I'm obligated to this close. I bought, uh, I bought some Boston Beer company stock in September, 2021. Uh, so because we're discussing their moves in the, into the long drink category, I wanted to just get that out front. Also, everyone can have a little chuckle. It's gone. Nothing. It's done nothing but go down since I bought it, which is very funny to me. Well, not to me, but to all of you, I'm sure. But anyway, Kate, my question is, do you buy that? I mean, like we've heard that before. I mean, that certainly rings a little bit like what we were hearing from Kraft Brewers towards the beginning of last decade. Do you buy that that's what's going to play out in the American introduction to long drink?

[00:24:19] Kate Bernot: I mean, I think there are four aspects to any new beverage launch, right? It's like, how good is the liquid? How is the marketing? How is the distribution? And how is your sales team? So in this case, Boston Beer can get its product into a lot more retail opportunities than the spirits based versions can just because of obviously where sales of spirits based RTDs are restricted in this country. So they've got kind of the I guess, penetration advantage in terms of like where they're going to sell this. They've got the marketing spend advantage, although the Finnish Long Drink did just pick up something like 25 mil in funding recently. But, you know, in terms of like what consumers really want from the liquid, I feel like that's sort of the open question here. It also looks like Boston Beer is planning a really heavy draft push for Bevy, which the Finnish Long Drink launched initially in restaurants and bars in the on-premise, but as a canned product. So Bevy is hoping to make itself the nation's top-selling non-beer draft product. So that could be an area where they find a niche and an advantage. And it feels like this is a, because this category is so new, it does feel like something that might get started in the on-premise. I know we've talked a lot about brands being able to launch and scale in the off-premise just in the last few years. I don't know something so new. It feels like you want the bartender to tell you the story and kind of present it to you. So I think that could be an advantage, so I don't know. I'm I'm not really calling. I'm not going to call a winner here.

[00:26:07] Team Jay: The bartender is going to be like, well, this is a long drink, but it doesn't have the gin, but it's a long drink, you know, like that.

[00:26:15] Zoe Licata: Let me tell you about the provenance of this drink while it doesn't have any of the attributes of the actual drink that, you know, I can make you the actual cocktail or you could have this slightly different version that doesn't actually have gin in it. That's on tap.

[00:26:29] Kate Bernot: It's from Finland. Everyone try to point to Finland on a map.

[00:26:34] Team Jay: And made in Pennsylvania.

[00:26:36] Dave Infante: Also, this is made in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. But follow-up question on this podcast, which is not mine, so sorry, I'll stop dominating everyone else here. But Kate, just to follow up on that, and I'm curious to hear everyone else's take as well, how much is this going to be setting up like a Angry Orchard entry to the hard cider space And we know now that the cider space certainly didn't do what I think everyone hoped it would have done and thought, a lot of people thought it would have done midway through last decade. Angry Orchard is obviously Boston Beer Company's hard cider brand and has been sort of, I would say, not totally incorrectly identified as one of the things that's kind of created stiff headwinds for the hard cider category in the US. How much of a concern is there for long drink companies that are producing authentic long drink, high quality long drink, that Boston Beer Company rolls in, introduces Bevy, gets a ton of penetration and share of throat, if you want to call it that. What was the better one that someone came up with, Jess?

[00:27:40] Justin Fonte: I've heard somebody say share a fridge, and I like that.

[00:27:42] Dave Infante: Share a fridge. Yeah, let's go with share. Yeah, share a fridge sounds less like we need an adult here. But yeah, share a fridge, but then what they're ultimately evangelizing is a subpar product that ultimately poisons the well.

[00:27:56] Kate Bernot: The Angry Orchard analogy is really interesting because in the presentation that Boston Beer gave to its distributors about Bevy last month, which Boston Beer made available to me, they talk about the fact that Boston Beer has been successful in their strategy as a fast follower in new products, right? So they saw Mike's Hard Lemonade, they introduced Twisted Tea, they saw Woodchuck, they introduced Angry Orchard. Spiked seltzer, truly. Now they're saying, long drink, Bevy. So they believe that this is like their strength, their sweet spot, is to be this fast follower with a product that is kind of a mass market success. I mean, I think Angry Orchard is, yeah, in decline now, but like, I don't think anyone would be mad if Bevy turned into their Angry Orchard, you know? Like that sold millions of dollars for years, so.

[00:28:49] Dave Infante: Not at Boston Beer Company, but in the rest of the category.

[00:28:51] Kate Bernot: Oh, sure. Well, so, You know, though, if you talk to people in the regional cider side of things, like they will have words about Angry Orchard's liquid, perhaps, but they will, I mean, even the staunchest critics kind of say, well, you gotta give it credit for putting cider handles in sports bars. Like that opened a category that was not a draft product or did not have a section of a cooler, right? Like there's some woodchuck in a corner somewhere prior to Angry Orchard. So I think, you know, that, other cider brands in that space perhaps benefited from just the retail availability that Angry Orchard, you know, and category awareness, which, you know, we'll see if that happens with Bevy and Long Drink.

[00:29:36] Dave Infante: Yeah, sort of like the blue moon effect.

[00:29:39] Kate Bernot: Totally.

[00:29:40] Zoe Licata: So let's move out of Finland into an equally exciting place of Wisconsin. Dave, you wrote something for Fingers yesterday about bargaining table negotiations at Citibrewing, which is one of the largest contact brewers in the country. Give us the lowdown on what's going on.

[00:29:59] Dave Infante: Sure. Yeah. So as you said, Citibrewing, based out of La Crosse, Wisconsin, they've got facilities in La Crosse, La Trobe, Memphis, which is the one we're going to be speaking about. And then they're closing on or already have closed on Pabst's old facility in Irwindale, California.

[00:30:14] Justin Fonte: What was the Pabst facility for like a hot minute? Yeah, Molson Coors is Irwindale, California for a while, and then Pabst bought it. And then it's super complicated, but basically the company that owned Pabst also bought Citi.

[00:30:31] Team Jay: Yeah, it's one of those flowchart press releases that they send that you're like, what is actually happening?

[00:30:38] Dave Infante: And someone's LLC is somehow like reaping a huge benefit off this in a way that I don't even understand, despite reporting a little bit on brewery financials. In any case, at the city brewing facility in Memphis, which is a big packaging plant down in Memphis called Blue City Brewing, There is a fight right now for the first contract for the newly, relatively newly unionized workforce at Blue City Brewing. So this is about 700 employees at Blue City Brewing voted in December 2020 by a pretty like closed vote. I think it was like 139 to 115. So a pretty close vote, certainly not a landslide victory, but nevertheless, the majority of them voted to join the, oh man, I always forget. It's the, the BCTGM is the acronym and it's the Baker's Confectioners. Let me just get this for you. I'm sorry. Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Green Millers International Union. What a combo of people. Yeah, well, you know, labor consolidation is a major story here in the U.S. over the course of the past century or so, and it created a lot of odd bedfellows out of necessity. But the BCTGM Local 149 represents about 700 workers at Blue City Brewing. And they began contract negotiations in February 2021. Typically, first contracts for union negotiations are always the hardest. They always take the longest because you're creating a source document out of whole cloth, right? So nothing exists to iterate off, and naturally, these things take longer. I'm told by the union officials who are involved in the negotiations that they're basically squared away on every aspect of the contract of the collective bargaining agreement that they're working on with Citibrewing management, except for the very sticky issue of pay. The wage structure at Citibrewing's Memphis facility is what union you know, kind of experts and labor advocates would refer to as, or at least would suggest, is a two-tier system. And so two-tier is pretty detested in the labor community because basically one set of workers gets one wage, that's pretty good, and then the next set of workers, people who are hired after a certain period, you know, a certain, after a certain date, they get a different wage scale and it's typically not as favorable, or they don't get benefits on the same schedule that those grandfathered in workers get. And so what this does, and we know this just from the history of labor organizing, even in the past 30, 40 years in the US, is that it typically creates a lot of tension within the workforce, within the bargaining unit. And it functions as a way for the company to drive a wedge between different factions of the workforce and ultimately weaken the union or even get them to decertify, which is getting rid of the union. And so what they're fighting for right now down in Memphis, and we're recording this on a Tuesday, they should be in bargaining right now about this. is to get contract provisions that would erase that bifurcated wage scale. And if they can sort that out, the union officials that I spoke with feel relatively confident that the rest of the contract is in hand and the company feels good about it. They claim both parties feel good about it. Citibrewing was pretty limited in their comments to me. They gave me a quick statement just saying that they continue to bargain in good faith and hope to have an agreement soon. But we'll see what shapes up there. I mean, Memphis is kind of in an interesting position from a labor standpoint. It is Tennessee, and Tennessee is right to work, but it's got proximity to the Midwest, which is a labor stronghold. It's also got a, and this is relevant right at this moment, it's got a large Kellogg's facility. BCTGM represents the workers at the Memphis Kellogg's facility that have been on strike for over a month over their own two-tier arrangement. I think the two-tier in that case is over healthcare benefits. So strategically and geographically, it's of some significance. And certainly within the beer industry, city brewing is a heavyweight when it comes to contract brewing. So it'll be really interesting to see what shakes out there over the course of the rest of this negotiation.

[00:35:14] Justin Fonte: So what challenges do workers in a place like Citi, which most drinkers have probably never heard of, despite the fact that they've probably consumed many products that Citi has made, what challenges do they face in drumming up public support?

[00:35:26] Dave Infante: Yeah, well, that's the big, the first one's the big one, right? Is that like, no one knows what that company is. And so with Kellogg's, like that brand name is a household name, Nabisco, to a slightly lesser extent, but still many people know what Nabisco is and they just finished up their strike. So brand recognition is really important, right? We all consume media in this nightmare ecosystem that we exist in on social media and kind of everyone's getting their fractured tidbits of news from a bunch of different places. That ability to quickly connect who we're talking about, what its significance is, where the company is located, things like that. That really can benefit workers when they're able to quickly get traction with an audience or with social media users who want to support them. It can also work against them in the case of someone like a place like Citibrewing, which despite being a major player in the US brewing industry, is not a household name to really any drinker. So that's that's certainly a challenge. There's also just the geographic challenge of, I mean, like I said, Tennessee's right to work. It's kind of interesting in its position because it's is a deep south. I think it kind of depends on who you would ask, but it's certainly in the southeast. And there's not a lot of labor union density in that state. So when you're looking for support from other labor organizations, from other community organizations, that built-in infrastructure is not nearly as strong as it would be in a labor stronghold like Buffalo or Michigan or Minnesota, any of the upper Midwest states.

[00:36:59] Justin Fonte: Got it. Well, in other employment news, Kate, you've covered the effect of the beer industry on what economists are calling the Great Resignation. Jesus, not the Great Recession. Can you tell I'm still like triggered from being a newspaper reporter in 07, 08, 09? So the Great Resignation. If social media is to be believed, nobody wants to work and businesses are running on skeleton crews and fumes. So myth bust that for us, please.

[00:37:25] Kate Bernot: Yeah, so I do think it's fair to say that many businesses are running on skeleton crews and fumes and hope. Right now, I spoke to both brewing industry educators at a community college here in Montana, where I live at Flathead Valley Community College, which has a brewing program. I also spoke to the director of the New Hampshire Brewers Guild and You know, both of them were saying, we're talking to breweries that cannot staff, and it's making really significant business crunches for us. You know, some breweries are having to contract out some production because they don't have enough brewers to cover shifts. Some are running, you know, without head brewers or assistant brewers, like really important positions unfilled. So I think that part is correct. But I think the idea that no one wants to work is what I am here to myth bust. This could be said of larger, I mean, a lot of what's going on in the brewing industry with production, brewing labor is just a part of like the overall American economy picture of a labor crunch shortage, whatever you want to call it. But there are some conditions specific to the brewing industry that I think are making workers potentially leave production jobs. So Brewing production jobs, not very flexible. If your kid needs you to work from home because they're doing remote learning, like you can't brew beer at home commercially. You know, it is physically demanding, hard to go in when you're not feeling well, because you have to lift and be on your feet and all that. And traditionally not a lot of great benefits, healthcare, retirement, stuff like that. So information from the Brewer'Brewers Association's benchmarking survey found that just 20% of taproom breweries offer health insurance to production employees. That's much higher, 71% for production breweries. But that's, I mean, that's huge. You know, during a pandemic, workers want health insurance. There are some creative solutions to that. The New Hampshire Brewers Association joined forces with the New Hampshire Restaurant and Lodging Association to be able to purchase group insurance plans. So that would allow smaller breweries to offer those benefits. But I think it's not that employees don't want to work. They want quality of life. They want good benefits. They want to be able to afford the place that they're living in. There's a lot of X factors beyond just like, are we paying you enough?

[00:39:57] Justin Fonte: Yeah, I think one of the things that really not stood out to me about this, but you guys remember when Amazon workers in Bessemer were having that drive and you would hear them give interviews and they would say, we're tired of having our pockets and bags inspected and losing 10 minutes of our lunch break. We want to be treated like human beings. At the same time, Amazon was running ads on every podcast I listened to being like, we pay $15 an hour. These things are, you know, you're not listening to what the workers say they want. They want respect. They want to be treated with dignity. And you just throwing money, quote unquote, money at them like is not what they're asking for.

[00:40:33] Kate Bernot: Well, I would say many small breweries are also not throwing money. But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, job satisfaction, a feeling of ownership over what you do, a feeling that you are appreciated and extremely valuable to the organization, like those things go a long way. So yes, you know, pay your workers what they're worth, offer them insurance. But, you know, are you are you making decisions with them at the forefront? Are you giving them stake in your company, whether that's actual financial stake or just decision making power? These are all also part of that picture.

[00:41:08] Team Jay: Well, and there's at a federal level, there are things on the table or that were on the table that would have helped make their lives better, like paid family leave, something that Switchyard Brewing in Indiana had advocated for. You don't often see or hear that within the brewing industry, but the owners, I'm probably going to miss the husband's name, but Kristen Cummings wrote this piece about how how challenging it was for their family while they were trying to open up the brewery and the benefits that they now provide, how difficult it is to provide those. But in the long run, they see the advantages of offering those types of benefits to their workers because it comes back twofold to them.

[00:41:53] Kate Bernot: Sure. I mean if businesses say they want a more gender diverse industry. If we want, you know, diversity of folks with disabilities and stuff working in in breweries like what supports are you offering for that are you offering paid family leave, are you offering. good insurance that covers, you know, chronic conditions. At some point, you have to be the change you want to see kind of thing. But it's hard to do all that when you are short staffed and can barely get the beer out the door. So I think this is just a really challenging confluence of pressures right now.

[00:42:30] Justin Fonte: Kate, didn't you find in reporting the story that the New Hampshire Brewers Guild didn't have their event because no breweries could spare a person to not be like on the brew house floor for a day?

[00:42:41] Kate Bernot: Yeah, the group canceled its Brewers Festival and Craft Brewers Conference this year, partly because director CJ Haynes told me, because I couldn't in good conscience ask breweries to send staff that they couldn't spare. I mean, these are real, you know, these are not theoretical, abstract problems. These are beer not getting made and events not happening.

[00:43:06] Team Jay: If only there were people who wanted to come to this country to work.

[00:43:11] Kate Bernot: Oh, that if I don't know, that would help. But, you know, there aren't any so weird.

[00:43:15] Team Jay: Yeah. Damn it.

[00:43:17] Kate Bernot: It is weird to think about.

[00:43:19] Dave Infante: It is weird to think about, and I don't think that this, you know, obviously we're painting in really broad strokes here or I'm about to, Kate, you were very specific, but now I'm going to generalize. It is really interesting to see when there are kind of these, you know, when there is an economic crisis in the way that the pandemic has created for so many industries, including the craft brewing industry, kind of what gets laid bare about, what companies need to function, what are frivolous things that the company doesn't actually need to function, and how much of these operations were being subsidized effectively by workers who were showing up for more than 40 hours a week, workers who were sacrificing their personal lives in order to get ahead in this industry that they loved. And once that calculus shifted just a little bit more out of favor of the worker, and they decided, well, fuck, I shouldn't go in at all. I'm sorry, can I swear? You can curse. Okay, cool. Please. I shouldn't go in at all because it's not safe, or I'm not going to get tipped out at the taproom because no one's coming in, et cetera, et cetera. I got to look for a new job. You start to see sort of the contours of those call it a social subsidy, maybe. I'm sure there's a better economic term for what I'm describing. But the craft brewing industry at its best in the US, I think, is a net add to civic life. I think I believe that on the whole, with many, many exceptions. But I think that you could I think if I had to gun to the head, I would say, yeah, the US is better off with a craft brewing industry than it's not. And I think, you know, that goes for a strong, healthy restaurant industry. And some of the other, you know, people love eating and drinking. That's a part of life, contrary to like, or In comparison to something like Amazon, which is not part of the civic fabric and may add a ton of value in terms of the way it moves products around the country, is not something people think about when they have warm, nostalgic, and positive feelings about their community. But if the craft brewing industry is a net ad, And we know it can't operate the way it has been without paid family leave and without better health care and more available health care. And the breweries themselves aren't able to provide for this, or only some of them are able to provide for it, the biggest ones. What's our take, or what's my take on who steps in to fill that gap? I'm curious to hear everyone else's take. I mean, everyone knows my politics on this podcast. I believe that's the role of government. Obviously, there are people who differ. What do you guys think?

[00:45:58] Kate Bernot: I think it's hard to run your business on a labor pool that relies on enthusiasm. Also that. That is a finite resource, right?

[00:46:09] Team Jay: Isn't that journalism?

[00:46:12] Kate Bernot: I'm in this photo and I don't like it. Enthusiasm can dry up the way any other resource can dry up and what are you as a business doing to keep that going? You'll be surprised to learn I did not solve this problem in my article. I did not, yeah, I am not like some think tank economist who figured it out, but.

[00:46:35] Dave Infante: Well, they don't figure it out either, so.

[00:46:39] Justin Fonte: It just, you know, like I worked in the craft beer industry for the better part of a decade and a lot, honestly, I know I was underpaid. I would ask occasionally, hey, like, can we fix this? And I would get told, well, you have really, you have a lot of fun at work. Like, yeah, I can't like call the student loan people and be like, I had a lot of fun at work this month, like knocks them off the balance.

[00:46:58] Team Jay: We've just been through months of people who have been ground down, though, as you've pointed out to me, you know, like, yeah, well, I mean, look at the past six months.

[00:47:08] Justin Fonte: Like I think the outpouring that we've seen in stories about sexual harassment, people often kept it in and kept it to themselves. Because when you come into work and get told we have fun at work, right, right. This is fun. We are here because we love craft beer. Don't you love craft beer? This is great. Can you imagine working anywhere else? No. Like, yeah, you're going to, you know, shut the fuck up and keep it all to yourself because you don't want to rock the very happy, enthusiastic boat. But I think what we just saw was a rogue wave coming for that boat. And I think people are, you know, there's a lot you put yourself into all of it. And I think this is something that I personally struggle with a lot is like, I just, in my time in beer, I worked so hard. I worked nights. I worked weekends. I was on planes. I crossed the country. I skipped events for friends. Like I skipped time with my family because I loved the brand. I loved the industry. I loved my company. I loved our story. And eventually, I was disposable. This is definitely a story for another time, but I think a lot of people are now evaluating what they want out of their life. And I think people are seeing that like work doesn't have to be everything that you do.

[00:48:15] Team Jay: That's the great point is like a lot of people in this industry have sort of wrapped up their identity with being in this industry. And what the last six or eight months or whatever it was, we saw that unravel. It was like, no, I'm, I'm a person beyond being wrapped up with this brand. I'm a real human being, you know, and that's what we saw come out for sure. Or at least some of it.

[00:48:42] Justin Fonte: I mean, the other problem is that like what we do is fun. Like we make beer. It's hard to unwind and it's hard to be off the clock when the thing that is your profession is also the thing that you do for fun, you know? You're never not working. My family is always like, oh, here goes Jess talking about beer again. But like, I got nothing else.

[00:49:00] Team Jay: I don't know.

[00:49:01] Justin Fonte: I should work on becoming more interesting.

[00:49:05] Team Jay: Uh, why don't we end this on a higher note? Dave, you wrote about Elvira who was a big part of my television watching childhood as I'm playing with my LJN WWF wrestlers and the Coors Light commercial comes on and Elvira is telling me how awesome Coors Light is for Halloween. Uh, what a perfectly timed story. Tell us more. I want to know. And I'm also very disappointed, more so in Jess than Zoe, in not knowing the Oak Ridge Boys' song Elvira. Really? Because Zoe wasn't even close to being born yet.

[00:49:41] Dave Infante: Zoe, you have an out. Yeah. Wow, Jess, I'm surprised you never come across that. Well, that's okay. We'll talk about this later. Yeah, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. So for those who don't know, Elvira was a very, I think, very famous, I think that's fair to say, kind of a B-list horror host who was on a syndicated television show starting in 1984. She's a striking figure. She's a cult classic. People love Elvira. This is a character created by the actress and entertainer Cassandra Peterson. In 1986, after a few years with the Beer Wolf, Coors Light was looking for a way to make a bigger move into the Halloween holiday and get the most bang for their buck on holiday marketing because Miller and Anheuser-Busch really had all the big ones locked down. Coors at this point was just starting its national push eastward. They were building a brewery facility in Shenandoah, Virginia, and they really needed to be able to kind of own a holiday and Halloween was going to be it. So they looked to Elvira to cut a few commercials that they would run, you know, leading up to the Halloween holiday, which was at that point becoming, you know, a little bit more of an adult holiday rather than just like a childhood trick-or-treating thing. And at first it went really well. Elvira is great. She is a very recognizable figure. She dresses really over the top. She has this pitch black, you know, shoulder length hair, even lower, longer hair. She has very, very pronounced, deliberately pronounced cleavage that she uses to comedic effect. And she speaks in this kind of goth slash valley girl incantation, if you want to call it that. She's a great character. Elvira is a classic. And she put that to use to sell Silver Bullet. And it went really well in the mid to late 80s for a few years. But eventually it ran aground on, reportedly ran aground on the Coors family's conservative politics and conservative Christian mores. And they became uncomfortable with selling their beer using occult imagery. And allegedly Joe Coors at one point called Elvira demonic. And so this kind of put the kibosh on the campaign, which was at that point fairly successful for them. And accounts differ. Molson Coors did not make Peter Coors available for me to speak with, even though he was the kind of, at that point, kind of the rising star at the organization. Bill and Joe Coors were kind of getting up in years. They were still on the board, but Peter was kind of the day-to-day guy. I wasn't able to interview Peter Kors, and ultimately, Molson Kors didn't provide any sort of detailed account from like their archivist or anything. So what I'm going off is, you know, marketers who were in Kors Light Marketing Department at the time, Cassandra Peterson herself, I interviewed her, and then accounts from The author Dan Balm, his book Citizen Corps covers this in detail, as well as some coverage from Russ Belant, who did The Corps' Connection, which is a book about the Corps' family politics. But a ton of fun. Elvira was, I'm happy to report, she is awesome to talk to. She was a very fun interview and a really great gag. And she's got a, She's got a memoir out now, Yours Cruelly, Elvira. So she was coming off a long day of press for her book, but she still made some time to talk about the old Coors days. And it was a ton of fun.

[00:53:16] Team Jay: It's funny that they've embraced bringing back Beowulf merch, but they haven't gone back to her.

[00:53:22] Dave Infante: It's a really good point. I thought about that only after I published the story. Yeah, like they did like a big like nostalgia push around Beowulf this year and Nerea mention of Elvira in terms of bringing it back for merch. I mean, they've certainly covered You know, they have their blog over there and they cover like internal company history. And I think they do a pretty good job for what it is, but it's obviously, you know, framed around portraying the company in a positive light. And they wrote about Elvira, but definitely not the stuff I covered in my reporting. And yeah, no, no throwback Elvira Coors Light merch from the Molson Coors company this year, at least.

[00:54:00] Kate Bernot: You've got some Beowulf stuff, right? Oh, I do, yes. But that's it's vintage. This is not current Beowulf.

[00:54:10] Team Jay: This is a company that's cool with or was cool with the Coors Light Twins, but you know, Elvira is a step too far.

[00:54:18] Dave Infante: Well, the Twins, it's funny you bring that up. I was just talking to someone about this today. The Twins commercial, despite being very popular, was apparently something that was actually a pretty hot button issue in Pete Coors's failed Senate campaign in 2004. He, or 2008, excuse me, I think you were in in 2008, he got outflanked on the right partly because of like the family values or the, you know, what appeared to be a abandonment of family values in this salacious quarters advertisement.

[00:54:47] Kate Bernot: Was Elvira a victim of the satanic panic?

[00:54:51] Dave Infante: Quite literally, yeah. So I don't know, did you guys know about the Procter and Gamble satanic scandal? This is actually- Turned this into a Satan podcast? This is fucking nuts. I highly recommend anyone listening this and everyone on this podcast after this, after we're done recording. Google Procter & Gamble Satan. There was a, you know, in the early 80s, so this was almost concurrent with with the Elvira ads, and it seems to have informed how Coors reacted to Elvira over the course of the late 80s, early 90s, there were a series of basically newsletters and pamphlets and independent media, let's call it, that was distributed about how Procter & Gamble's logo at the time was actually a satanic occult symbol. And, you know, like the CEO had these various connections to the Church of Satan, etc, etc. It all turned out to be completely fabricated. And it took a while to wind its way through the court system. But I believe that eventually the courts awarded Procter & Gamble millions of dollars in damages against Amway, which was one of its competitors at the time. And based on what the courts decided, it appears that a competitor of Procter & Gamble basically did an astroturfing campaign to warn people that they were actually satanic in order to I don't know, sell more of their competitor's toothpaste or something. It's incredible. So Elvira thinks, Cassandra Peterson thinks that because that was going on and in the headlines at the time, that may have informed the Coors family's anxieties about the commercial.

[00:56:30] Justin Fonte: And MLM up to no good. I am shocked.

[00:56:35] Team Jay: Well, I highly recommend the Satanic Temple in Salem. Great visit if you're in town to visit Jess.

[00:56:44] Justin Fonte: They are a fantastic civic partner to the city. I've never been.

[00:56:47] Team Jay: I have a beautiful photo of myself in Marcy with a Baphomet.

[00:56:53] Justin Fonte: We at Sam Adams, we put out a beer for the Super Bowl the last year I was there in the art, because you can't use Tom Brady's likeness, but everybody calls him the goat, greatest of all time. There was like a goat and a jersey, and that was the label. And then we got complaints on Facebook for people asking why we were peddling satanic beer. So full circle.

[00:57:14] Kate Bernot: I would buy more if I found satanic beer. So, you know, you gain one, you lose one.

[00:57:19] Justin Fonte: It comes out in the wash. We started this by addressing the fact that all of us went to Catholic school. It didn't stick.

[00:57:25] Team Jay: Look what happened.

[00:57:27] Justin Fonte: This has been awesome. I'm so glad my two families could unite. Why don't you guys tell our listeners where they can find you? Not literally, don't give us your home address. Kate, where can we find your stuff?

[00:57:39] Kate Bernot: You can find my writing at goodbeerhunting and incraftbeerandbrewing. And you can follow me on Twitter Kate Bernot and Dave't try to tell you what is and is not Central Jersey.

[00:57:49] Justin Fonte: I will.

[00:57:50] Kate Bernot: I'll just get sad and log off Twitter for the day.

[00:57:52] Justin Fonte: I'll die on the hill for you. My solution to everything. Probably for the best.

[00:57:56] SPEAKER_??: Probably for the best.

[00:57:58] Dave Infante: Dave, where can the people find you? Yes, thank you. My name is Dave Infante. You can follow me on Twitter Dave Infante. You can also find Fingers, which is my independent newsletter about how America drinks, at fingers.substack.com. And as we mentioned at the beginning, I also file features for Vinepear, so you can find me publishing at Vinepear as well. Awesome.

[00:58:21] Justin Fonte: Thank you guys so, so much. Thanks for going over with us and going along. This was fascinating. And I'll see you for Beer Byliners.

[00:58:29] Team Jay: Yeah, and you two are welcome back anytime. Oh, we behave.

[00:58:32] Justin Fonte: Yay. Thank you to our one man audio team of Joe plus Nate and Ryan who helped us out with the recording today since we're in the studio. Justin Fonte, you guys are the best. Thanks for listening. Like, rate and review us. Check us out at brewboundlive.com and think about joining us in Santa Monica.

[00:58:52] Team Jay: Toodles. Toodles.

[00:58:55] Kate Bernot: So sorry. And hail Satan, we're out.