Brewbound Podcast: The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea on TRU Colors’ Questionable Track Record

[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 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. Next on the Brewbound podcast, we discuss the New Yorker feature on North Carolina's True Colors, whose Anti-Violence Mission has been called into question by a double homicide. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. My name is Justin Kendall and I'm the editor of Brewbound and I am joined by Jessica Infante, the managing editor of Brewbound. What's up, Jess?

[00:00:59] Bound Insider: Nothing, Justin. How are you?

[00:01:00] Jessica Infante: I'm doing well. How are you doing? Zoe Licata, Brewbound reporter extraordinaire, Generation Z consultant. How's it going?

[00:01:08] Charles Bethea: I'm doing fine. I am dealing with accepting that summertime has kind of come to a pass after this Labor Day weekend, but I'll accept it eventually.

[00:01:18] Jessica Infante: Yeah, there are a lot of people in the beer industry who are also mourning the loss of the summer selling season. So maybe you can extend it a little bit here with football, but we'll see. And we'll talk a little bit about that. Coming up here with our, well, our featured early guest, who is Sean McNulty, Bound Insider Newsletter writer. What's up, Sean? How you doing?

[00:01:43] New Yorker: Can I be the Gen X correspondent? Can I be the official? I don't think we have one here. Just saying, I'm official, Jen. I'm like legit in it. So can I get that title? Zoe, would you mind having a counterbalance there?

[00:01:55] Charles Bethea: Yeah, I would love for you to have it.

[00:01:57] New Yorker: Do we got to bump your pay? For Gen X? No, we're too cynical. You can't pronounce. We do it for the love of the game, Justin.

[00:02:05] Jessica Infante: We don't do it for the money. Perfect. That'll work out just great for us. And we also have another guest, a featured interview this week. We will discuss the New Yorker feature on True Colors, the North Carolina brewery that employs rival gang members with a stated goal of ending violence in Wilmington. But that mission has come into question after a double homicide at the home of brewery founder George Taylor's son. Here to discuss that with us later in the show will be Charles Bethea from the New Yorker. So we're looking forward to having him on here. So stick around for that. But first, We gotta plug our BrewTalks conversation series, which is coming to Denver for Great American Beer Festival week. We'll be at Cervantes Masterpiece on Thursday, October 6th from noon to 3 p.m. Mountain Time. So set your clocks and calendars for that. Our first guest, We can announce it right now. Mark Safaric, the brewmaster of Dogfish Head will be there. So we're filling out a couple of panels. We've got conversations set to take place and more news to come on that. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me, Jess, or Zoe on that. Let's get to this week's show. Sean, we talked a little bit about it. Labor Day has come and gone. The summer selling season is over and now we move into football season. How are you feeling about the beer industry's prospects heading into the back half of this year?

[00:03:33] New Yorker: Nowhere to go but up. Summer of the year to date is, as we all know, and I've been writing about, yeah, not great unless you're below premium brand. Or an import. Or an import, as always. Owned by Constellation Brands. A bit of a narrow window there. You also have the World Cup coming in November, which globally should help out. And there'll be a second little boost for the year after the NFL launch in September. So look, I'm a beer biz optimist. I think beer and football hand in hand. I'd love to see in the, we heard about a lot of new ad campaigns launching this fall. So curious to see what the new creative is. I know Bud Light has a new agency, so we'll see if we get some new possibly creative from them. It kind of happened recently, so I'm not sure when that'll kick in. little odd to their timing. They went August on a football season, a little more prep time there. But yeah, I'm becoming an optimist for fall beer and football season.

[00:04:32] Jessica Infante: Yeah, Zoe's got a fantasy draft coming up and she is not going to be among the nearly one in five consumers who plan to watch an NFL game and bars or restaurants at least to start the season, or at least draft in a bar. No, no, but that's what our friends at CGA says is one in five consumers plan to watch an NFL game this week in a bar or restaurant, which I feel like is kind of low. You know, maybe those folks are hitting stadiums, but I don't know.

[00:05:02] Charles Bethea: Yeah. I don't know if I'm like entirely surprised by it, but maybe that's just like our football culture here. It's just, it's mostly you are sitting at home or like in your friend's basement with a group of people watching the games, but it's, I don't know, it still feels maybe a little bit low. I don't know if that's a part of that is people just got used to watching games at home during COVID and just sticking with it, but we'll see if that pans out actually through the season.

[00:05:29] New Yorker: Yeah, I think it's best to watch the Giants in private these days, personally. Although I guess misery loves company, I don't know. But we'll see how that goes. Yeah.

[00:05:41] Bound Insider: I mean, it sounds low, but like one in five, that five is probably a pretty really big number.

[00:05:47] Jessica Infante: Right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you got to wonder how much of this is sort of inflationary, recessionary fears and concerns already starting to sort of bite us. I don't know, the jobs numbers being good, again, seems to me to point to not as much pain as we're expecting, but I don't know. I'm talking out of my ass, really, on that one.

[00:06:12] New Yorker: No one knows, Justin. Anybody who's telling you anything about the economy is just making a best guess at this point. So I think, you know, let's just see what happens, keep a good thought, and enjoy some football.

[00:06:22] Jessica Infante: Let's move on to some of the news of the last week. You had some thoughts, though, on some previous news that we did, Sean. You wanted to talk a little bit about Allagash IPA or Allagash's move into IPA. So what do you want to expound upon for us there?

[00:06:41] New Yorker: Well, it was just to know that, look, it doesn't on paper maybe make a lot of sense. And I guess that this IPA is a challenging market, et cetera. too hard. It moves a lot of beer. Stone IPA moves a lot of beer, the classic IPA style, which isn't as crowded anymore. Maybe there is some white space there, which, you know, they're not going after the, the 16 ounce for, you know, hazy's in that market. Like, nor should, you know, I mean, now I guess it's definitely not known for IPA, certainly not known for throwing oats and making cloudy beers and doing, you know, so, which I haven't had the beer. You guys, you guys have had it by now or yeah. So it's more of a traditional, I'm going to call it East Coast IPA. Is that relatively accurate? So, you know, I'm like, no one's entering that market and hasn't in a while. And you look at Allagash's, where's their power? I mean, pre-pandemic more so, but, you know, and getting tap handles, Allagash White tap handles everywhere. Can they get a second tap handle in some locations for not craft beer bars per se, but just like regular bars, quote unquote, that everybody has Allagash White. do they have some influence to maybe add a second, you know, get that IPA handle every now and again from the two hearted that's always on or whatever it is. Like I get the skepticism and I'm not like completely sold on the idea. Is it in 60 ounce four packs or is it in bottles? Just also curious packaging wise.

[00:08:02] Charles Bethea: I believe 16 ounce. That's what we got.

[00:08:05] New Yorker: Yeah, like if it was more of a six or 12 ounce bottles, that would probably make a little more sense and a little more on brand for me than like a, like a four pack of cans for our gash. I don't know how they've been selling for them as they've done other limited stuff, but. I'll guess white for me still comes in that. But you know, but that aside, and just also even just, you know, in Jersey, just because we're both in Jersey, obviously, as everybody knows, you know, what are the two most popular beers? Cane Head High and Carden 007, or Odub. What are they? Traditional East Coast IPAs. Like, you know, there is a market for this stuff. So I'm just like, I think they're, you know, it's not what they're known for, but I do see like, hey, maybe there is some white space here that just hasn't been looked at in years because hazy's have been the growth of the business. So that was my only, you know, note of optimism about that. I'll guess just move that it could, I could see what they might be thinking in that and the opportunity might be there.

[00:08:56] Bound Insider: Yeah, I think we're at a point where releasing an IPA in New England that's not hazy is innovative in itself.

[00:09:02] SPEAKER_??: Exactly.

[00:09:03] New Yorker: Right. Yeah. I mean, Harpoon has the market, but like, what's the alternative? What's the second option in that category? You guys know better than I would, but is there a number two non-hazy in New England that could they be the number two? So keep it a good thought for now, Gash, that's all.

[00:09:21] Bound Insider: Definitely possible.

[00:09:22] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I think that leads to a conversation that I know that we want to have, Jess, and it's one that's been on Jess's mind for quite a time is that what's next beyond IPA? You know, it's a little striking that Allagash is going into IPA, you know, when they traditionally not played in that space in a big way. But I think we've talked about it a little bit among ourselves, like, we got a bit of an IPA reliance problem, right? When so much of the market is dedicated to this, and you know, consumers love it. It's hard to say, like, don't release an IPA. Nobody's saying that, you know, but it's like, if Kraft is going to get any bigger. If it's going to reclaim some of the share losses that it's had, it's going to have to come outside of the space, I think. It really is. And is that through a Mexican-inspired craft lager? I think there are a lot of good examples of that right now out there. But we know that imports are killing it, or at least Constellation imports are. And Dos Equis does really well for Heineken. So is it a space that craft brewers can play in, even though I don't know how authentically they can play in it. But you see the success that Stone has had. You see the success that Firestone Walker has had. Boulevard has a pretty good, really good actually, lime and salt lager out Southwest Boulevard. So there are breweries that are putting out good beers in that space. But is that what's beyond IPA, what's going to move the needle? And I think We're all sort of searching for answers on that. And it's a conversation that I think we're going to have here very shortly to sort of tease it. But that's our goal. And you might hear that in Denver.

[00:11:16] Bound Insider: Yeah, I mean, I think that you're right, like an over-reliance on IPAs potentially runs the risk of alienating people. I think a lot of like lower information consumers hear IPA and they just assume that IPA is synonymous with craft beer. And if they've had one that they didn't like, you know, that will put them off. And the problem is that what we're calling IPA right now runs the gamut, you know, like there are some beers that have IPA in their name, but if you were to blind taste them, almost nothing about them would harken to what you think of as being a traditional IPA or rather, you know, somebody with a palate that's kind of been slightly more, you know, trained and educated. So, yeah, I mean, I think leaning so heavy into one thing is potentially disastrous.

[00:12:02] New Yorker: Yeah, I think, you know, the challenge, I mean, like IPA is still growing. So like, it's not even like it's, you know, so not to be devil's advocate here, but like, as Jess said, there's a reason why people are still going into it because you go into a growth sector. You know, the problem is it's just dominated by, you know, it's minimal growth in very small brewery. You know, what's the percentage wise, but look, you know, they tried lager. I'm not paying an extra $5 for a Kraft lager because it's lager. Well, I mean, because it's Kraft, you know, like they have a price problem on lager. I think that's a real, they dove into it. I mean, Firestone founders always remember 2018, I guess that was, Justin, the big lager push, I think, right? It was a big year of the lager and, you know, solid gold does fine. I think Firestone lager's still out there. I don't even, I don't get it here in New Yorker anymore, it kind of, when you're selling a, it's hard to convince an average consumer to upgrade to a craft lager at a price point that, for a style that isn't that materially different of quality. I mean, you know, you can argue that the cows come home, but people also like make ultra people, you know, there was not like there's a, there's a lack of options in that field. So lagers tough. And then when you have imports, Yeah. Like, you know, can else Beth also does very well with their sublime, you know, like there are certain markets where like California is a bit by the biggest Modelo market, you know, in the country, like, can you play in that? Sure. Can the Minnesota can summit play in Mexican lager? Probably not. Like, you know, so there's also like a bit of like, to that being able to play in it, but the growth levers, you know, just, I mean, as we just say, economically speaking, price-wise, we don't know where it's going. That's the biggest challenge Kraft has is not, I think, is that at this point, not necessarily what style aren't we doing. They've done every style. IPAs, the answer that's come back time after time after time, outside of now RTD and now non-ALC will be the two ones that are kind of out there now, but I don't know that, you know, there's a lot of things that haven't been done.

[00:14:00] Jessica Infante: And it doesn't have to be a logger. Logger has been pushed forever. And the Mexican inspired loggers seem to be something that, you know, have grabbed some traction, at least for some brands. I just think that there are a lot of consumers who are not going to be attracted to IPAs. I mean, Zoe could credibly speak to being one of those people. Is it going to be fruited beers? Is it going to be what? Is it something that we don't even know about yet? I think that that's where our conversation has to be is because a decade from now, what's craft going to be like? What's it going to look like? I think we need to be looking into the future of what this segment is going to be like, and, and how, you know, we can get more drinkers into this area. I think a perfect example is funky town in Chicago. They won our pitch slam competition last year. They don't play in IPAs. They know their drinker base. That's not what they want. And I think that that's, That's what I've sort of got in the back of my head is like, if we're going to reach people that we under index with, that's how we're going to have to do it. You know, I think they're a great example.

[00:15:20] Bound Insider: It's way more about meeting people where they are rather than introducing a product to them that their palate is not acclimated to and telling them to learn. Gone are the days of stone with arrogant bastard and you're not worthy. We have moved beyond that. And I don't think you can expect consumers to do a ton of work to retrain their own taste buds just to drink what you're making.

[00:15:44] Charles Bethea: That's over. It goes back to our conversation we had last week after Bart's report on the Harris poll about like one, you have to create this brand experience that's centered around like, what is your audience type? And it's not necessarily about like style trends and brand is becoming even more popular over style. So people aren't necessarily looking for these, Oh, I need all these IPAs now they're looking for, okay, what, what is actually going to be catering to me personally, and not like the craft culture or what is popular. Yeah.

[00:16:17] New Yorker: And I love what Neil Stewart has said in his great piece for you guys too, just about brand building. And just like, it takes a long time and you have to do it a certain way now. So like dropping this one new line for six months, it's like, it's never, it's never going to just, you know, you strike gold and, you know, the unicorns that are out there, but in its wake are just, you know, you guys just need to get every press release out there. It's like, you know, brand building is maybe more the key here than what's the style going to be that changes our business kind of thing. You know, that might be who's going to win in the next or be around, just to your point, in the next 10 years in crafts, who's still going to be, you know, the, the, the top or at the top, it's like sticking to your game, you know, Trillium makes a logger shore, but they just own that The hazy IPA market in that treehouse seems like that's what they do. The growth's going to top out at some point, but it's a healthy business and that's what their business is. So even something like Fiddlehead's growing huge in IPA. So there's still this white space to be had here. So it's a- Great example.

[00:17:23] Jessica Infante: A magic bullet is hard to find, I guess. The point is, we got to reach people, like Jess said, where they are. And we certainly see how their palates have changed over the last three to five years with the introductions of hard seltzers and RTD canned cocktails and hard kombuchas and hard teas and ranch waters. And we can just keep going with the things that are doing well or are attracting them. And then you have big sodas entry into these products, and they're giving you an alcoholic beverage experience with known brands. The palates have definitely shifted. And the days of me sitting in a cornfield trying to figure out like, if I can drink this light lager, you know, are over.

[00:18:15] Bound Insider: To be fair, Hazy's actually did a great job at bringing women in. I remember like early research when Sam Adams had launched their New England IPA was that this brand is being trialed like half by women, which is huge.

[00:18:28] New Yorker: So do you not drink hazy at all? Or is that just curious if you IPA across the board or just wondering?

[00:18:34] Charles Bethea: Yeah, generally avoid on most occasions. I can handle a couple if they're like a little lighter, if they have some like broodiness in there, but it's mostly like any bitterness, anything like that. I just, no, thank you.

[00:18:50] New Yorker: Okay. But yeah, the hazy maybe, yeah.

[00:18:53] Bound Insider: What did you drink growing up, like non-alcoholic? Like Capri Sun, Squeeze It?

[00:18:58] Charles Bethea: Yeah, a lot of Sunny D. A lot of Sunny D. All right. Sunny D. Capri Sun was in there too, yeah. But we weren't really allowed to have juices or anything. It was too much sugar. So interesting. Mountain water, well water. Black coffee only, that's it. Up on the mountain top. And maple syrup. Yes, and maple syrup.

[00:19:18] New Yorker: And one other quick thing I like, like Brandon, the engagement, just like you guys, this thing with the untapped last week and that data that came out and like the drop in millennials going to tap rooms was pretty drastic. The only, and like engagement of that consumer, like, you know, why is craft down? And it's like, maybe that key driver of the craft boom is a little over craft, you know, and Justin, your point, but maybe the new new products to engage, they may have grown out of whatever that was. And they're, you know, they need to cater to that, Justin. So I think that may speak to what exactly what you're talking about now about changing tastes that with your core demo, that may be or they don't want the new Hayes anymore. They want, you know, but who knows? The longer, who knows?

[00:19:57] Jessica Infante: Well, and it's a bit of a perfect storm too, of the issues being like, look at what the last two years was, you know, like Kraft has relied so much on at the brewery sales. as well as, you know, take-home package. But when you are forced into a situation of either those breweries being closed for about a year or whatever it was, or you're going to the grocery store, but you got to get in and get out, we can't underestimate what these last two years have sort of done to the consumer in that they've had to change their pattern so much. It takes a while to get back into that flow of like, oh, I can go to breweries again. And do I want to go to breweries again? Or, you know, like, did I really latch on to something through the pandemic that I'm going to keep buying, you know, which is a major advantage to the brands and companies that are in like grocery and, you know, have those placements? Or do I want to go back to that rotation of, You know, I'm up for whatever. We can't sort of underestimate what happened these last couple of years.

[00:21:07] Bound Insider: Yeah. And the untapped data that you're referring to, Sean, I believe Trey Smith, the CEO of Next Class, did a, did a deep dive into, you know, check-ins at the brewery by age and found that there was a significant, like, not significant, but, uh.

[00:21:22] New Yorker: It was like 20 to 17 percent. It was, you know, a decent shift downward.

[00:21:27] Bound Insider: Yeah. Yeah. And what made him want to look into that was somebody had floated the idea of, did parents of young kids stop going to tap rooms before kids could get vaccinated?

[00:21:36] New Yorker: Oh okay, interesting.

[00:21:38] Bound Insider: Yeah, I mean I don't want to start a should kids be allowed in tap rooms conversation because we don't have five years. That I think was what was driving the research there, which was interesting.

[00:21:48] New Yorker: Or you got kids and you're just not going to the taproom much. What changed, Justin? People's lives change. It's like that person who could go to the brewery all the time. Yeah. You know, as Justin can speak to directly, it's like maybe you're not going as much.

[00:22:01] Bound Insider: Maybe like as your kids get older and start to have a social life of their own, you can't. They're not part of yours anymore. That's like where a lot of my friends are right now.

[00:22:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I mean, eight months with an unvaccinated human being, you know, and trying to keep that person alive and well, you know, is is definitely a change factor in behavior. Anyway, we don't have to belabor this. We can have this conversation again, which we plan to do. But let's talk about one of those products that came out that, you know, was appealing to people's tastes already. And that was truly Boston Beer's Truly Hard Seltzer. We know that they've hit the skids as far as sales this year. They've had a tough couple years with the Truly brand and trying to figure out where that's going. And they've launched a new advertising campaign to try and swing that back the other way. And I would say that the ad can, at least to my taste, is a little polarizing. in our little group here, I know all of us were kind of like, I'm not sure this is the direction you want to go with this. And I spoke with Boston Beer about it. And I asked about consumer testing, and they said it tested positively. And I guess what we're beating around is the ad has fruit flies in it.

[00:23:21] Bound Insider: You're being way too polite right now.

[00:23:25] Jessica Infante: I'll let you guys be impolite. You guys go ahead and be impolite. Tell them about about the ad. You guys will probably do a better job of describing it.

[00:23:33] Bound Insider: Zoe, do you want to be the bad guy or do you want me to?

[00:23:35] Charles Bethea: I got it. All right. So well, what we've talked about before is that truly is one of those moves to try to change their trajectory is they're reformulated some of their core truly flavors with real fruit juice. and to show how great that fruit content is. Their new advertisement features fruit flies all over the cans, just loving that fruit. Some nice close-up shots in there right on top of that can, right where you're going to put your mouth. Personally, not the most appealing thing. I don't know if I want to purchase something that may attract fruit flies, which is the idea this gives me a little bit. But I understand what they're trying to say. They're trying, I mean, saying like this, look how great this is. Even the fruit flies want it.

[00:24:23] Bound Insider: I get it. It functionally does the job of saying truly is now made with fruit juice. I don't know if you've ever worked in like a restaurant or bar or a tap room in the summer. The war on fruit flies is soul crushing and never ending.

[00:24:37] New Yorker: I mean, what happened to Alipa? I thought we were doing pretty well. I don't you know, I love that ad.

[00:24:42] Jessica Infante: She's doing a lot of bevy on on our instas these days. So I guess so. That was the least cool thing I think I've ever said.

[00:24:52] Bound Insider: I do think the move to reformulate with fruit juice is really smart. I think that is, you know, what people find so appealing about, you know, like the high noons of the world. But I don't know the hiring that fruit fly wrangler man was the way to do it. And also, if you have to make a video that's like three times as long as your commercial to explain the commercial.

[00:25:13] Charles Bethea: Yes, they had their behind the scenes a little too big. They're behind the scenes video featuring the fruit fly wrangler. which didn't know was a job, but apparently is.

[00:25:25] Bound Insider: You know what I drank over the weekend that was really good? Truly Margarita Mango Chili flavor. I liked it.

[00:25:32] New Yorker: A lot going on there.

[00:25:33] Bound Insider: Right? But it was good.

[00:25:35] Jessica Infante: And to your point there, that's a more full flavored beverage than they were producing before. I think that's one of the things that the original, you know, single flavor brands really struggled with was there's not a lot of flavor behind it, you know?

[00:25:51] Bound Insider: Yeah, you've seen the memes that are like these, like from like a couple of summers ago, like these hard seltzers are more like if somebody whispered the name of a fruit from three rooms away. Watermelon, but at the bottom of a, of an eight foot box that's in the other corner of the room, you know.

[00:26:11] New Yorker: I'm going to ask a question from the Gen Z correspondent to the Gen X, Gen Z. I'm old, I don't remember what the letters are. As someone who kind of, I mean, really came up in the hard seltzer generation, you know, for lack of a better term, do you think hard seltzer can return to growth? Or is there something, you know, amongst your friends and get that cachet back or back to the point of this advertising is to try and stem They're down, I think, what's 14% in IRI or something like that, the truly brand family. Is there a way back or is it just going to be mitigating? What's your sense when you go out with people? I know high noon is spoken about now a lot and things like that. Is there something that can be done that could change the tide or just a gut check?

[00:26:57] Charles Bethea: I think hard seltzers are always going to be part of what we're reaching for. I don't think they're ever going to completely go away. I think it's just like a core part of our drinking culture now. But I don't see it happening, like spiking anywhere anytime soon. And I don't know what would drive that. I mean, I noticed this weekend, particularly There, I mean, last year we would have had tons of, it would have been 90% truly in her white claw. And I saw maybe one white claw, one truly and mostly high noons everywhere helped in part because they dropped those new flavors just in time for Labor Day weekend. So everyone wanted to try those, but Yeah, I think having a light drink that you can have throughout the day that's a little fruity and it's not too overwhelming and maybe not too too bad for you. That's the key thing that we're reaching for. I don't know what we can do to and get more attractive to us. I mean, yeah, we like flashy things, new flavors, but that obviously didn't work out for Truly. So I don't know if I have a solution. It's part of what we're going to be drinking forever. It changed how we're going to drink forever, but I don't think it's going to have any big booms again. All right.

[00:28:16] Jessica Infante: Let's get to our featured interview with Charles Bethea of The New Yorker. There's a stunning story that dropped last week in The New Yorker on True Colors, the North Carolina craft brewery whose stated mission is to end gang violence by hiring rival gang members to work together. True Colors was founded by George Taylor, a tech entrepreneur who, with his son Kurt, created beer and wine recommendation app NextGlass, which would later go on to acquire beer rating service Untappd. Before True Colors even began production, the company received investment from Molson Coors. But months after that investment, two people were murdered at the home of George Taylor's son, George Taylor III. New Yorker staff writer Charles Bethea did a deep dive into the troubled history of True Colors, and he joins us now. Thanks for being here, Charles. Yeah, no problem. Charles, this is a must read story for anyone, even outside of the beer industry. But how did you get interested in True Colors? How did you come across them in this story?

[00:29:22] North Carolina: I heard about the company from a colleague who grew up in Wilmington, where the company is based. She doesn't live there now, but she pays attention to her hometown news. Sometime last summer, after the double murder that I write about in the story, she saw some local coverage of it and read a little bit more about the business model and proposed that Together we write a story about it that ultimately didn't work out. I took it on myself and, you know, it's quite quite a ride.

[00:29:53] Jessica Infante: Yeah, what sticks out to me here is that there's this collision of what seems to be an altruistic purpose with a stated capitalism and an I know best bravado from George Taylor. When you look back at this story, you know, how do you view it?

[00:30:12] North Carolina: So I think it's the story of sort of a classic serial entrepreneur disruptor type guy, like sort of Silicon Valley guy transported to the Southeast, healthy ego, taste for risk, a handful of big successes, a handful of big failures behind him. And he sees the opportunity first and foremost, I think, to make money in a very specific moment. And it's a moment that we're still in. It's the moment of, you know, the sort of like society wide awakening or reawakening to social justice issues. And so in the wake of, you know, countless killings, especially of young black men, I think altruism is on the minds more of corporations and philanthropy and also the appearance of virtue and signaling that in various ways. And, uh, It's not a question of how sincere that altruism is with folks like George Taylor and True Colors. It's more a question of how well planned and executed it is. And I think that's where, you know, True Colors ran into some issues or has run into some issues.

[00:31:26] Bound Insider: Another part that really jumped out to us was that George Taylor was steadfast in his wanting employees to remain in their gangs. Did you get the sense that Taylor had second guessed True Colors' approach

[00:31:38] North Carolina: So from the outset, you know, I'd say he really shrugged off the advice of experts on gang violence in favor of strategy that would turn more heads. And one of the experts that he spoke to and who I spoke to as well is the head of what's called Homeboy Industries in LA. It's a nonprofit that tries to get guys to leave gangs and then set them up with jobs that can sort of help change their lives in fundamental ways. He told Taylor that the idea was crazy to employ active rival gang members. Taylor went ahead and he did it anyway. I checked back in with Boyle a few weeks ago and he said he still thinks it's nuts. I just think Taylor was committed at a certain point to this idea. We can talk about why, but I think a lot of it had to do with marketing. The idea of doing something involving active rival gang members hadn't been done before. It's more bold and unprecedented, and frankly, it's going to elicit a lot more press and attention than doing what has been done before and what's been somewhat successful with companies like Homeboy Industries, which is employing former gang members and reinforcing that they stay out of gangs. You know, I think whatever second guessing George Taylor did, he, you know, it didn't really amount to any substantial changes in company policy as time passed. And he really just sort of doubled down on this more marketable, risky approach.

[00:33:15] Charles Bethea: Based on those interactions that you had with Taylor, what sense did you get about his commitment to the cause or what was motivating him through these decisions?

[00:33:27] North Carolina: I think it's important to point out that from the get-go, he said that his first goal was to sell beer. It's a for-profit business, not a non-profit, as I said. So the social justice cause, even though it's really the entire marketing pitch, making good on that is secondary to making money. He's always said that, you know, he imagined selling the company within a few years. So to me, that begs the question of not just to whom does he sell it, but of what happens to the gang employees then. Is the new buyer just going to like sort of bring all of them along, which would mean bringing along a whole lot of risk? Or is he going to fire them and bring on people that he trusts? What happens to the mission? Does it become purely just sort of lip service? It's hard to imagine for me that any buyer would just start rolling out the True Colors model across the country and cities and hiring rival active gang members right and left. But in any case, Taylor didn't really have any satisfying answers to those questions or those hypotheticals. When I talked to him about them, he always would just say sort of vaguely that, uh, you know, with all of his other startups, things just sort of worked out. Of course, none of them involved gangs, but he was, he was comfortable with at least saying that his track record was such that he was sure everything would work out. But it's pretty clear to me that Even though he wouldn't be completely transparent with his financials, saying they're confidential, he's going to benefit the most from a sale. He's going to make money. Some of his employees who had stock options would potentially also make some amount of money, but it seems like in many cases, they would be back to square one. in terms of having the same traumas, the same stresses, the same dangers present in their lives. Because very few people will hire people with felony records. So it's really tricky to imagine how this would be sustainable in the long term for anyone.

[00:35:35] Jessica Infante: I think that's one of the things that we've struggled to understand with the business model. And even once Molson Coors invested in the business was one who was going to profit the most and whether the employees would profit at all from any type of sale or investment. And, you know, the other thing that I think we struggled with understanding is if it was a built to sell model that he was doing this on and really in a fast turn, which seems very hard to do, you know, like you said, what would happen to these employees?

[00:36:12] North Carolina: Yeah, it's unclear. You know, I don't want to suggest, and I hope the story doesn't suggest, that there aren't guys who are working there who are making more money than they've made before. They're making that money legally. I just think it's a little bit naive and even potentially, you know, intentionally misleading to suggest that money fixes their problems alone. I'm not a gang expert any more than George Taylor is. My understanding from talking to people who are is that their problems are deep rooted and complex and are not just financial. And so his model I think is it's sort of it's simplistic. And so. Yes, one wonders what happens when the company is sold or it goes under or what have you. Did it solve the problem of gang violence that it set out to solve, that it says it was going to solve? It seems to me that even putting it in those terms is a little bit crazy.

[00:37:14] Jessica Infante: So at this point, what was the sense that you got from the community in Wilmington about how they viewed the brewery and its mission?

[00:37:25] North Carolina: Well, first of all, one of the first things I did was reach out to breweries, not just in Wilmington, but in North Carolina as a whole. I was curious what they thought about True Colors. And apparently they had made a decision as a group not to talk about True Colors. So it was, you know, it was seen as like a very volatile and controversial and just something to stay away from, right? Most locals, when I talked to them, were willing To acknowledge being somewhere I think between suspicious and hopeful. I mean who wouldn't want to root for a company that whatever else you could say about it does represent the kind of opportunity even if it's short lived. for people who don't really ordinarily have any opportunities. But I think for most observers and for company employees that I've talked to, most of them former company employees, as time passed, the hopefulness kind of subsided and was replaced more by cynicism. which I think comes from an awareness of the history of decades of watching wealthy white people tend to succeed while local black people tend to struggle. And it seemed like this was going to ultimately replicate that in some ways.

[00:38:47] Charles Bethea: That's so interesting because particularly with craft beer, there's so much emphasis on connecting with community and being a local company and being a part of these people's lives. So through any of your conversations with either people who worked at the brewery or with Taylor, How did they balance this idea of like being a beer brand, which typically has such local and community support and trying to be a positive part of the community with that sort of weird area where people don't necessarily want to talk about it yet or feel cynicism about it?

[00:39:24] North Carolina: Yeah, right. Well, I mean, there's there's a tension there. I think another thing to note is that, and I don't really say this very explicitly in the story, but there isn't a huge thirst for beer, or at least for this kind of beer, in that community. I talked to people who We're in communication with George Taylor barrier and leon as he was starting to sort of work out this idea of a brewery like this And a few of them said look you should do something totally different like beer is not the right product here These guys don't really drink beer They don't really like beers that much. So if you want, you know, i'm not saying there aren't beer drinkers in the community i'm not you know, I don't want to paint like an overly broad picture, but like if you want something that's authentic it should probably be a product that this community naturally gravitates towards. So I think there was also a little bit of a tension there from the outset that like, it was a little bit of like performative enjoyment of the product. And so that makes gathering a community around it, maybe a little trickier, if you know what I mean.

[00:40:31] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and there's a line in the story too that has one of the wealthier people who have, I believe, invested in it saying that it's perfect for the golf course or on the boat or something like that, which is even more of a disconnect. Huge disconnect.

[00:40:49] North Carolina: Those are not things that are accessible to most of the people in the community that was employed at the brewery and immediately around the brewery. It's a poor area. They don't have, most of them don't have golf clubs, certainly don't have boats. I don't know how much tailgating they do. So it's like, yeah, it was just a total weird disconnect there.

[00:41:09] Bound Insider: So why do you think George chose a brewery? It's a super cash intensive, labor intensive. It's not an easy business. Like it just seems weird to me that this is the avenue he went when there's places like Homeboy Industries out there that do completely other different things.

[00:41:26] North Carolina: Yeah, I mean, Homeboy, to take the last part first, I mean, Homeboy is a non-profit. I think George is very much, he's not a non-profit guy. He's a for-profit guy. He's like a hardcore entrepreneur guy who wants to make as much money as he can make. So that sort of put to the side these non-profit options. Why beer? Good question. I mean, he pointed to, and I think this is true, he had been involved with what became Untappd. and Untappd. So he had contacts in the beer world and an understanding of the beer world through Untappd. And so it was maybe slightly easier than reinventing something else, a whole new product universe. So I think he also likes beer himself. I mean, it's, uh, you know, it's an addictive product, so it's got that going for it. But yeah, I think he kind of forced, he forced beer away into this model where, and I don't know that I, I know exactly what would have been the best replacement or alternative, but I think there probably were some other ones, but he chose beer, I think to answer the question most succinctly, largely because he had just been involved with a beer social media app.

[00:42:40] Jessica Infante: One of the other things that sort of jumps out about the True Colors story is the double homicide that occurred at George Taylor's son's home, George Taylor III, the deaths of, I think it's Cordreece and Briefer Williams. So Cordreece and Brianna were killed at George Taylor III's home. I believe there are three people who are accused of that homicide. But that wasn't the only violence that's sort of been linked through True Colors. Do you have a sense of how much violence is sort of tied, been sort of tied back to the brewery?

[00:43:21] North Carolina: It's a good question, but I can't give you a discrete number because even after months of reporting, it's not clear to me. I don't think it's clear to law enforcement either. Of course, it also depends on how you define linked. What does it mean to be linked, for violence to be linked to the brewery if we're saying it means involving people? who've worked at True for some amount of time since its inception. I think maybe a half dozen would be a conservative estimate of the number of killings involving True in that way. Shootings, who knows, maybe double that, maybe more. I mean, To give you an example of how murky these things are, a homeless person was found dead on True's property just a few months ago. That person's family is vehemently arguing publicly in the press that they're white and they have money and access to the press more than most. They're arguing that True employees were involved in some way, potentially, and that at a minimum, they think Taylor knows more than he's letting on, and that They're suspicious of the fact that he's been very reluctant to turn over surveillance video of the property from that time period. Meanwhile, law enforcement thinks it was a suicide. The jury is still out. But ultimately, so ultimately, that incident was too complicated and unclear to mention in my piece, I couldn't just drop in a sentence like it would have begged a whole section, we didn't have space for it. But that's an example of maybe that you would say that's a killing involving true colors. It's not clear.

[00:44:59] Jessica Infante: What more, I guess, do we need to know about the deaths of Cordurice and Brianna at this point? Because it really sort of brings home that what George Taylor was trying to solve, you know, came to his son's home. That, to me, was pretty stark.

[00:45:19] North Carolina: Yeah, it's a very brazen act, obviously, to kill someone, but to do so in a community that's not your own, in a home owned by the COO of a company that's ostensibly trying to prevent that very kind of violence. Whether there is a statement intended there by the alleged perpetrators, I can't say, but it certainly feels like there's a statement there. Two of the three alleged suspects have a link to True Colors. One of them was briefly employed there for a short period of time back in, I believe, 2019. was on the scene when there was a shooting, a non-fatal shooting, nearly fatal shooting, in front of what was then True Colors' office space. Another of the three had been turned down for a job immediately preceding the double murder last year. Unclear how that impacted his decision to allegedly take part in this. It does seem pretty clear to me from my reporting that True Colors, by employing active gang members, created another sort of thing for rival gangs to fight over, which was the jobs themselves. There's a finite number of jobs. You can't employ everybody. So who gets those jobs? And I think Corey Tyson, Cordreeze Tyson had a high role. He had a role at the company and he had the ear of George Taylor and his son in such a way that the perception was he could help influence who got those jobs. And I think that potentially put him in further jeopardy.

[00:47:15] Bound Insider: So another piece here is Molson Coors' minority stake in True Colors, which I believe they announced in 2020 before the company had even produced a single beer. It's something that we've covered a little bit, just like we covered the shootings last summer. How well vetted do you believe Molson Coors' and PNC Bank's investments in True Colors were? Or do you think, did this feel like the mission-driven, let's check a box kind of thing?

[00:47:42] North Carolina: I was granted an interview with a Molson Coors VP. PNC did not offer an interview, so I only have their public PR boilerplate comments about this, so I can speak more to the Molson Coors side of things. It appears to me that they did something close to the minimum in terms of due diligence, I would say. I think like many, they came to this opportunity with sort of rose-tinted glasses on, colored by the uprising for social justice following the murder of George Floyd. I think that they needed to be supportive, as most corporations are realizing belatedly, they needed to be supportive of efforts impacting poor and marginalized communities. And Taylor served one up. He had, I think, through Untappd, he had contacts within Molson Coors. He used those contacts to get a meeting with Gavin Hattersley, the head of Molson Coors, as well as people below him. And Taylor's a good salesman, and he made his pitch. And they bought it, I think. Maybe they had their fingers crossed. I don't know. But I think now they're sort of, in a way, kind of stuck. If they pull out, that, to me, suggests not only that the exercise made poor judgment with their original investment, but that they could have actually maybe even helped exacerbate the problems that they were trying to fix. If true was also exacerbating some problems, then they were tied to that. In any case, shortly before my story went to press, a communications person with Coors made it crystal clear that their investment had been a, quote, piece of the puzzle to advance Molson's DEI efforts. I thought that was really quite an admission insofar as it seemed to point straight to checking a box on an annual report.

[00:49:34] Jessica Infante: Yeah, we asked Molson Coors for a statement on the story and they said nothing has changed since our initial announcement with True Colors and that was the extent of the statement from them.

[00:49:44] North Carolina: Yeah, well we'll see as time passes sort of where they land on that.

[00:49:50] Jessica Infante: One of the other things that sort of complicates matters and that we were unaware of was that several True Colors employees were laid off earlier this year on the brewing team in the spring. Do we have a feeling for how many people work at True Colors at this point and maybe how many have quit?

[00:50:10] North Carolina: It's hard to say, partly because George Taylor has not always been straightforward or honest with me when I've asked him questions. I've learned that The opposite sometimes is true. I can tell you that he told me at various points that he's employed 60 or 70 people at True Colors. When I visited on two different occasions, I saw maybe two dozen there, two dozen people, maybe a little bit more than that. None of them were in the production facility. They were all in the sales marketing side. It was in the wintertime when I guess less beer is made and drank. You guys tell me if that's true. I don't know. That's what he said. I mean i've talked to multiple people who quit and were rehired or who were fired and asked to come back and There's a whole lot of turnover and upheaval there I would guess that 10 to 15 people have left at least I mean we know There were the three or four who we fired right before pnc invested nine million plus dollars I know that four more people left to take part in what's called port city united, which is a government run program that's trying to solve this issue and it's run by a local black man who seems to have a better grasp of the history and the issues than George Taylor does and who basically recruited four of Taylor's employees, some of his earliest employees to come work for this other entity. So there's quite a bit of turnover. I think it's not an easy place to work even if the salaries are are pretty good and health insurance is real.

[00:51:47] Bound Insider: 60 to 70 employees is a whole lot for a brewery that size, right?

[00:51:54] North Carolina: Yeah. That was another one of the sort of question marks is like, what are all these people doing? It seems like, you know, part of the goal is just to get them off the streets Bound Insider a building where they could be, you know, I don't know, watched and stay out of trouble. But what do you put those people to work doing? A lot of people said that they didn't think they were actually doing a whole lot, a lot of the time. You know, there were a few specialized brewing people, but those weren't really the gang folks. Some of the gang folks worked on marketing and sales and that kind of thing. But there was, it seemed like there was actually a whole lot of just sort of sitting around in the building.

[00:52:34] Bound Insider: One thing I loved about your story was the level of detail. Like you threw in some details that really, you know, bring everything to life. But one of them that really struck me was that they built the brewery to include a recording studio. I mean, that's, to me, definitely a nice to have for a brewery space. Do you know what they plan on doing with it?

[00:52:56] North Carolina: Yeah, well, I think that wasn't, you know, it's an interesting addition, I think, as George put it, and I thought this was kind of an eye roller, he said, everyone hears a rapper, you know, everybody, there's a rapper, but there are some rappers there, I think giving them an opportunity or musicians of various kinds, giving them an opportunity to make music is great. It seems like True will own all that music, if it goes anywhere. But it's also a place to make music that can maybe help carry the true message, either explicitly or implicitly. It's kind of like a marketing arm, sort of, in a way. There's some really cool stuff that I've heard that's come out of there, and not all of it seems like it's been sort of polished to a degree, that it's lost its real grit. So yeah, it is an interesting thing. Supposedly, there's a yoga room there. I didn't see that when I was there. There's a tap room, there's a cafe, all of them were empty when I was there. I haven't really gotten the sense, to get back to your question about the community, I haven't really gotten the sense that there are a lot of people who are just like excited about drinking True White.

[00:54:06] Jessica Infante: It really brings up the question of, you know, how they're measuring success at this point. And, you know, we've stated mission one is, is selling a lot of beer. And the other mission is, you know, preventing gang violence. I mean, your story raises real questions about how successful they're being at both of those ventures.

[00:54:27] North Carolina: Yeah, yeah, I tasted the beer myself. I'm not actually a huge beer drinker. But when I drink beer, I like darker beers. So I was, you know, True Light's not for me. It does taste to my palate, however unsophisticated it is, kind of like a Miller Lite. So it's not really reinventing the wheel. It tastes like whatever the industry term is for that caliber of beer. What do you call it? Like a premium light or something?

[00:54:53] Bound Insider: It'd be premium light, yeah. But I mean, the style is American light adjunct lager.

[00:54:58] North Carolina: Right. Okay.

[00:55:00] Bound Insider: I mean, no normal person would say that.

[00:55:04] North Carolina: Go into a store and ask for a...

[00:55:06] Bound Insider: Excuse me, your finest adjunct logger, please sir.

[00:55:11] North Carolina: So yeah, it's certainly a lot easier to quantify success financially than it is in terms of the Anti-Violence Mission. I mean, your bottom line is your bottom line, right? Those numbers ultimately are going to be pretty clear if they're making money or not. The impact on the community is a lot harder to measure. Like I say in the story, the numbers of shootings and deaths has gone up and down in Wilmington over time. There's just natural fluctuations and it spiked during the pandemic. George Taylor, you know, wants to point, well, it spiked because of the pandemic, not because of anything we were doing. And I would probably tend to agree with him. I don't think troop elders caused that spike. But then when violence drops back down the next year, he wants to take credit for the decrease in violence. So, you know, it's one of those things where, and law enforcement does this too, and I'm sure other entities, you know, want to use the numbers to their own advantage, right?

[00:56:04] Jessica Infante: And he seems to feel, at least from the quotes in your story, that he's being unfairly judged for the performance. I think he said something to the effect of others are given, you know, a decade and he's being judged every year. Every day, yeah. Every day, yeah.

[00:56:22] North Carolina: Yeah, I mean, it probably is unfair to judge an endeavor like this in the short term. But at the same time, he also wants to take credit in the short term.

[00:56:32] Jessica Infante: Well, and it seems that he also wants to sell the brewery in short order, too, which seems like a lot of conflicting priorities.

[00:56:40] North Carolina: Yeah, I would agree.

[00:56:42] Charles Bethea: With so many details and players in this story and so many nuances to all the various topics that this kind of delves into, is there anything else that you explored or discovered that kind of had to be left on the cutting room floor?

[00:56:59] North Carolina: Well, I mentioned the situation with the homeless person who was unfortunately found dead at the brewery a few months ago, or outside the brewery, not inside the building, but within the grounds of the brewery. I mean, there were, you know, there were a few other people that lost their lives whose stories, who deserve their own story. I focused on Corey Tyson's story because for a number of reasons, one mainly being that he was killed in the home of the CEO of the company. but also he had a high position within the company. He was very justice involved. He had been to prison a lot. He seemed to be kind of like the perfect vehicle through which to explore does true colors do what it says it's doing. And admittedly, he's just one person and his end was tragic. His story isn't everyone's story, but I think it was a useful, way to explore, to compare what the company is saying it's doing versus what's happening to the people who work there. I wish I could have done that with more people, but the nature of journalism is you kind of have to pick your test cases. He was the one that I chose, but that's not to suggest there weren't a handful of others who are pretty important in their own right.

[00:58:15] Charles Bethea: So going forward, what are you going to be looking out for or like expecting to see following this? Like, is there anything that you're specifically wanting to keep tabs on?

[00:58:26] North Carolina: Well, I mean, I didn't, to be totally clear, I didn't write the story because I want anything particular to happen to this company or these people. It just was a story that kind of fell in my lap through a colleague and I wrote it because it was interesting and involved a whole lot of, I think, resonant themes. So, I mean, I'm curious, like everyone else, kind of, what's the next chapter? Where does it go from here? I'm curious if, the main investors double down and remain invested. I'm curious if somebody else takes the reins of the company, although I doubt that that would happen. Curious what we learn in the trial involving the three suspects accused of being involved in killing Corey Tyson and Breonna Williams. All the obvious questions, I'm curious to see how they'll play out and we'll see.

[00:59:15] Jessica Infante: So are we. So we can't thank you enough for taking all the time out to chat with us. So thanks for being here, Charles.

[00:59:22] North Carolina: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks.

[00:59:24] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Well, and that's our show for this week. Thank you to our one man audio team, Joe. Thanks to Justin Zoe for hanging out. Thanks to Charles for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.