Brewbound Podcast: The Brewers Association’s Dr. J on Thrive, CBC and Vegas Musts

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: CBC is finally here. We talk about it next on the Brewbound Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound Podcast. I'm Justin Kendall. I'm Jessica Infante. And this week, we are not joined by Zoe Licata. She was at the National Beer Wholesalers Association's Legislative Conference. You'll be able to read all of her coverage at Brewbound.com, but we've got another conference to talk about, and that's the Craft Brewers Conference, which Jess and Justin will be going to, and Zoe. She's going to be a road warrior.

[00:00:42] Zoe Licata: Yeah, Zoe's got a lot of flights.

[00:00:44] Justin Kendall: Maybe she'll get status.

[00:00:45] Zoe Licata: Maybe she will. She deserves that.

[00:00:48] Justin Kendall: I've yet to achieve status, so...

[00:00:49] Zoe Licata: It's a lot harder than it seems. It's a lot harder. I was really close last year, like really, really close to JetBlue Mosaic, but some things are not in the cards for us.

[00:00:58] Justin Kendall: Sometimes it's not, but what is in the cards for us is we will be doing this podcast on the floor of the trade show at the Craft Brewers Conference. We'll be at booth 1989. We'll be there Monday to Wednesday. So come over and check us out there. Very exciting.

[00:01:17] Zoe Licata: So speaking of CBC, our special guest this week gave us all of her picks for both what she's looking forward to about the conference itself and about what she's gonna hope to do in Las Vegas. So I definitely highly recommend listening to the interview in its entirety, but we have the one, the only, the inimitable, Dr. J Jackson Beckham of The Brewers Association Hopes was recently promoted to full-time employee at the BA. Dr. J's new title is director of social impact. She tells us all about that. I am shocked that she had time to speak with us because she's super busy, but She is gearing up for Thrive Day, which is a whole full immersion day, the Sunday going into CBC that really covers all the people aspects of the industry. And you'll hear all about it in the interview, but definitely something worth checking out.

[00:02:14] Justin Kendall: Well, I mean, if you're going to be there on Sunday, there's that whole day of, of content that she's put together, but it's also going to bleed throughout the entire event because there's a big focus, it appears to be on wellness this year.

[00:02:30] Zoe Licata: Yeah, there is Thrive content threaded throughout the whole conference. And I mean, look, I don't want to steal any thunder from this interview, but there are two elements that we are both very excited for that Jay will tell you all about, but.

[00:02:43] Justin Kendall: Gonna pet a lot of dogs.

[00:02:45] Zoe Licata: Yeah, one of them involves the doggos. There are therapy dogs coming to CBC for you to hang out with and pet.

[00:02:52] Justin Kendall: And a quiet room.

[00:02:54] Zoe Licata: So where do you want to start? This has been like a Brewer'Brewers Association Hopes week for the two of us.

[00:02:59] Justin Kendall: Yeah, it's been a whirlwind day and whirlwind week. So let's start with the production numbers. Volume for BA Defined Craft Brewers was down 1% in 2023. That is the first measurable decline since the COVID year, but really the first decline since they've been tracking, which dates back to the, I want to say early 80s, maybe even the 70s. I think Bart did say the 70s.

[00:03:27] Zoe Licata: So yeah, we joined the annual media briefing The Brewers'Brewers Association Hopes Economist and now also VP of Strategy, Bart Watson, who broke down all these numbers for us in, I have to say, record time. Like, Bart talks, I am a fast talker, he puts me to shame. He makes me sound like I'm in slow motion.

[00:03:50] Justin Kendall: That was like micro machine man level of speed talking. Like I can listen to things at like one and a half speed usually. Bart is a one man, one and a half speed just when he's talking normal.

[00:04:04] Zoe Licata: All the time. Yeah. And I think that's like baseline for Bart. Like, I don't really think that requires any like additional caffeination or anything.

[00:04:11] Justin Kendall: Impressive. I've had three coffees and I feel like I'm moving through mud.

[00:04:16] Zoe Licata: Well, so Bart broke down a lot of info, but like you said, first decline other than COVID. And that says a lot about where we are in the state of things, like the state of Craft Brewers right now. And we should also be clear that this is all BA-defined Craft Brewers, which means that all of The Brewers involved in this data set make fewer than 6 million barrels a year and are not any more than 25% owned by someone who is not also a Craft Brewers. So if you're confused, I don't blame you. But basically what this means is say somebody like New Belgium and Bells, who is owned by an international brewer based in Japan, not Craft Brewers, but Green Flash, Montauk, Alpine, all owned by a Canadian cannabis company. Yes, Craft Brewers.

[00:05:08] Justin Kendall: Stone owned by Sapporo now? Out. Out. In?

[00:05:14] Zoe Licata: Anybody owned by Monster.

[00:05:16] Justin Kendall: Yes, so we're splitting hairs here at this point.

[00:05:20] Zoe Licata: And I feel like the BA's craft definition is something that always gets a lot of hand-wringing and grumbling about, and I would, look, far be it for me to say anything, I do not work at the BA, but I do think it might be smart for them to reconsider this, but we'll see.

[00:05:37] Justin Kendall: I'd like to think they will.

[00:05:39] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I mean, I understand when, This is clearly a conversation for another time. I understand when AB was on a shopping spree, why you would want to make the delineation. But when it's, you know, a foreign owned brewery that doesn't have any other brands in the U.S. like Kirin, you know, obviously they do sell like Kirin is here, but it's not as competitive in the same way that AB was trying to be. I get it. It's different. I don't know, man. Sorry. I went on a tangent. I do that a lot.

[00:06:09] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Well, to get us back on track, let's talk a little bit about some of the data that was in this report. Bart mentioned that the market share for Craft Brewers, it actually increased to 13.3% up from 13.1% in 2022. I guess the explanation is like, oh, well, you know, volume's down, but what's this mean? Well, it means that craft declines were actually less negative than the overall beer category. So talk about where things are. That's kind of the situation that we're in. And also of note is the openings and closures rates. Still openings outpaced closures, but just barely.

[00:06:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah, that window is getting smaller and smaller. And to compare Kraft to the rest of The Brewers industry, the overall beer category had a lot of wonky things that happened in it last year, like the Bud Light boycott and the continued crashing of Hard Seltzer. So Kraft, he didn't do as badly as those two. Congrats.

[00:07:16] Justin Kendall: It's participation trophies all around last year.

[00:07:19] Zoe Licata: Hold your head high.

[00:07:20] Justin Kendall: Yeah. So the breakdown as far as operating breweries goes, they reached an all-time high last year. That was 9,683, up from 9,597 the year before. And that breaks out to 245 regional Craft Brewers, so your largest breweries, 3,900 taproom breweries, 3,467 brew pubs and your smallest breweries, 2,071. Yeah.

[00:07:53] Zoe Licata: And I mean, like taproom breweries obviously do most of their sales on site. Brew pubs operate restaurants, micro breweries do most of their sales in distribution. Just to break that down a little bit further. And the only class in that grouping to grow is taprooms. There's 139 more taprooms. in 2023 than there were in 2022, but everyone else declined. And these numbers are small. There's, you know, five fewer regional Craft Brewers, nine fewer brew pubs, 40 fewer microbreweries. And that doesn't necessarily mean that's because five regional Craft Brewers closed. It could just be that, you know, their volume declined enough to drop them out of that group to drop them down to a microbrewer or something like that.

[00:08:39] Justin Kendall: Yeah, there's a lot of nuance to these numbers that we can't give you in like a very short, you know, clip on a podcast, but Bart will be more than willing to give you all the details at the Craft Brewers conference. He's speaking on Tuesday during the general session. So that's early in the morning. Make sure you go to that.

[00:09:00] Zoe Licata: For sure. Always a good time.

[00:09:02] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Let's get into the top 50.

[00:09:04] Zoe Licata: So the top five did not change. Not surprising. I think we all kind of expected that. The top five largest BA-defined Craft Brewers in order are Yangling, Boston Beer, which is Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada is number three, Doable Market, which is Firestone Walker Boulevard and Brewery Omegang was number four, and Gambrinus Company, which is mostly Shiner and a little bit of Truman was number five. And those guys have been a lock for probably since New Belgium fell out of the set in 2019, I would assume.

[00:09:38] Justin Kendall: Yeah, the only shakeup that we might see and it didn't happen this year is what those Tilray brands will do once the full set of AB craft, once that volume is full year under Tilray, which it wasn't in this data set. So when Tilray says, Hey, we're the fifth largest Craft Brewers. Yeah, they probably are, but they weren't considered that this last year because the B.A. didn't start counting their acquired craft brands until October.

[00:10:10] Zoe Licata: Right. So Tilray was number six. ABV, which is the roll up of Victory Greenpoint Southern Tier was number seven. Brooklyn popped up to number eight. I believe they were up two spots. And Theta. had a lot of success lately. They had some good production numbers last year compared to the year before, so a bit of a tear. Number nine went to Monster Brewing, which is Oscar Blues, Cigar City, D. Bellum, Squatters, Wasatch Perron, the former Canarchy crew. They dropped one spot to number nine. Athletic jumped three spots to number 10, and there you have it. That is the top 10. So some established legacy craft brands, some platforms and some of these platforms like the Canarchy Group and ABV, they have long been these roll-ups, but that was a pattern that BART called out as something that has seen success last year and probably will continue to do so, this grouping together of other brands. You can see it a little bit further down the list where FXMAT, which is FXMAT Brewing, also the parent company of Saranac, acquired Flying Dog at some point in 2023. I think before I went on maternity leave. And that bumped them up one spot to 34. And then we also saw the formation of a new platform in Great Frontier Holdings, which is Ninkasi, Ecliptic, and Wings and Arrow Beer. Ninkasi on its own the year before was number 43 in 2022. And by their powers combined, the whole platform was now number 35.

[00:11:45] Justin Kendall: One thing to think about here about the top 10 is obviously there are three companies that are producing more than a million barrels in here, and that's Yangling, Boston, and Sierra. But when you're looking at the other half of the top 10 and what it takes to be a top 10 Craft Brewers on this list, In 2022, the 10th largest brewery, according to the VA, was Brooklyn, and their production that year was 276,729 barrels. So that's how big the range is. I mean, when you're looking at the other end of the spectrum there, Yingling is, you know, 2.28 million barrels in 2022. So quite a jump there, but that's what it would take. So for Athletic to make that leap into the top 10 is humongous because in 2018, they were making 875 barrels of beer.

[00:12:43] Zoe Licata: Absolutely meteoric, just craziness. Do you want to get into some newcomers to the list?

[00:12:48] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I was going to ask you, let's get into some newcomers.

[00:12:51] Zoe Licata: So new this year was Montucky cold snacks at number 40, which is interesting to me, but makes sense. It really lines up with everything that Zoe was writing about, about this being potentially the year of the lager. So their number 40 and number 45 is another platform. It's U.S. Beverage, which is Uinta and St. Lawrence. Coronado snuck in at 48. And Drake's, which also owns Bear Republic, another platform that teamed up in 23, snuck in at 49. So those are all new to the list. But what fell out of the list was Stone due to acquisition. Flying Dog came off because it's rolled up into mats numbers. North Coast fell off the list this year as did Made by the Water, which is another platform of Fober, Catawba, Palmetto, and Oyster City. So just kind of interesting stuff all around. You know, you see sometimes where the platforming works and then sometimes where, you know, volume drops instead. Another thing that Bart called out during the webinar was know he dubbed them fast-growing breweries and there's a few of them so some pretty big leaps outside of the top 25 happened with Pittsburgh Brewing which jumped up 10 spots to number 21, Jack's Abbey in my neck of the woods Framingham, Mass. Jumped nine spots to 38 and Fiddlehead up in Vermont jumped eight spots to land at number 28 All three of them had strong growth from, you know, 22 to 23, and all of them had strong growth, you know, the year before, too. So Bart called out something among all of them that he sees, which, quote, is real geographic focus. I'm going to quote Bart again because I can't really say it much better than he does, but many of them are not super widely distributed. They're really going deep in particular markets. Many of them, and this is more qualitative, but in talking to them, have succeeded partly by continuing to focus on draft, suggesting there's still a lot of draft opportunity out there for brewers who make that a focus part of their strategy. So I certainly would apply that to Fiddlehead, to Jack's Abbey, and to Georgetown out in Seattle. Georgetown landed really high on this list too. Shameless plug, Georgetown. Brewbounds, large brewer of the year. I should have said that with much more confidence. Georgetown Brewing, Brewbound's large brewery of the year for 2022, number 16. That's huge. And they only distribute in like the Pac Northwest and nowhere else. So I'm glad that Bart really called this out because, you know, I know when your volume starts to plateau, it can be really tempting to be like, okay, well, what state aren't we in? Find a distributor, let's go. It's much harder to get these kinds of volume growth levels by just going really deep in a smaller market. But a lot of The Brewers have been able to do that. And a lot of The Brewers, like Georgetown, like Jack's Abbey, like Fiddlehead, focus on beer. I mean, nobody's numbers for making not beer is included in this list. So that's another conversation for another time. But I would put a lot of these names in here as being super craft centric. So in terms of declines, not that many brewers kind of fell. I felt like I was typing up more than down in our little list tracker. Steepest Belongs declined to Minhas at number 29, which fell 14 places from its 2022 rank. And Summit at number 37 had also dropped 11 spots. And then Indie Brew, another platform consisting of Scofflaw and Bearded Iris fell five places to number 50. you see a lot more like wild swings in the lower half of the list.

[00:16:32] Justin Kendall: Right. And we won't get that until probably weeks from now, I would say.

[00:16:39] Zoe Licata: Yeah. When the May-June edition of the New Brewer drops with all of that data, which usually is kind of like around Memorial Day.

[00:16:46] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And the challenging part about this is like, while we have a ranking number, we don't have a volume number for any of The Brewers yet.

[00:16:56] Zoe Licata: Right. I mean, for all we know, like 20 barrels could separate number 46 from 47. Exactly. The deltas are real big at the top and pretty small at the bottom.

[00:17:06] Justin Kendall: So we'll look forward to hearing more from Bart on this, but let's get to our featured interview with Dr. J. Jackson Beckham, Director of Social Impact for The Brewers Association Hopes Craft Brewers Conference Primer finally upon us, and our guest this week is going to be very busy during the Thrive pre-conference workshop. Joining us now is Dr. Jay Jackson-Beckham, Director of Social Impact for The Brewers Association. Thanks for being here, Dr. Jay.

[00:17:38] Brewers Association: Thanks for having me, Justin. Jess, I'm really happy to join you today.

[00:17:42] Justin Kendall: So that title I just read off is a new one. Congratulations.

[00:17:47] Brewers Association: Thank you, appreciate it. Yeah, new as of the first of the year.

[00:17:52] Justin Kendall: So what does this new title entail?

[00:17:54] Brewers Association: There's a couple different things, but I would say that the new title came alongside me joining The Brewers Association Hopes a full-time employee. Up until that time, I've been working with The Brewers Association Hopes a contractor. So we talked a lot about what being full-time would be, and one of the things that we really prioritized was cross-departmental integration. So how do we make the work that I've been doing alongside The Brewers Association Hopes years be fully integrated with every other department at The Brewers Association Hopes one of the things that we kind of quickly came to understand was that You know, my work, which has been focused in diversity, equity and inclusion, often sort of branches out outside of that space. Specifically, I think Thrive is a really big example because that covers several topics that are not specifically in the diversity, equity and inclusion space. And so the Social Impact Department, which is also new, is sort of a container that holds all of the diversity, equity, and inclusion work that we've been doing to date, but also brings under its aegis what we call member and industry engagement. So this is all of our educational efforts, around the people side of the business, all our philanthropy efforts. So this includes the grant programs that we've been running, our partnerships with other social impact organizations. So for example, the work we do with the National Black Brewers Association. And then in a third area, something we call association accountability. And that's about making sure that we are accountable to our members and to ourselves. for doing what we say we're going to do. And some of the things we think about in that association accountability area is like stewardship of our codes of conduct at The Brewers Association, doing impact reporting so people understand the impact of some of the things we're doing. For example, our mentorship program, the grants that we award. So those sort of three areas, DEI, member engagement on the people side of the business, and association accountability are sort of our three focus areas in social impact. So I direct a team of two and we, in addition to me, so a team of three to get that work done.

[00:20:29] Zoe Licata: That's a lot. I mean, I have all of the faith in the world in you and your ability to do all of this. If anybody can, it's you. But I also think your description of this new job included the word Aegis, which I think is a first appearance on the Brewbound Podcast. You're really upping the vocabulary around here. I apologize. Don't apologize. I can't wait to see what you and the team are able to accomplish. But since it is CBC week and Thrive is back for the third time, I believe? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so for somebody who hasn't been to Thrive before, what can they expect? It's a full day before everything really gets going and there's, it is jam-packed. I've seen the schedule.

[00:21:14] Brewers Association: So we think of Thrive as sort of like an umbrella sub-brand. And Thrive, so for anybody listening, Thrive is all of Beer Education that we do that includes DEI, human resources, or wellness education. So those are kind of the three cornerstones of Thrive. When we started Thrive, the first year, it really was like a roadmap for getting through the conference. So we sort of took all of the existing information about seminars in the conference and we sort of curated a roadmap for people who, like, if you really wanted to focus on the people side of stuff, if you wanted DEI, HR, wellness, how would you attend the Craft Brewers Conference? And so that's sort of was the first effort around Thrive. We also did a film screening that first year. We just, we screened one pint at a time. And that was a sort of a, a kind of side activity that was also included in what we think of as Thrive. Think of the screening as really an opportunity to highlight stories and storytellers, you know, diverse stories and storytellers in the industry. The second year we added the Thrive pre-con And that was a full day prior to the Conference Primer we, it's almost like a mini conference, so we have very focused topics there, we have our own featured speakers, and the idea is You know, a lot of times there's kind of a seminar here or there for people who are thinking about these kind of people leadership topics, but not a huge opportunity for sustained learning and professional development or for networking with their peers in the same roles or dealing with the same challenges. So that was sort of where we conceived of the Thrive Precon. So the first Thrive Precon we did was in Minneapolis and that was nerve-wracking and wildly successful. So we rebooted for the next year. So we did the Thrive Precon again and when we When we looked at that second Thrive Precon, we made some adjustments. And what we realized was that there is a bit of a preaching to the choir dynamic that sometimes goes on when you're talking about topics like DE&I, HR, wellness. And we were like, but really who we need are decision makers. in that room. We need people leaders, we need decision makers, we need owners, we need taproom managers, we need HR professionals. And so we've sort of shifted the pre-con to be, you know, very, very focused on content for leaders. So the pre-con is really like, if you're a people leader, that's the space for you. Thrive also bled out into the rest of the conference. So if you look at the general conference education on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, you'll also see a Thrive track. So the Thrive track in the general Conference Primer probably more appropriate for everybody. It's not as focused on leadership and decision makers. So If people ask, you know, what's the difference between the Thrive Precon and the Thrive in the General Conference, the Precon is a little bit more focused on leaders and leadership. And then we have a whole lot of other activities that we sort of pull under the umbrella of Thrive. That film screening that we did the first year with One Pine of a Time, the second year of the screening, we did a short film made about the Black is Beautiful collab beer effort. This year, we've sort of branded that media event and created a networking sort of entertainment event on Monday evening, and that's called Thrive Live. And that's, again, our showcase of diverse storytellers and diverse stories. This year, we're going to be featuring a trio of podcasters, the Black Brewers podcast, the Bitch Beer podcast, and the Food Engineer podcast. And they're going to be talking about, you know, the importance and significance of storytelling in the industry in terms of creating a space of inclusion and keeping conversations going. And then we're also featuring a panel of breast cancer survivors who are going to, again, talk a little bit about how cancer survivorship and craft brewing have sort of intersected for them and how important it is to kind of share and think about those stories when it comes to doing advocacy work in our industry. So all of these things we think of as like part of what we're calling our Thrive ecosystem and you know everywhere we're sort of evolving to provide both Beer Education, more you know networking and in general sort of entertainment experiences at the conference. You know, a couple other things, and we have a wellness area, and that sort of comes under the umbrella of Thrive. This year in the wellness area, we've added a quiet room for people who are just like me, get like totally overwhelmed by the conference, the number of people. So that's kind lighting, soft seating, hot tea. We have some people coming in to do sound bath workshops. It's no devices in that space. So, You can come by there if you need to chill, and there will always be somebody staffing that space who has gone through trauma-informed care training if you need some assistance with anything. And then, you know, last thing we added, a pause and relax lounge where we're going to have some therapy dogs pause like Paul's. So if you want to go cuddle a dog for a minute and recharge, get some love that you don't deserve, right? Because we don't deserve the dogs. Stop by and get that.

[00:27:00] Zoe Licata: You're going to have to drag Justin out of that room.

[00:27:03] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I need as much dog time as I can get at this point.

[00:27:07] Brewers Association: Yeah, go. It'll be in the wellness area and there will be good doggos there for everyone.

[00:27:13] Zoe Licata: I personally may move into the quiet room. permanently as somebody who is just noised out, touched out, needs a break.

[00:27:24] Brewers Association: There will be things there for you, probably some coloring books. I have advocated hard for Legos because that's my jam. So there'll be activities for folks to do if they just need to cool out.

[00:27:36] Zoe Licata: This is great. And I know you talked a little bit about how, you know, there's two different ways to approach the, you know, decision makers, that's who needs to be in the room for, you know, Thrive Precon. But everybody can benefit from the messages. And I think You know, we have this conversation a lot about how, you know, there are really meaningful efforts to include content like this at various events. We work really hard to make sure that Brewbound Live has a lot of elements about how to, you know, champion underrepresented groups. But getting the people who most need to hear these messages in the room can be a challenge. So to me, it sounds like you're really threading the needle really well.

[00:28:17] Brewers Association: That's the hope, you know, and I think One of the things we recognize both from our members when we talk with them and people who have attended past Thrive Pre-Conference Reading, you know, there's a sort of magic mix of raising the right conversations that are sort of timely and speaking to the pain points that people are hitting every day, providing like actionable tools and interventions so that people walk away with at least a good start on solutions that they can tailor and take back home into their businesses. And then number three, sort of intentionally creating a community or, you know, I like to think of it as a community of practice. So others who are going to try the same things you have tried or have already tried, the things you intend to try, who can you know, do what's probably informal benchmarking, right? Oh, we tried this strategy, it worked like this for us, or it did not, you know, and I think if we can kind of always maintain a balance of those three things. That's sort of the magic spot for both attracting and like providing good return on investment for the folks who show up for their thrive pre cons. And you get lunch, and there's a catered lunch.

[00:29:41] Justin Kendall: That's huge. I'm all for a catered lunch.

[00:29:44] Brewers Association: Yeah, because I am a plant based eater, I take a lot of care with the lunch to make sure there's lots of options. And to date, it has never been in a box with a cookie that is wrapped in saran wrap. We don't do that. We go different for the lunch.

[00:30:00] Zoe Licata: Love that. I mean, I think the three of us know almost better than anybody beer industry events basically are like several days of just eating terrible things. Yeah. And something that just annoyed me the most was a homebrew con years ago in my old life, where I, you know, met a friend for lunch and had perhaps had A few too many samples the evening before, I wasn't feeling my best. But this friend, I didn't want them to think that I was like a trash human, so I ordered a salad and I felt great. It was like, oh, now that I know the secret to fixing this condition is not a bacon cheeseburger, it is a salad. It was like, just kind of awful, but also kind of awesome to be like, oh, here's the fix. But it's not. It's not the greasy thing you were hoping it would be. So I love that you are mindful about lunch. That's awesome.

[00:30:54] Brewers Association: Yeah, 100%. And we usually have a little bit of N.A. beer, just trying to put some of the messages that we share around health and responsible consumption into what we do.

[00:31:10] Zoe Licata: I didn't attend CBC in Nashville. I was too pregnant to go anywhere. but it was kind of hard to ignore some of the online chatter that came out afterward for some people being disappointed with the site selection. And I know that you and BA CEO and President Bob Pease have been meeting with the leaders of Lady Justice Brewing in Colorado who have really been asking you guys some of the tough questions and they've been reporting out on the results of these conversations. And it really sounds to me like on both sides, all of you are really committed to creating a necessary change. So one thing that came out of them was that all future CBC host cities must have a score of at least 80 on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipality Equality Index. To me, that's great. That's like a meaningful, tangible benchmark that everybody can see. That's, you know, a third party verifying all of this. But, you know, when was this decided and what cities are on your wish list for future CBC hosts?

[00:32:04] Brewers Association: Yeah, so one of the kind of structural changes that The Brewers Association Hopes in place after CBC and Nashville over the summer months, we did a lot of work. We had a lot of conversations and these were These were not just, you know, a couple people in a room. This was our entire staff and it was our entire board of directors. And we also worked with the outside facilitator to moderate a lot of our meetings and help organize how we wanted to think about outcomes. So using the HRC index was one of the things that we thought about in terms of how do we use a objective, as you said, third party benchmark that, you know, doesn't allow, you know, doesn't look, isn't about our personal discretion, right? It's about like some vetted data that we can actually take a look at. And, you know, those city reports, municipal and state reports are available for anybody. You can just log on to the HRC website and look at them for yourself and, you know, take a look at what types of things they index and measure. And I think that's a win. When we put that into place, it applies to everything at the time of booking, but we also looked to see if the cities that have already been booked actually fit, and those are also, you know, meeting that, meeting that score, which is great. You know, the funny thing is, like, I'm actually just kind of excited about some of the cities that are already planned, so I'm stoked about Indianapolis. I've been to that city a bunch of times, and, you know, I think sometimes maybe there's, like, people might think, oh, Indianapolis, you know, hey, what's there? But I'm like, actually, it's a kind of a great, it's a great conference city. And my former life as an academic, we went there a lot and looking forward to be being back there. And honestly, I think about the cities that I sort of missed in the COVID times, you know, the San Diego and I used to live in San Diego. I think any excuse to go back to San Diego, I'm excited about. So I hope that is something we'll see again. And then I guess 2015 was DC, I believe, if I'm racking my CBC brain correctly. 2017. 2017, thank you. That's sort of hometown area for me. So I'd be like delighted if we made it back to DC in the coming years.

[00:34:30] Zoe Licata: I love DC. I was always in college. I was always torn. Like, do I move to Boston? Do I move to DC? Obviously, I went to Boston, but love DC, would love to get back. But yeah, as soon as I had seen the 80 benchmark, I went and looked up what Indianapolis was, and it is, it is 80.

[00:34:47] Brewers Association: Yeah, and you know, the folks at Visit Indianapolis, we always, you know, our events team always works really closely with cities, their visitor bureaus. Visit Indy should be on site at CBC if anybody wants to, you know, chat with them and ask questions, but they're fantastic. That's a great group of folks. They understand both their challenges and opportunities as a city. When I was in Indianapolis last year, I had some great conversations with them about, you know, our objectives for the conference and how we want to make sure that our attendees are, you know, in an environment that's healthy physically, mentally, emotionally. And I think they're going to be fantastic partners for us. So I'm really looking forward to that.

[00:35:32] Justin Kendall: Well, looking at this year's conference, there is a lot that I'm looking forward to. The Brewers Association Hopes released the top 50. I want to hear what Bart Watson has to say about, you know, sort of the state of the industry. That's a must. Can't wait to hear Benny Ashburn and Vaughn Weaver's fireside chat. So there's good stuff there. But what are you most excited about at this year's conference?

[00:36:00] Brewers Association: yeah oh gosh okay so i'll i'll give you the like at the conference and i'll give you the in Las Vegas because i think there's a bit of a combination um going on there you sort of nailed you know hit the hammer on the head of the nail there in terms of like the general sessions i am super excited about our general sessions this year. You know, in Nashville, those of you who went might remember that we went to a single general session, and this year we're going back to a double general session format. So Monday's general session is our keynote fireside chat with Fawn Weaver, which is moderated by my friend Benny. I am like frothing at the mouth excited about this. I've been a longtime fan of Fawn Weaver and the work she does both producing in the beverage alcohol space as a really incredibly brilliant woman who happens to be Black, innovating in an industry where she's an underrepresented individual, all-female C-suite, a shelf full of incredible awards, unprecedented growth during the COVID years. And if you happen to follow Fawn on social media, you know that she's just sort of a firecracker and an inspiration. I think she has a lot to give our industry in terms of thinking about how to lead through adversity. You know she is known as a great leader but I think what's really really significant about Fawn is that she has led well through adversity and we are in a time right of of headwinds. And I think that she's going to have some important messages for our community. And I think that's fantastic. And then Tuesday's general session is going to be industry awards and Bart's state of the industry. And I fully admit, if you've been around me long enough, I am a total fangirl of Bart's state of the industry on many levels. I think he does an incredible job sort of distilling insights into like a couple of really sticky, actionable things you can think about. you know, so last year was like new drinkers, new occasions, right? Like they, they just kind of stick in there and, you know, he kind of tees it up for the next year. And then Bart is a fantastic presenter. I'm envious of his public speaking skills, his wielding of the charts. You know, I'm really, I'm always very excited about that. And then the industry awards, Same thing, that gives me the moment where I'm like, oh yeah, that's why I absolutely love this community. That's why I love this industry. It's the wonderful reminder that I get to have once a year that there are some really special people doing some really fantastic things and we get to shine a light on them. And very, very selfishly, since I direct The Brewers Association's mentorship program, we get to give out our Mentor of the Year Award. And that is so special to me personally, because I have a really intimate look at how those individuals who win that award have extraordinarily tangible impacts on the lives of those who they mentor. I definitely maybe get a little dust in my eye for that one. So looking forward to it.

[00:39:28] Zoe Licata: Amazing. Let's put a pin in that because I do want to come back to talk about the mentorship program because you've done some awesome work there. But you also talked about what you're looking forward to in Las Vegas. So give me your picks.

[00:39:39] Brewers Association: Okay. I'm a podcast nerd. I have many podcasts in my feed. One of the podcasts is called Atlas Obscura. It is a celebration of strange and wonderful places. And last week, they did a whole week of episodes that were Las Vegas themed. So it was like a perfect kind of like third party preview of Las Vegas. Nobody's paying me for this. So if you want to listen you can see but one of the episodes is about this museum that someone has put together of lost objects. It's essentially somebody who is I think probably self-identifies as a bit of a hoarder collector. So it might be like Hundreds of limbs from dolls found places, like expertly curated and little curio boxes. And it's just all these like little collections. So that museum, it's going to be so great and wonderful and weird. I absolutely can't wait to do that. Number two, Las Vegas has incredible food. So I am promising myself that I'm going to have at least a couple, like I'm aiming for two, like really lovely sit down meals at some of the restaurants that Las Vegas has to kind of show off because I think that's going to be fantastic. And one of the things that people might not know about Las Vegas is that it, like other sort of bigger metropolitan areas, it has ethnic enclaves. And so you can kind of seek out some very specific types of cuisine, visit some communities, take in the area. You know, I'm a big fan of porous boundaries to the conference center walls. if I had my way, we would all sort of fully take the opportunity to sort of see what the cities we visit has to offer, not just sort of go there and stay amongst ourselves. So I think anybody who does that, please like take your time, take a look around. And then number three, botanical gardens, because Plants, gardens, amazing. And if you're a plant lover, desert climate natives are some of the most beautiful and weird plants in the entire world. And I love, love, love them. So I will be trying to do that as well. Awesome. Well, that's quite a list. I feel like... Yeah, I never do the list. I just make the list. You just add the list. I might do like 30% of the list. I feel very accomplished when that happens.

[00:42:27] Justin Kendall: That's always the issue with Vegas is I'm the person that gets trapped in the casino. Not the actual casino, but like you're in the hotel, so you just never end up leaving the property because, you know.

[00:42:40] Zoe Licata: It's sprawling.

[00:42:41] Justin Kendall: Yeah, it's sprawling.

[00:42:42] Zoe Licata: Well, and they've designed it that way.

[00:42:43] Justin Kendall: Exactly.

[00:42:44] Zoe Licata: Yeah. You're up against a lot. It's not your fault.

[00:42:46] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I know. And then, you know, we have all day conferences or whatever at these places. So I didn't hear fish on the list. So you're not a fish head?

[00:42:55] Brewers Association: I am not a tough fish head. Me neither. I grew up in DC in the early and mid 90s. I'm much more likely to hit a punk or hardcore song that goes for 90 seconds rather than a noodle for 30 minutes. Yeah, that's that's maybe not on my list, but I am excited to do a little bit of people watching to all of the fish enthusiasts who are sort of flocking from other parts of the country and other parts of the world to see the shows.

[00:43:38] Zoe Licata: Let's get back to the mentorship program, because that's something that's a few years in now you've added. I want to say Mentorship Mentor of the Year Award was added for Minneapolis. in 22. I feel like that sounds right, yes. I mean, I know all of this was released a couple weeks ago, so it's not a secret, but can you brag on the Mentor of the Year for a couple seconds here?

[00:44:00] Brewers Association: Yeah, yeah. So this year, our 2023 Mentor of the Year is Laura Lodge. Laura has sort of her feet in many different buckets. So she runs Annual Business called Customized Craft Brewers Programs, and she also runs a nonprofit called Start a Brewery. But if you've been around for a while, you know that Laura's sort of been in the industry for a long time and she's contributed to some kind of core BA resources. Years ago, Laura has worked in all three tiers, so she has lots of information to give about distribution tier, about, you know, the production side, supply side, and also on the retail side, she does, you know, helps folks develop retail programs. She is the executive director of Big Deer's Barley Wines, Belgium's Festival, so that's Laura. So her footprint is extensive, but I think A couple of things like, you know, our Mentor of the Year Award, one of the things I love about it is that this is not a top-down choice. The Mentors of the Years are chosen through a nomination process, so they are nominated by the mentees themselves. And one of the things that I loved about collecting Laura's nominations, one, she's been nominated every year. So she didn't emerge as the winner the first two times we did the award, but she's nominated every single year. And things that her mentees say about her, the most consistent thing they say about her is that she goes above and beyond. So, like, everybody uses that term, above and beyond, above and beyond. So, you know, she takes mentorship really seriously. She carries through, has follow through, you know, she's the type of person who says, if I don't have the answer to your question, I will find the answer to your question. And aside from all the great work she's done for our mentees, She's just been a tremendous asset to me and to the coordinators who I work with and administering the program. So, you know, a great example is we do something called Mentorship Monday as part of the mentorship program. It is basically a, you know, on Monday evenings, we get the whole cohort together and someone will give a talk on a topic, you know. usually something that has broad interest and applicability across all of the tracks in the mentorship program. Laura has been responsible for making the referrals to the people that we've brought in to do those talks. I would say last year, almost all of the talks were people that Laura introduced us to and helped bring on board. She's been an incredible recruiter of mentors for us. She's impacted the program in more of the ways than I can say and just such a deserving individual. So I'm really excited to celebrate her. And I told Laura when I told her that she was going to get the word that she would have to practice her plaque holding handshake thing because that's a, it's a hard move if you've never done it before.

[00:47:09] Zoe Licata: I'm sure she she's definitely brushed up on that. Jay, we know you're super busy. So thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And I can't wait to see you next week. So I will be in the quiet room at every chance I can get, you know, when you've got a little baby who is finally starting to babble and has toys that play every song you can possibly think of. A peaceful quiet room basically sounds like exactly what I need in my life.

[00:47:35] Brewers Association: That is amazing and fantastic. You will not be the only fairly recent mom that I know who's coming to the CBC.

[00:47:42] Zoe Licata: We'll have a little mom club. Perfect. Well, Jay, thank you so much. Can't wait for next week and everybody else. Thank you so much for joining us on this week's Brew Brewbound Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, like, rate and review, feel free to share with a friend and we of course will be back with a new episode next week.