Brewbound Podcast: Minneapolis’ Insight Brewing on Supporting a Community in Crisis

[00:00:00] Homeland Security: 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 at booth 956 during CBC.

[00:00:28] Jessica Infante: how one Minneapolis craft brewery is operating through the city's ice crackdown, next on the Brewbound Podcast. Hello, and welcome back to the Brewbound Podcast. I'm Jessica Infante. And I'm Zoe Licata. Zoe, it's you and me again. Look how quickly that happened. Justin's at the dentist. He's not back out on leave. Don't worry. He is still among us this week.

[00:01:01] Customs Enforcement: That would be an impressive turnaround for kid number three. Yeah, it would. Miraculous.

[00:01:09] Jessica Infante: Quite a feat. Well, we do have an interview coming up. We will be speaking with Joey Steinbach, who is the marketing manager at Insight Brewing in Minneapolis. We made plans to speak with Joey before, sometime last week, before this weekend's events in the city, as I'm sure if you've been following the news, you know that there's a heightened protest due to the really heightened ICE operations going on targeting Minneapolis's immigrant population and really affecting everybody in the Twin Cities. But during a protest this weekend, one American citizen, ICU nurse who served the veteran community, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE officers as caught on several different recordings of, you know, different various bystanders in the crowd. And it continues to play out. Tensions are heightened. Anyway. I'm rambling, but we made plans with Joey last week before any of that happened. Obviously, that's the second such killing in the city just this month. But we noticed that Insight and many other breweries in Minneapolis were really positioning themselves as community hubs. And Insight Brewing particular has been collecting food and supplies. to distribute throughout other mutual aid groups that ostensibly are giving out these very much needed necessities to people who probably are terrified to leave their houses for fear of being detained and sent who knows where. So we wanted to just chat with a brewery about that insight, participated in the city's general strike on Friday where they closed for business, but they remained open and, you know, we're inviting people to come in and get warm, have some coffee and snacks. And they offered sign making materials for anybody who was going out to any of the many rallies that were happening around town and just as a gathering place for the community. So we are going to chat with Joey all about that.

[00:03:03] Customs Enforcement: Yeah, we talk a lot about how taprooms and breweries are really integrating themselves into the places where they exist. And so this is just another element of that, of how part of your business sometimes is also involving yourself in things that are going on in your community. So I think that's why it's pretty relevant for folks to hear how they're doing it, why they're doing it.

[00:03:25] Jessica Infante: Whenever I'm talking to somebody new or whatever and I mention how much of the regular news I consume and how closely you have to follow the national politics and they'll be like, why? Like it's beer. I'm like, it's all related. You gotta.

[00:03:40] Customs Enforcement: And it affects everybody and those people are the ones that are buying your beer. So whatever impacts them is going to impact you.

[00:03:46] Jessica Infante: Well, that interview is coming up, but we are going to get through some news before then. But I think that the biggest other national news story that is definitely affecting both of us, Zoe, is this winter storm. How are you doing?

[00:03:56] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. Yesterday was like the best day ever. Yesterday being Sunday because we were snowed in and then the Pats won and we're going to the Super Bowl, which is insane. And then I just got to go celebrate by running around in the snow in the empty streets, which was great. Living your best life. Yeah. Today, not a great day. A lot of shoveling. I wish this was a visual podcast so I could just show everyone the just mountains of snow that are everywhere piling up just so people can move their vehicles. It's been quite a few years since we've had something like this.

[00:04:34] Jessica Infante: I mean, I don't mean to make this weird, but you look great for somebody who has spent many hours shoveling today. Thank you. You're welcome. It's a barrage. And to play my role as the old lady here, I remember the winter of 2015 when this happened in Boston like every weekend for a month. Yeah. And I kind of feel like that's what's going on here. I'm a little scared.

[00:04:52] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. This is potentially the first of two back-to-back weekends. It's just a little scary. We had snow last week. Oh, you weren't here. Yeah, I wasn't here. This one was wild too because it was 40 states I think was the count that were affected by this storm. This one really hit everybody. So everyone else who's dealing with this, stay warm, stay safe.

[00:05:20] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:05:21] Customs Enforcement: And we feel your pain.

[00:05:23] Jessica Infante: Yeah, you're definitely earning some post-shoveling beers, that's for sure.

[00:05:27] Customs Enforcement: Yeah, definitely celebrate after.

[00:05:30] Jessica Infante: Well, so the reason that you weren't here last week is that you were at the Beer Business Daily Beer, Wine and Spirit Summit. Is that the official name now? Beer, Wine and Spirit Summit, yes. Because it was just Beer Summit, Wine and Spirit Summit, separate events, but convergence has come to our peers at Schumacher Publishing.

[00:05:48] Customs Enforcement: Yeah, it is the Beer, Wine, and Spirit Summit. Yep, in sunny San Diego, California. So it was way different. I was sending pictures like outside at the San Diego Zoo to my parents last Saturday while they were in some snow. And I really wish I was back there right now. I don't blame you. But it was gorgeous. And yeah, there's a lot of conversations that happened at the summit. And they still had this setup of kind of the first day and a half is beer and then other day and a half is wine and spirits. But I think that's more of a technicality. Like there were conversations across all of beverage alcohol throughout all the days. including one of the kind of newsier bits of the full weekend or three days, was a one-to-one conversation with Clement Pappas, who is CEO and co-founder of Stateside, aka the creators of Surfside. And he revealed some new products that are coming out because they're not done with just Surfside. We knew about one of them, which is super light, And it is their version of a kind of spiked sports drink or aid. And then the new one was Red Tiger and Purple Tiger, which are vodka sodas, essentially. One is apple flavored and one is grape flavored. That was quite an interesting announcement. I don't think anyone was really expecting that. And there's a lot of conversations afterwards about what this was. And it's their first high ABV offering. So all their other products are in that 4.5% range. This one is 10, I believe. And it's going to be a convenience store play. So that definitely got some conversations going throughout the event, as did the first really public-ish stage presence of Brandon Whitworth from Anheuser-Busch. He graced the stage to give updates on AB, including that they don't seem to really care about intoxicating hemp beverages. which was quite a statement to be made on stage after several other conversations before him were saying, hey, we're very much still interested in this category and think that we can figure something out. As most people know, there's an incoming ban happening in November, but people are trying to find out a way to stop that from happening or put some regulations in place ahead of time. But Brendan said his words, are we actually still talking about this? So that was also one of the attention grabbing remarks on stage.

[00:08:28] Jessica Infante: They do not give a fig about hemp, which, you know, that's fine. That's their prerogative. But yeah, I understand why they don't. They've got plenty of other things going on. However, I do think that category matters a lot to many other entrepreneurs.

[00:08:43] Customs Enforcement: Yeah, it was fascinating to hear directly from a large beer supplier that they really don't care about it and don't believe that it is a thing when so many other conversations were saying otherwise. So I'm curious to know why they believe that is. But there were plenty of other conversations on stage too, and we have posted a good amount of content, both myself and BevNET Spirits editor, Ferron Salniker, who came to help cover some of the Wand Wine Spirits stuff. So make sure you check out all of that because there are a lot of other good bits up there.

[00:09:21] Jessica Infante: For sure. I was not in attendance, and I know it's the last year that the Summit will be at the Hotel del Coronado, and I had really hoped to go for the last time in my life because I don't think I could afford that under normal circumstances. But I was busy throwing my husband a surprise birthday party at a brewery, so. Good for you. Right? Just doing my part to help the segment.

[00:09:45] Customs Enforcement: So yeah, no more Dell. No more Dell.

[00:09:48] Jessica Infante: Bummer.

[00:09:48] Customs Enforcement: It'll now be at the Breakers, I believe, for the next five years at least.

[00:09:53] Jessica Infante: The Breakers is gorgeous.

[00:09:54] Customs Enforcement: Gorgeous place, but Palm Beach, I don't think as great as San Diego. You heard it here first.

[00:10:02] Jessica Infante: No, man, I would agree with you on that.

[00:10:12] Insight Brewing: Apologies to Florida. Don't apologize to Florida.

[00:10:30] Jessica Infante: So in other news, you also, not to make you keep talking, but you covered Lester Jones's quarterly webinar last week. What were big themes from that other than Lester going hard on the Big Lebowski?

[00:10:43] Customs Enforcement: Yeah, it was a Big Lebowski themed presentation, which I'm going to admit I have not seen, so I didn't understand all of his references. Oh, you should watch it. It's good. Yeah. But one thing that kind of connects his conversation and what you're just talking about at the summit was Harry Schumacher from Beer Business Daily's kind of opening keynote remarks talked a lot about pricing and how beer's model of you can increase price and demand will still go up is not necessarily working as much as it used to. And so prices are going up, but demand is going down. and Lester kicked off his presentation with that fresh in his mind saying that might not necessarily be the case that that might misrepresent what's actually going on and he pointed a lot to what's happening in the on-premise and there's still a lot of pricing power he said in the on-premise Prices are pretty high there. Going out is very expensive. Those price increases tend to be above just general inflationary increases. So it's pricey, but people are still going and demand is going up still. So there is still potential to use that model that has worked for 20 years now in the on-premise. So he kept trying to have a very positive perspective on everything that is going on in alcohol and kind of dove into everything that is happening there. So we have coverage that should be on the site by the time this episode is out diving into all the nitty gritty numbers there. But really emphasizing, hey, look at this place, the on premise bars and restaurants that beer has been able to really capitalize and connect with consumers for so long. We still have so much opportunity to really focus there. brands that are doing that already are being rewarded for it.

[00:12:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think the way that people kind of think about it is when you go to a restaurant, like you're there, you're there to spend money. Like this is the price of admission. Like as mentioned, husband's birthday, we then went out for dinner on Wednesday, which was his actual birthday. And we did a round of drinks and oysters before the restaurant, two cocktails, one beer, a dozen oysters, including tip $100. That's banana town. And obviously I paid it because this is what we're here to do. So I think Lester's theory on pricing, I think holds for the on-premise, but I don't think that always translates because no one needs to have a case of beer in their fridge. It's not like a necessity. You know, it's also review season here at Ye Olde BevNET CPG Media. So during my review, Justin and I last week were talking about just like how to strategize our content better and like, are we doing some things we don't need to be doing? And specifically the CPI came up and it's a monthly thing. I don't know what the readership levels are of our CPI reporting, but I think it's helpful for us to do. It's a good exercise because you remember last year, end of year 2024, when the BI data came out about how awful beer volume was. you could almost pin it directly to the months that beer at home, way over indexed versus general inflation was the same months that were like catastrophically bad for beer. So, I mean, hey, if you like getting these CPI reports every month, let us know. You also got to think about the speaker's audience, like Lester, who I love and is a genius, but his peeps are the MBWA and their sales audience is retailers. So of course you want to be able to tell retailers like, hey, our product keeps pace with inflation or even beats it. Like, yes, that's absolutely something retailers want to hear.

[00:14:18] Customs Enforcement: Yeah.

[00:14:19] Jessica Infante: Lots of ins outs and what have you.

[00:14:21] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. Just one more positive takeaway. Draft had a really good year. And look at that. In terms of specifically on share of on-premise retailer spending and share of on-premise beer, they went up from 50% at the end of 2024 to 55.1% at the end of 2025 in terms of retailer spending. So some good stuff happening for draft, which is very positive to hear.

[00:14:50] Jessica Infante: I think that's very positive.

[00:14:51] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. That makes me happy. I'm curious how much of that was investment in Guinness.

[00:14:58] Jessica Infante: A good point. Well, what else is going on? It's Super Bowl ad season, kind of.

[00:15:04] Customs Enforcement: Kind of. It's been, I don't want to say the word, but there hasn't been as much hype from as big of a variety of folks I feel like this year than there has been in years past when it comes to Super Bowl ads. Yeah.

[00:15:19] Jessica Infante: I mean, maybe also people are just taking the national temperature and are thinking like, I'm not putting this out there right now.

[00:15:26] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. I think that's definitely a massive factor. And when, you know, folks are dealing with Depending on who you talk to, the state of consumers and when it comes to the state of the economy, how they feel about things is all over the place. But I think that still is also a factor too of, hey, do you want to brag about how you're spending $8 million on a 30-second ad right now? Maybe not. Maybe not. But we have seen a few things, including Anheuser-Busch seems to really be reinvested in the Super Bowl this year. They did that a little bit last year and this year, even more so. After, you know, they were the exclusive beer folks there for a long time. The exclusive alcohol folks. Yeah, for a really long time. Crazy. And then they ended that and then they've totally been coming back. And this year, Coming back full force with Bud Light, Budweiser, and Michelob Ultra. So those ads are rolling out so you can keep up to date in the newsletter and other things that whenever those come out. But the latest was Budweiser really leaning into the American spirit of 2026, bringing back Clydesdales, also bringing back a new friend, which is a bald eagle. Very America. I mean, is that the friend that's under the bucket? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. So what Jess is referring to is there was a teaser was released beforehand of the Clydesdales are in a barn hearing a rattling under a bucket of a potential new creature. And we believe that is the baby bald eagle.

[00:16:59] Jessica Infante: Yeah, we did think it was a frog. Maybe there's two commercial. I don't know. We could be wrong. Maybe the frog will come back.

[00:17:07] Customs Enforcement: Right now it's a bald eagle and Clydesdale friends with a quick snippet of a Dalmatian with naturally Lunar Skinner's free bird playing in the background. Obviously, what else do you go with there? Which I think I have heard more in the past, I don't know, three years or so than I have in a very long time. Really? I think it was because when we had the Four Nations hockey tournament, was that two years ago? That was the goal song for the U.S. team. I feel like that really reignited folks obsessing over that song for a hot minute, and then it just never went away. So you'll hear it again February 8th, Super Bowl Sunday, where the Patriots will hopefully defeat the Seattle Seahawks.

[00:17:55] Jessica Infante: Well, do you feel good about this? Because I feel like this is all teeing up to be like the Patriots here.

[00:18:01] Customs Enforcement: Several people asked me about this, and I'm just happy to be here. I can't believe I don't think it's fully set in as we're recording this. This is less than 24 hours after we have won our conference championship and are going to the Super Bowl. And I don't think that is fully set in at all. I thought we were going to win maybe like six or seven games this year, and we won 14, not including playoffs.

[00:18:22] Jessica Infante: Well, when I was planning Ryan's birthday, in my head, I didn't even think, like, oh, like, maybe the Pats will be doing something because, like, they've been bad. Right? Yeah. Thankfully, like, Notch had a TV in the party room, so the game was on. But like, I don't know how many people would have bailed if I didn't send out that message, like, please still come to his party. The game will be on.

[00:18:42] Customs Enforcement: Yeah. The whole, like, story of this year has been that the two seasons before this, the Pats were three and 14. And this year they were 14-3 and now are going to the Super Bowl. So it's crazy. I can't believe it's happening. I really can't. And to any haters out there, I'm sorry. Honestly. You're not sorry. I just can't believe the luck that we have. I can understand why you hate us, but I'm happy to be hated right now.

[00:19:13] Jessica Infante: with like the the nation's birthday, it just makes sense. Yeah. You know, am I trying to connect?

[00:19:19] Customs Enforcement: No, you know what? That is so right. You are so right. What other team is more appropriate to win on the 250th anniversary of this country than the New England Patriots? No one. And that is why now I'm even more confident. Fate is aligning. So 250th anniversary, it is impacting Super Bowl ads. It is impacting potentially the fate of the Super Bowl. But it is also impacting how we are talking about the state of the country. And so that is what we will be talking about in our featured interview. Because you can't talk about good stuff without also talking about the current modern era of America. So should we jump into our featured interview? I think we should.

[00:20:06] Jessica Infante: What a great cue up. Let's go. Minnesota has been ground zero for the Trump administration's ice crackdown, which has led to clashes with protesters and the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens. It has been a major national news story, and it's really, I'm sure, been difficult to live through for all the citizens. But here to talk about how Minneapolis's craft breweries are supporting the community is Insight Brewing Marketing Manager Joey Steinbach. Joey, how you doing?

[00:20:35] Department of Homeland: Well, are we allowed to cuss on this podcast?

[00:20:38] Jessica Infante: You are absolutely allowed to cuss. Nobody cusses on this podcast more than I do. So go right ahead.

[00:20:44] Department of Homeland: Yeah, I mean, we're not doing fucking great. It's it's hard. It's been really hard. But we've been really stepping up in the community and, you know, just witnessing the organization from even just my personal community, my neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis. It's staggering. Like the people are really showing up for this.

[00:21:02] Jessica Infante: It's just been impressive to watch from the outside. I know you've had sub-zero temperatures for a while now. And just to see how you guys have taken to the streets in response to everything that's going on is, you know, like I'm a big old baby. I don't know that I could do it. So it's, it's impressive.

[00:21:19] Department of Homeland: Yeah. I mean, you know, we're built for it. I think the most recent protests that got down to like negative 20 before windchill, but you know, that's nothing that's easy and it's worth it.

[00:21:31] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Well, I mean, let's set the stage here a little bit because I've been watching what you guys have been posting on social and Insight has really stepped up to support the community. You're collecting donations of food and supplies to be distributed throughout the community at a time when many residents might be fearful of leaving their homes. Why was this important for Insight to do?

[00:21:48] Department of Homeland: I'm not sure if it was important for Insight to do. I think it's just the right thing to do. We do have a platform and we do have a voice. You know, we're not one of the biggest names in the game by any means, but we've got a decent social media reach and watching everything happening in our direct community, you know, Insight Brewing is a Northeast Minneapolis brewery. And it's just so hard, like even, you know, like we have a resident food truck on Tuesdays, OG Zaza, and they had one of their members grabbed by ice kind of when this was all starting. And it's. like it is that close to home, you know, and it just felt wrong to stay silent about it, despite people thinking that politics and beer don't really align. But, you know, if you go back to the origins of tap rooms, it's like, you know, pubs, it's a public house, you know, it's a community space. It's not just about pushing a product. It's not just about the bottom dollar. It's definitely a community space for everyone, especially including our immigrant neighbors.

[00:22:49] Jessica Infante: And one thing that's always stuck out in my mind about Minnesota in general, but Minneapolis in particular, is you have a robust immigrant population from all over the world. I mean, my assumption is that this has really changed your community for the better in terms of how much culture comes into town. And, you know, you have people from all these different places, like I'm sure you have like a wide variety of different kinds of restaurants. And I think, unfortunately, that probably is what has put a bit of a target on the city for the administration right now. But what is the city generally like other than before, you know, Operation Metro Surge started?

[00:23:23] Department of Homeland: Yeah, I mean, before all this started happening, I mean, we've got one of the biggest Somali communities in the country. We also have a really robust Hmong population. We have a lot of Hispanic population. And it's like we have some of the best food in the Midwest. We have Eat Street that has Thai places. It has Japanese spots. It's got Vietnamese places. It's got Mung Kitchen. It's got, you know, like the list goes on. I live in Northeast Minneapolis, like I mentioned, and all up and down Central Avenue is almost 100% immigrant owned and operated businesses. And we've been a huge center for ICE activity. And it's just been so difficult because you just drive up and down the street and you see places that are closing down until all of this blows over or you see community members standing out in front of the business with their whistles at the ready. And, you know, they lock the doors and they kind of like peek through the window just to make sure that, you know, the person's good to come in. It's just been so much different ever since all of this has started happening.

[00:24:22] Jessica Infante: I mean, it's terrifying to think that, you know, your neighborhood bakery is operating like a speakeasy, you know?

[00:24:26] Department of Homeland: Honestly, yeah. We have some people that are only letting people in through the back door because it's less visible from the street.

[00:24:33] Jessica Infante: So you mentioned whistles and I do want to touch on that a little bit because I think I read that Insight has been distributing them, right? And I think it's something that really started in Minneapolis, right? This alert system?

[00:24:45] Department of Homeland: Yeah, as far as I know. Yeah, it's been really interesting because everything evolved so quickly too. It went from ICE agents showing up in Minneapolis to a few different things I had noticed on social media like, hey, get an ICE whistle. and how to be a legal observer. And the whistles have been a really big thing in our community specifically. It's almost like a, it's a way to say that I'm on your side. You know, people walk around the neighborhood kind of monitoring the situation and then they have the whistles, very visible, usually very brightly colored, always plastic because it's too cold for metal whistles right now. It'll freeze to your lips. Yeah, I mean, just how, for lack of a better word, tactical, the use of the whistles have been. It's been really inspiring how quickly this grassroots organizing kind of came together.

[00:25:39] Jessica Infante: So, you know, you guys participated in the general strike that happened last Friday. I checked the socials of a lot of the breweries in town and many of them were doing it. You effectively shut down for business, but you were still open as a gathering space to disseminate whistles, but also coffee and snacks and sign making materials. What was that day like for you?

[00:25:59] Department of Homeland: That day was so truly inspiring. So yeah, we did shut down for regular business. We weren't serving or selling anything. Any staff that we had there was volunteering their time just to gather donations from the community. And that day, I mean, we had so many people come through before and during the protests that day, but we had just hundreds of pounds of food come through, diapers, winter wear, people donating hand warmers, donating more coffee. Some local celebrities were coming through too in support, and we're just really stoked about what we were doing. But my birthday was the day before, and so I was in... Thank you, thank you. The ripe old age of 34 now. So that day, I was miserably hungover. And... I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this because there's just all these people coming in. But then each member of the community was like, what do you need help with? We can help organize. We can help drive to the food bank. We can run to families that you need. Like literally just people off the street being like, put me to work and they would go do it. And we had hundreds of people come through that day. It was so inspiring, despite how terrible I felt.

[00:27:10] Jessica Infante: Well, so it's interesting that you bring that up because it was still your birthday. You still celebrated, you know, as we were talking before we started recording, like it's a snow day here in Massachusetts. So I've got my two-year-old home with me. I wrote these questions for our conversation standing at my kitchen while she had a dance party to my playlist of 90s EDM hits. And it's just, it feels weird that like life still goes on. even amid what's happening in Minneapolis, what's happening in Maine, where these gangs of armed federal agents are taking people from their communities, but they're also shooting and killing American citizens in incidents that have been recorded by bystanders, you know, as now happened twice in your city, which is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. It's odd that we all still have to carry on. So what's this like for you and the team? How does it feel to be operating a brewery taproom during all of this?

[00:28:02] Department of Homeland: Yeah, I mean, it's hard. Like it's definitely affecting our team pretty heavily. In one way, it's good to still be open and still doing stuff. It's a distraction for us and it's a distraction for other people. And I know it's hard to like want to be distracted right now. Like there's so much to be mad at. There's so many things you can do to be active, but you have to take breaks for yourself. They say rest refuels the revolution. So I think that's kind of the space that we're trying to provide. We're still doing like our normal weekly programming. Like we have bingo on Mondays and trivia on Tuesdays, cribbage tournaments on Thursdays, you know, game nights on Wednesdays, but it's kind of hard to, You know, even in my role as the person that kind of runs our external communications, like social media specifically, I don't know what kind of voice to use right now. You know, like there's things that we had booked before all of this. And we're not going to necessarily cancel them if we don't need to, but it's also just like, how do I say, Hey, come do a cooking class about mozzarella while there's people being murdered on the street, you know, like finding that voice. has been so difficult and it feels a little inauthentic to post about anything other than what's happening and ways that we're supporting. And I think the food drive, which we're continuing to do, we're basically just going to run it until we don't have to, which is hopefully going to be sooner than later, but that's been giving myself for sure and I know a few other of our our staff members a little bit of purpose because we are still receiving overwhelming amounts of donations and having something to do besides, you know, patrolling your neighborhood or going to the protests, going to the marches, writing and calling your senators. It's a very like one-to-one thing that we can do where we feel like we're making an impact.

[00:30:01] Jessica Infante: That's huge. And let's talk about that food drive a little bit. I noticed that you're giving a token for a free pint to anybody who donates, right?

[00:30:09] Department of Homeland: Yeah, that's great. That was primarily for Friday, just because, you know, participating in the strike, it was like, we're not going to be serving you anything. You can't drink anything here. That's not the point, you know. But here's a pint token for the next time you come around. But as we've continued with this food shelf situation, we are just offering free pints day of now. And there's not like any strict amount, you know, it's just kind of like, don't be shitty about it. Don't bring us a can of soup.

[00:30:39] Jessica Infante: So you are collecting all this stuff. What are the logistics like? Because you're not then disseminating it, right? You give it to mutual aid groups in the area?

[00:30:46] Department of Homeland: That is correct. Yeah, we primarily work with local organizations that are doing direct-to-family deliveries. We also have some people who are regulars at the taproom and even some of our employees that are assigned specific families, and we'll shop for them. Great. And so those people in our community just literally walk back to the offices where we've organized this food shelf and just shop whenever they want to. That's awesome. a resource, yeah.

[00:31:11] Jessica Infante: Because, I mean, the logistics of getting this food out to who it needs to go to would be just an added layer of complexity that you guys don't really need. You're doing so much right now and there are groups that are doing that work. So it's great that you can be part of the funnel, but you don't have to run the whole thing.

[00:31:26] Department of Homeland: Right. I mean, I'm very new to kind of managing a food shelf right now, but fortunately I've got a shout out to my boy Cable. He's one of our packaging people at Insight. He's been really stepping up and kind of making it his own. But, you know, when we get overloaded, we can't just rely on those single shoppers. So we'll, you know, get somebody from the community to come in and deliver it to a local food bank or even use our delivery vans if we get enough, you know, like those 10 foot sprinter vans. Great.

[00:31:53] Jessica Infante: So logistically, if another brewery wanted to do something similar, what advice would you give them?

[00:31:57] Department of Homeland: I would say if you're starting a food drive like this, make sure that you allocate space for it and definitely have destinations in mind, whether it's having a mutual aid group that you're working with directly or a food bank that you know that you can get food to in case you do get overwhelmed. Other than that, just, you know, be very clear about the needs of your community. Like for us, we've seen a lot of need for, like, dried beans, tortillas, canned proteins, and, like, more traditional, like, Latin food in our neighborhood specifically. So, like, people keep buying Kraft Mac and cheese, but we're looking for, you know, we're looking for a tub of lard, we're looking for corn tortillas, we're looking for, like, a three-bean dry bag mix and brown rice, you know. So being very aware of the needs in your community and clear about communicating it to

[00:32:49] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I mean, I will hop on that soapbox all day. If you're looking to donate to a food pantry or something that helps with food insecurity, like you got to be mindful of that stuff. You got to think about who the end user is and for the love of Christ, do not donate expired stuff.

[00:33:03] Department of Homeland: Oh yeah. No, we've, we've seen that too. Somebody came in with a box of half empty cosmetics and shampoos, conditioners, lotions, and like, there's like a layer of like slime on the side. Yeah. What are you thinking? We're not a garbage disposal. Exactly.

[00:33:19] Jessica Infante: It's basically, here, you throw this away. God. Funny that this is a universal experience, unfortunately. Yeah. I do want to go back to something that you mentioned. You run all the social media and Insight has been really vocal. I saw you had made a post not long after the killing of Renee Good saying how you were speaking out. You were not okay with what was happening in your town. And the response that I saw in the comments was mostly positive, but what's been the response to the brewery taking a stand on important matters? What are your followers saying? Or maybe not your followers, but general random people on social media. And does that matter?

[00:33:57] Department of Homeland: I'll start with the second question. I don't think it really matters. I mean, if it comes down to like a business bottom line, you know, it might matter if enough people get mad at us for you know, being mad that the government is murdering people, but it's not really going to bother us. We're going to keep doing our thing. But I would say the response has been overwhelmingly positive, like probably 90, 95 percent. For some reason, we still had an X account for a while, you know, Twitter, too. And. I did post it there and boy, howdy, I have never seen such a flowery language, we'll say.

[00:34:37] Jessica Infante: Oh, that is very polite of you.

[00:34:40] Department of Homeland: Yeah. I mean, they were calling us slurs. We're getting death threats. We actually deleted our account on X, which is fine. It didn't really do much for us anyway. Most of our traction is on threads, Facebook and Instagram. But yeah, I mean, on Facebook and Instagram, a few outliers that were vocally against us taking a stance. But otherwise, I mean, it's people in you know, people on the West coast and people on the East coast seeing this post for some reason, like, Hey, we're sending you love from wherever, like love from Ohio or Florida. It's like, Oh, dang, I don't know why you're seeing this. Like we're a company with 22,000 followers on Instagram, but sure. That's great. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's been really nice to see the support we've gotten from the community and with January traditionally being one of our slowest months of the year. We are actually up by a significant margin from last year, which is not what it's about. Obviously, like, we're not making a stance so that we become the hip brewery that people come to in these really hard times, but it's been really refreshing just to see. people choosing to spend whatever time they need to rest and refuel with us. That's great. Because they know that we're a safe space for our community.

[00:35:55] Jessica Infante: That's great. Well, how do you train the staff to handle stuff like this? What conversations have you had to have with the team?

[00:36:01] Department of Homeland: In like the event that ICE did visit our location? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, we didn't really have to do much. As soon as all this started happening and our Minnesota community put together all these different training programs, like everyone kind of just hopped on it voluntarily as soon as they could. And we were just texting each other back and forth in group text or even in our company Slack, like, hey, here's a link to a legal observer training if you'd like to sign up. And sure enough, like they carpooled to go there together. You know, everyone kind of took their own initiative on how to approach this situation and educated themselves on what to do if ICE did come to our doorstep. We also did print out some pamphlets that's available to the general public, but is also useful for us. That's like, you know, everyone's welcome here except ICE. Here's what you do if they come, here's your rights, you know, do this, don't do this. So it just kind of all happened naturally. Wow. We didn't do any company-wide training or anything like that.

[00:36:58] Jessica Infante: That's great. And how has this affected how you're planning ahead this year? Is it? Do you have one plan for if ICE leaves Minneapolis and one plan for if they stay? I don't even really know how you run a taproom business under these conditions.

[00:37:13] Department of Homeland: I mean, yeah, we're working on it. I'm fortunate enough to have some really solid coworkers, like our taproom manager, Jose. He's been rolling with the punches and we've had some really difficult time scheduling people just with everything that's going on. I used to be a bartender before I moved into my marketing role. I ended up bartending alone one day so that a few of our staff members could go to the protest. So we're all just kind of like keeping it fluid. We're looking out for each other. We're supporting each other when we can. I've got dates for things I want to do in 2026, but it feels hard to book anything right now, like for a lot of musicians or like booking a stage or booking food trucks. Like, what does that look like in a month or two months or three months? We've got a rough outline of what we're looking to do, but execution is going to be a whole other story.

[00:38:04] Jessica Infante: For sure. I do want to go back to one thing you mentioned a while back, which was that pubs are an important public gathering place. But thinking back, nerdy fact about me, I had a part-time job almost 10 years ago now guiding historic pub crawls in Boston.

[00:38:21] Department of Homeland: Oh, cool.

[00:38:21] Jessica Infante: Where we talked... Yeah, I'm a loser. And we talked about, you know, we hit four different bars and talked about the American Revolution, which really focuses a lot on taverns. Like all of that was organized through conversations in taverns. And it's hard for me to remember my tour script from back then, but it just feels eerily similar to like the occupation of Boston to me feels a lot like what's happening right now. Like British troops came in in numbers that overwhelm the city. I don't know where I'm going with this, but basically it feels a lot like what's happening in your city is rhyming a little bit with stuff that happened 251 years ago.

[00:39:00] Department of Homeland: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so many historical equivalents you can draw, you know, I don't want to talk about anything too dark, obviously, but I mean, I'm hoping it ends up more like Napoleon trying to take Russia and his troops just getting frozen out, you know? Hopefully ice can't stand the cold in Minnesota.

[00:39:20] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I mean, don't invade a winter people in the winter.

[00:39:23] Department of Homeland: Damn right.

[00:39:26] Jessica Infante: Have you had any interactions with any of your local leaders and elected officials?

[00:39:31] Department of Homeland: Well, that's, it's, it's a tough one. I mean, we've always been a fairly liberal progressive state, obviously. But, um, I guess this is more of a personal thing. than a statement I can make for the brewery or for Minnesota, but it seems like they're not really doing much. There's a few that have been really active in the community, but in lower stations of power. A lot of them are out on the streets. They're at the protests. They're at these food drives. They're putting their best foot forward, but with the people that have the ability to make change, there's been promises or statements made, but not really a lot of traction outside of that, which has been difficult. It seems like this really has just kind of come down to the people to manage, which is a bit of a bummer.

[00:40:26] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it is. Well, Joey, you guys are doing some awesome work out there. And I just thank you for taking the time to talk to us because I know you're busy. So thank you so, so much for joining the podcast today.

[00:40:40] Department of Homeland: Yeah. Thank you for having me. This was a treat.

[00:40:43] Jessica Infante: And that's our show for this week. Thank you for listening. The Brewbound Podcast is a production of BevNET CPG. Our audio engineer for the Brewbound Podcast is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski. Our designer is Amanda Huang. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends and review us on your listening platform of choice. You can find our work at Brewbound.com. And we also welcome feedback and suggestions at podcast at Brewbound.com. On behalf of the entire Brewbound Podcast team, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.