Brewbound Podcast: Misconduct and Misogyny in the Beer Industry

[00:00:00] Jessica Infante: 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 Check 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 Check Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. This episode includes a discussion about the revelations of widespread harassment and misconduct in the beer industry and contains language that may be upsetting to some listeners.

[00:00:49] Justin Kendall: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a special edition of Check Brewbound Podcast. My name is Justin Kendall, and I am the editor of Brewbound, and I am joined by Brewbound reporter, Jessica Infante. Jess, I would ask you how you're doing, but I think the last two weeks in this industry, I don't even know how I would describe how anyone is feeling these days.

[00:01:16] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I think we're all a little rattled. It's certainly been quite a two weeks, but honestly it's been a decade for me, so.

[00:01:25] Justin Kendall: Yeah, decade referencing your time working in the beer industry.

[00:01:31] Jessica Infante: Yes, as a woman. And yeah, I guess we should just kind of get right into what we're talking about here. The beer industry is really having its own reckoning with ongoing allegations of widespread sexism, sexual harassment, toxic work environments. sexual assault, rape, misogyny. You know, we've covered this pretty closely. So we thought that doing a special episode to just break it down for all of the podcast listeners would be really helpful to share what's been going on with everyone. So how should we start this? From the top?

[00:02:08] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I guess we should just break down a little bit of how this got started. And I would say why, but we know that there is a systemic undercurrent of toxic behavior in this industry. We don't have to pretend that there isn't and just go from there. So yeah, I'll let you hit it. And the less I talk, probably the better.

[00:02:34] Jessica Infante: So beginning back on May 11th, Breanne Allen, who's the production manager for Notch Brewing, which is located in my hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. Notch is opening a second location. Breanne had been on site at that new location when equipment was being delivered and a contractor on the site said something flippant to her about, are you sure you're the brewer? Something along those lines. It's one of those throwaway comments that a lot of us hear all the time. Like you can't possibly like beer or, oh, I bet you only like the fruity wheat beers. You know, people just make assumptions. based on the fact that you're a woman who's into beer and it happens daily nationwide to everyone. So Breanne was a little peeved. She goes on her Instagram story and uses the question function to say, when have you experienced sexism? And women start answering her and she started sharing them. And a lot of them are comments along those lines, just like the stupid stuff that all of us get all the time. But then things kind of escalated and people started sharing experiences they've had with discrimination in the workplace, sexist behavior, sexist comments, up to and including rape and sexual assault. And people started naming names. It was basically, you know, what we call a whisper network, but come to life almost. I mean, whisper networks are obviously very much alive, but it was a way that everybody could see it. And if you've never heard the term Whisper Network, you know, it really kind of came to be during the Me Too reckoning of, what was that, 2017, when women started sharing stories about, you know, abusers they've encountered, particularly in the film industry. So people will say things to each other, you know, person to person, don't work with so-and-so, so-and-so said this, things like that. And that's kind of one of the mechanisms that women use to help each other in these situations that can be challenging.

[00:04:22] Justin Kendall: I think this gets to one thing that you sort of pointed out on Twitter is there's a reason that we don't hear a lot of these voices come out. And I'll let you take it from there.

[00:04:36] Jessica Infante: Yeah, exactly. The reason that we don't, you know, if you hadn't heard about these terrible conditions that the women writing into Breanne were sharing, it's probably because a lot of times women don't share them. So there's a few reasons for that. You don't want to get labeled as being difficult. So you usually, if you're in these tough situations, sometimes it's easier just to keep your mouth shut, put your head down and keep working. Or if you do make a complaint and raise some issues up to management occasionally, then you do get branded as being difficult. And you, unfortunately, there can be all sorts of fallout. So a lot of times when people leave these difficult work situations, they end up having to sign agreements saying they won't disparage their former employer. And that's usually, your severance package is conditioned upon you signing that. So there's a lot of institutional things that go into keeping all of these things quiet.

[00:05:27] Justin Kendall: with these NDAs, is there a limitation on them or do they go in perpetuity?

[00:05:34] Jessica Infante: The ones I've seen are in perpetuity and I'm not really sure how enforceable that really is, but in order to find out whether or not that's enforceable, you'd have to enlist the help of a lawyer and a lot of people can't afford that. A lot of the accounts that Brienne is sharing are stories that come from women who are taproom staff, and these are bartending jobs. Sometimes they're part-time jobs. I've been in the service industry as a waitress in college. You don't have the kind of money saved up to hire a lawyer, and you're probably a little afraid. The beer industry, although there are over 8,000 craft breweries in this country, is really tight-knit, especially geographically, and you don't want to run the risk of ruining your reputation and ruining your ability to get employment elsewhere. So speaking up, usually, honestly, probably not worth it. Brienne gave a platform to people to share all those stories that they were too scared to share any other way. And I think there are so many women with these experiences that the sheer volume of them is just crushing.

[00:06:40] Justin Kendall: One of the things that I noticed on Monday was that Notch owner, Chris Loring, said that they plan on setting up a third party anonymous reporting system for such instances, because as Loring wrote, they had a part-time employee who worked as a taproom shift supervisor who was accused of sexually harassing another industry employee at a bar in Salem. And ultimately, They went through the HR process, and HR suggested a written warning.

[00:07:12] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and Chris even writes that he had asked if the right thing to do would be to terminate the employee, but the HR service said no. As you said, they suggested a written warning delivered face-to-face. And so I believe that was what they did, but as time went by, it had been discovered that this problematic employee had Where is it? So Chris writes on Instagram, the same employee had earlier been involved in two separate incidents with Notch employees, but they were never reported. And this was during a time when the management team was three quarters female. So clearly we need to do better to implement a culture where reporting is easy, confidential, and safe. You know, like you don't wanna be seen as a complainer or weak or whiny. You know, we as women, we face so many obstacles with people's perception of us that you never want to do anything that gives anybody any kind of ammunition to think less of you. I can see these women, you know, having gone through whatever happened with this employee and just feeling like, I'm not gonna say anything. I don't want to make any waves. We're also socially conditioned to want everyone to like us and to be nice to everybody.

[00:08:24] Justin Kendall: So why do you think this time is different? Because as we've seen since this started on May 11th, People have called it a reckoning. And for some people, it is definitely been a reckoning. There've been changes made to top level positions. There've been lower level positions that have been let go. There have been ownership that stepped away from their day-to-day operations. That doesn't mean that they're not still owners of these companies. Why do you think it was so powerful this time?

[00:08:59] Jessica Infante: We've talked about this a lot, and I think there's two things here that make this different. One is just the sheer volume of the complaints. Brianne's got almost a thousand accounts shared to her Instagram, which is at rap magnet, if you have not checked it out. And the other thing, and you brought this up the first time we talked about this, was the names of the breweries involved. I think a lot of these breweries have been held up as paragons of the industry, both for the beers they produce, and in some cases, their founders have become folk heroes. So I think that was kind of what shook some people was, oh, this is my favorite brewery. They can be caught up in this. I think that really was the accelerant here.

[00:09:44] Justin Kendall: And you mentioned the reach. Brienne's Instagram has gone from about 2,000 followers to now more than 57,000. God. That's huge.

[00:09:56] Jessica Infante: That's massive.

[00:09:58] Justin Kendall: It is. Let's run down some of the fallout that we've seen since this started.

[00:10:06] Jessica Infante: We really started, I mean, we had been following it, but I really started covering everything on May 18th. it had like a week to kind of get up to like a boiling temperature. On Tuesday, May 18th, we reported that the founder of Tired Hands, Gene Broilette, I might be pronouncing that wrong, Gene had stepped down. Gene had himself posted to Tired Hands Instagram on Monday the 17th, acknowledging that they'd been named many times and that he was going to step away for a little bit. Tuesday, the 18th, that post came down and a new post replaced it that was posted by the staff. And they said that they had asked him to step down. And they thanked Breanne for her work. They said, quote, we, the existing staff, will remain in place and continue operating as we search for new leadership to build a stronger culture here. The recent outpouring of stories about our industry have unified us in addressing our own experiences, and we stand in solidarity with anyone that has ever experienced toxic workplace abuse, racism, or sexism in the brewing industry, including our coworkers past and present." That was huge news that the founder of an extraordinarily popular brewery in Pennsylvania had stepped away. And as you mentioned, we still don't know what that means for his ownership stakes. So that happened, and then the director of sales at Connecticut Valley Brewing in Connecticut, obviously, was dismissed from his position. He had been named several times as somebody who has behaved extraordinarily inappropriately. And I had even heard stories about this particular person's inappropriate behaviors just in my years being in the beer industry in and around New England. The third brewery that prominently featured in our first story about this incident was Modern Times. Modern Times is headquartered in San Diego. They have nearly 10 taproons up and down the West Coast. They distribute beer as far east as Texas, and they do some spot drops on the East Coast, but permanent distribution as far east as Texas. Modern Times had terminated an employee who ran their league. His title was the league coordinator. His title on LinkedIn was the party lord, but this person was named in a few accounts shared to Breanne's profile for inappropriate behavior. And a few accounts also mentioned that this one particular problematic employee, when called on his problematic behaviors, would occasionally invoke the fact that he was close with Modern Times founder and CEO, Jacob McKean. At the time that we published that story, that was what we had. Later that night, it was like 10, 15 East Coast time, I was getting ready for bed and saw that Modern Times had posted something else from Jacob himself saying that he was stepping down. And one of the things that happened here was that Modern Times' Oakland taproom, their staff created their own Instagram account and posted saying they would not be pouring beer until they saw more meaningful change.

[00:13:09] Justin Kendall: And that's something that we've seen sort of throughout this is there's a bit of solidarity going on with workers stepping up.

[00:13:20] Jessica Infante: Brianne's story also had a mention of tired hand staff stopping work for a day or two before Gene announced that he was stepping down. So there's definitely a lot of workers rising up because, I mean, who does a toxic workplace affect the most? The staff. And if you're in charge of a super toxic workplace that you have built and created, these founder-led stories are so common in craft beer. we almost have some companies that are synonymous with their founders. If you were the face of a company that has this toxic culture that results in employees being abused, what other option do you have but to step down?

[00:14:01] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I understand that. You got to step down from the day-to-day operations. And I think that the one thing that I and a lot of people will be watching here on out is what happens with the ownership stake. Ultimately, some of the people who have been accused in these instances are still in ownership stakes. They hold ownership stakes of these companies. So they're still going to financially benefit from these companies, from the work of their employees who are trying to put the pieces back together. Does this end up with a sale of a company, you know, a divestment? What happens next is sort of. the other shoe that I'm waiting to see drop on some of these things that, you know, these deals don't get done overnight. So it could take time in a lot of these cases, but then in some cases, it doesn't seem like the ownership that has been accused of things are stepping away from the daily operations.

[00:15:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and that dovetails with what we covered today. So last week, Brienne dedicated a whole day to sharing stories from employees of Philadelphia breweries that had problematic experiences. And one that was mentioned many times was Evil Genius. They're based in Philly. And I had reached out during the day, spoke with one of the founders and said they would have a statement. But as the day went on, we never heard again. During the day, one of their founders, Trevor Hayward, resigned from his seat on the board of directors of Philly Loves Beer, which is the nonprofit organization that hosts Philly Beer Week, among other things. That broke on Friday, but we still didn't hear anything from the brewery itself. On Saturday, the leadership of Evil Genius took to Instagram and they posted a seven slide carousel story with their statement, and they owned up to some things. They said, we've made mistakes in leading Evil Genius. It has not always been the place we want it to be, and we take responsibility for that. And they detailed that they had had a meeting with staff and staff told them some difficult things and everybody had a conversation and they walked out of it with a few action items. They're going to start a diversity, equity and inclusion committee made up of staff from across the brewery to offer guidance to leadership. They're going to expand recruitment efforts to intentionally recruit a more diverse team that more closely represents the Philadelphia community. They're gonna make changes to brewery policies to make sure they have a safe and inclusive environment for every member of our team. I did chat with co-founder Luke Bowen a little today, and he shared that they also had retained the services of an external HR company back on April 8th. So that was a while, you know, obviously more than a month before this all started. But neither of those founders are stepping down. Now, shortly after that post, the staff made a post of their own. 18 people signed onto it. I asked if that represented the entire staff. I asked how many people were on staff. I did not get an answer. But the staff says that they're thankful to Breanne for bringing the toxicity, misogyny, discrimination, and harassment that exists in the craft beer industry to light. They agreed they had a very open but difficult conversation with the leadership. And they said that they have faith in the team's ability to lead them through this. So we'll see what happens. But one thing that I think is pretty clear from many of these breweries is that they don't have formalized HR departments. And these are small companies, so that's not surprising.

[00:17:43] Justin Kendall: It's not surprising, but you see where things can go awry when you don't have that in place and you see the obvious need for it. But also in some cases, like we saw with Boulevard, even if there is an HR in place, it doesn't always benefit the employee.

[00:18:07] Jessica Infante: Right, and this probably has a lot to do with why women don't come forward even when there is HR in place. People tend to believe that HR is there to protect the company. It's not there to protect the workers.

[00:18:18] Justin Kendall: Do you think it makes a difference to have a third party HR department? Do you think that having it outside of the brewery system, do you think that would make it seem more approachable to an employee?

[00:18:34] Jessica Infante: Maybe, that's a good point. In past jobs I've had, a lot of people on the HR team were like long tenured employees, which can be great because they have so much institutional knowledge and they know the company inside out backwards and forwards, have worked there for decades. But sometimes that can be bad because people like that, they might not believe that the company can do anything wrong. Maybe they have a touch of toxic positivity, which is a phrase I've seen a lot of places lately and really makes a lot of sense. So maybe like a third party external HR seems more neutral, seems more approachable, seems more doable. I don't know. But, you know, as we saw in Chris Loring's post today, Notch has one. We learned that Evil Genius has retained one. I'm not really sure, but a lot of these companies are, first of all, really young compared to many other companies out in the world. And I don't just mean in the beer industry, but a lot of them are not very old and a lot of them are founded by friends. And I was interviewed by a TV station in San Francisco last week to talk about this. Something I had said to them that I really wish I had phrased better is that a lot of these workplaces are very social. There's friendships that form, which is great, but there's also, there's no real way to separate your personal life and your professional life. I think that's probably true for the service industry too. One thing that I think is common in taproom environments, but also bars and restaurants is that the staff It doesn't feel like you're in an accounting firm, you know, you're for all intents and purposes throwing a party for your patrons.

[00:20:11] Justin Kendall: One of the other breweries that ended up letting go a leader was Pollyanna Brewing Company in Lamont, Illinois, which I hadn't heard of this brewery before, but they were very vague at first in their initial message about new leadership change, but they also referenced back to sort of the movement that was going on and then more came out about it.

[00:20:40] Jessica Infante: Right. They had parted ways with him back in March and they said that they parted ways with him last week. but they didn't make any mention. And I hadn't seen any stories in any of thing that Brianne shared about them. But then this week they really owned up to it. They said that they had heard a few complaints about his behavior from employees. They had suspended him. They made him go to counseling. They implemented their HR and ethics program. They began annual harassment training and enacted a zero tolerance policy. and I'm now quoting from their Facebook post, he was only allowed to come back when he met strict rehabilitation guidelines and we were confident that he was committed to abiding by Pollyanna's focus on inclusion, diversity and respect for others. But then they got a new allegation of sexual misconduct and it made it, quote, clear that he could no longer be a part of Pollyanna's future.

[00:21:35] Justin Kendall: They made a leadership change, but one brewery has sort of stayed steadfast so far, and that's Hill Farmstead.

[00:21:44] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Founder Sean Hill was mentioned in a few of Brianne's stories, including one that she was sharing on her own behalf. And Sean made a statement to our friend and colleague, Beth Demmon, who occasionally freelances for our parent publication, BevNET. Beth wrote about this for Vineparent. Sean sent her a lengthy statement and said that she could only quote it in full. And I'm not going to quote the whole thing because It is lengthy, but Sean says, I needed and still need a moment to reflect on the commentary, which has been serious in tone and tenor. To say it is unsettling is an understatement. I surely have a different perspective on what has been shared both overtly and anonymously, but what matters is how each person sees it. I think something that is uniformly apparent is the need to examine the environment of our industry and address how the entire community might move it collectively toward a place of shared respect, safety, personal responsibility, equitable conversation, and inclusive diversity. That's a lot.

[00:22:49] Justin Kendall: It is, and Sean has also spoken to VT Diego, and he said that some of the comments that have been attributed to him were akin to a game of telephone, but he said that he was committed to participating in changing the beer industry.

[00:23:09] Jessica Infante: Cool. There's a lot that we could do. How do you want to start, Sean?

[00:23:17] Justin Kendall: Well, let's get to some of the things that are happening. One of the things that came out on Monday was Breanne was directing employees who have been the victims of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, or sexual assault that have reported incidents to their company's HR departments and received unsatisfactory resolutions to a website.

[00:23:45] Jessica Infante: Right. It is brewproblems.com. It is set up by National Injury Help, which is a nationwide law firm that helps people in personal injury lawsuits, but also these kind of mass tort situations like this. So could we see a class action lawsuit here? I don't know how that would work, but if you go to the website, that's very much how it seems. You're on the website, it tells you to claim your financial compensation now. Did you work for a brewery in the last two years? What were your dates of employment?

[00:24:16] Justin Kendall: And that's not all. The Brewers Association launched some initiatives as well.

[00:24:21] Jessica Infante: Yeah, so the Brewers Association shared a 50% off discount to the services of an organization called WeVow, which helps educate business places and provides training and support for sexual harassment in the workplace. So certainly I think that's something that a lot of breweries need. I know they got a little bit mocked for this online. It's a step, you know, it's something that breweries can do. They're also going to be adding relevant training to craft brewers conference in September and they're going to be building a similar pipeline of resources the way that they do for, you know, technical things and quality things and brewing things. So I think we can expect to see some more from them on this.

[00:25:01] Justin Kendall: Absolutely. We have to. Right. There's no getting around it. They have to take a strong stand on this as much as they can.

[00:25:11] Jessica Infante: Sometimes I think occasionally people expect a little bit more than what they're always capable of, but we'll see what happens. Another thing that has happened is, you know, last summer, the BA put in place a code of conduct for members. It came after several incidents at breweries regarding pretty racist behavior from owners and management. And that's how this code of conduct came to be. And one of the pillars of it is that people need to act with respect to individuals and groups. After announcing the code of conduct, I believe in the summer, in the early fall, the BA put forth a path to submitting complaints when members break this code of conduct. and they have now received, at my last check, three complaints since Brienne has started sharing stories. As far as I know, these are the first complaints they've gotten, because I checked in with them in January when the Boulevard story was happening, and they had gotten no complaints at all.

[00:26:11] Justin Kendall: I believe they are the first complaints.

[00:26:14] Jessica Infante: The complaint process is complicated. The BA has set up a triumvirate of three experts who can vet the complaints. They are not people who work in the beer industry. They are people from HR and DEI work. They receive complaints, they vet them. If they decide that these complaints have merit, they pass it on to the BA's board of directors. and the BA's board of directors decides whether the complaint has merit. And then together we can meet out some potential punishments, which are you could lose your membership completely. You could lose your membership for a time. They could set conditions on your membership, meaning that you have to take some remedial actions before they let you become a full member again, or you could be censured.

[00:27:00] Justin Kendall: And we've seen guilds to also offer maybe even harsher punishments.

[00:27:08] Jessica Infante: Yeah, the Maine Brewers Guild added something to their bylaws last year that allows them to revoke membership.

[00:27:16] Justin Kendall: That's pretty big.

[00:27:17] Jessica Infante: That's very big. These organizations, the guilds and the BA, they rely on having members for existence. So you'd have to think that they're willing to revoke membership is a pretty big deal. I don't know that we'll ever see it happen. You covered this when they first announced it. The BA first started guidelines for marketing and advertising. And I don't know that they've ever gotten complaints about that.

[00:27:43] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Well, that sort of is where we are as of 6 p.m. Eastern on a Monday on the East Coast. But what do you think happens next? Where do you think this story goes from here?

[00:28:00] Jessica Infante: I don't think we're done seeing resignations. I am a little worried that there could be a chilling effect. I worry, I mean, have you ever sat through a corporate sexual harassment training? Everybody makes jokes about it. So I'm just a little worried that maybe people aren't going to take it seriously. If you haven't read the stories on Brienne's Instagram, I really, really encourage you to do so and make sure you're in the right state of mind because some of them are harrowing, honestly. And it's been a lot. It's been a long two weeks. I've been subjected to a lot of the things that are described there, both in my time in the beer industry and just in my time in a female body. One of the things that where we've seen a lot of talk about change is beer festivals. Which is interesting because we're not having any right now, so probably a good time to, if you organize a fest, take a step back and look at what kind of guidelines you have and what you have in place to make sure that things are safe. I mean, you and I talked about this the other day. There's so much overconsumption that happens. And not at all to blame all of this horrendous behavior on alcohol, but the alcohol acts as an accelerant sometimes, particularly in those situations. I've had really gross things said to me at BeerFest that I'm not going to repeat here because my mother occasionally listens to this podcast, but I've been touched when I didn't want to be touched. Brienne's approach has changed a little bit herself because I think she was just so overwhelmed with the quantity of things coming in. She had shared with a few other beer writers that she felt really overwhelmed and I don't blame her at all. That's so much emotional labor to have to take on. I feel exhausted from having covered this. I'm sure I don't feel a fraction of what she has felt." So she changed her approach a little bit last week and she is now asking people to only submit stories if they're incidents that they reported at work that were not dealt with satisfactorily. And her message has really changed a little bit to report this at work. you know, speak up, get loud. And I know that's a little bit easier said than done because we do unfortunately face retaliation. But I think if you're a brewery right now and you get a complaint from an employee and your first thought is to silence them, No, that's not it. That's not what we're doing. But what I really hope women across the industry realize after the past two weeks is that if something terrible has happened to you, you're not alone and it's not your fault. I know a lot of what we do is internalize it. At least a lot of what I've always done is, oh, well, I must've said something and that made this happen. No, it's not your fault and it's not anything you did. There unfortunately are really bad actors out there. So if you're feeling alone, like you're really not, I hope that is what everybody sees. This is big. It's big, it's everywhere, it's nationwide. And you could talk to any woman who's worked in beer and she'll tell you a story, but don't ask her to tell you a story because nobody wants to relive that trauma. what we're finally seeing is like, it wasn't in your head, you didn't make it up, you didn't do anything to bring this on. And Brienne certainly gave voice to the thousands of women out there who've experienced some pretty awful stuff.

[00:31:31] Justin Kendall: There's nothing more to say after that.

[00:31:33] Jessica Infante: That's good, because I don't think I could repeat that.

[00:31:36] Justin Kendall: Well, we don't have to, so we'll just say that's our show for this week. We'll thank our audio engineer, Joe, for putting together this special edition of Check Brewbound Podcast. We'll see you soon. Be good to each other.