Brewbound Awards 2025: Cause of the Year - Right Proper

Speaker 1 [00:00] I am thrilled to welcome our next two guests to discuss this year's Cause of the Year award winner, Washington DC's Right Proper Brewing, whose work to support laid off and furloughed federal workers, has spread good beer, cheer, and networking. So joining me are Right Proper co-founder Leah Cheston. Hi, Leah, how are you?

Speaker 2 [00:18] Hi, thank you so much. This is such an honor. I'm, I'm humbled. Oh, it was,

Speaker 1 [00:23] it's such an easy, easy decision this year. And you had the brilliant idea to welcome your, uh, your one of your partners in crime in all of this. We have with us today, Kyle Dietrich, the founder of Grounded Idealist. Uh, the organization's been a partner co-hosting events at Right Proper, supporting displaced workers with coaching and career transition support. Welcome, Kyle. How are you?

Speaker 3 [00:46] Jess, I'm great and congratulations, Leah. Happy to be

Speaker 1 [00:49] here. Well, like I said, it was an easy decision and Leah, you and I have talked a lot about this program, which has an excellent name on the Brewbound podcast before. But for, you know, the at-home audience who is, you know, watching Brewbound Live 2025 happen, let's run it back. So, you've done this before in other instances, but this year's iteration of Right Proper's federal worker support. Uh, it's really started earlier in 2025 when major reductions in force started happening in the federal government, which was largely driven by executive orders. So Right Proper rechristened its Pay It Forward program as Executive Order me a beer. Which is terrible situation for so many people, but I got a little bit of a chuckle out of. So, so far, more than 1000 beers have been purchased for laid off federal workers, but there's so much more to this program than just beers. So, please tell us about it.

Speaker 2 [01:40] Yeah, so, uh, like you said, we had pay it furloughed program very similar where strangers could buy beers for furloughed federal workers in the, in the last government shutdown in 2018. Um, and so when this started to happen, these executive orders started going through and, and our, you know, our friends and our community, people were losing their jobs. Um, we had a playbook for it. My, my husband came up with the, the name, so all credit to Thor there. And um yeah, so, so executive order me a beer, and it's just a simple idea that strangers, either in the pub or people from wherever, you know, can, can pay for these beers, order them online, and then people can come in and redeem the beer. And so if you are an affected government employee that lost your job, you could come in and get a free beer that's been paid for by someone else.

Speaker 1 [02:34] Which is great, but then you also added a networking component, right?

Speaker 2 [02:38] Yes, and so it kind of organically grew and evolved. And so initially it was just this idea of connecting, you know, the beers to the, to the people affected, and then we, um, Started hosting happy hours, industry-focused, happy hour networking happy hours, so people who had lost their job in a specific field, you know, science will this be this week, um, education next week, that, that sort of thing to sort of bring people together who had been affected and hopefully bring in, uh, you know, employees, employers in the private sector that could, you know, maybe hire some of those people. Um, and then that sort of evolved to other, uh, coaching networks and Um, other, uh, nonprofit organizations that were helping, uh, these, these laid off federal employees and so offering services during these happy hours like resume editing, little coaching, short coaching sessions, and, and so Kyle was, was one of those and part of that process, so he can talk, talk a little bit more about that as well.

Speaker 1 [03:37] Yeah, Kyle, let's, let's bring you in here. I know you attended some of these events early on, and now you're, you're really helping run them. So walk me through that journey.

Speaker 3 [03:47] Yeah, we, so I was at USAID, the US Agency for National Development, until February. Again, executive orders, stop work orders, lots of things happened. The agency ultimately was dismantled, so not just, I think the big thing is it's not only federal, we have 250,000 federal workers, but we also have contractors implementing partners, nonprofits, researchers and university. There's just so many people affected by this, and in DC, obviously it's very acute and pronounced. We all know many, many people. Um, so I am a coach, was working at USA leading the team, the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, and really saw this as an opportunity to support people that were essentially free falling. And so we mobilized an organization called Grounded Idealist. We partnered with several organizations that held events at Right Proper. Leah and Thor, I've known for a few years. They're neighbors, the family owned business. I also really love their food and their beer and just they're great people, and you can kind of keep it in mind like what people are going through. You lose your job and you lose your entire sector for some of us, particularly the international development community, and so having a space to convene to come together is powerful given how kind of isolated you feel. How lonely this moment is. And so, we did a number of events as partners where we showed up to do coaching, kind of mini coaching, really helping people ground and think about their career, their skills, their purpose, um, but also in a space that was lighthearted and we could connect and, and really think about what this moment meant for us. And so we've had a number of events. We did one, I think just a month ago. Which was there's a coalition of organizations and a lot of them have held events at Right Proper that are founders looking to help people in transition right now in all different kinds of ways. Civic Match was one of those groups. They helped federal employees go to state and local government. We help people start businesses as social entrepreneurs, we do coaching and career navigation support, and so it's just been a great place for coming together for, for just celebrating a little bit of the wins, for coordinating and building human relationships at the center of like this bigger movement we're trying to build.

Speaker 1 [05:52] Amazing. Kyle, as somebody, you know, in the community, how would you say that? What has right proper support meant? To this very sizable community of, as you mentioned, not just federal employees, but contractors, freelancers, other related organizations, how much do they feel the impact of what Leah, Thor and the team have done?

Speaker 3 [06:13] You know, I'm gonna, I'm going to answer it this way. We all have up years and down years. Businesses have them, organizations have them, people have them, and the real question is how we show up for each other, right? Because we all know we're going to have an off year with our health, with our business, we're going to lose jobs, we're going to lose family, like, and so the real question is as a community, how we show up for people in those up and down times, and, and the thing I think we realized really early on that Right Proper got right. Is what people are looking for and the reason this has worked so well, something as simple as donating a beer to support somebody is people are looking for a space to pour in their hope, their love, and their support for people, right? And so the biggest thing we can do is creating containers for people to continue to pour in because if we look like really clear eyed about what's going on right now without being political, it's hard. Like this is a hard moment. And we need to kind of a safety net to support some people. We all, we need to kind of come back together because there's a lot of division right now. Um, and so that it's, it's as simple as that, whether it's an actual physical place to come together for a happy hour or just a beer, like we had an event and we were able to offer like food and drinks for free for all these wonderful people who've spent their whole lives and this entire year serving others. And so it's just a gentle way of giving back and affirming what they're doing.

Speaker 1 [07:33] Now, Leah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the happy hours came into being because you had all these pre-bought beers and nobody was coming in to claim them, and you wanted people to enjoy them, right?

Speaker 2 [07:44] Yeah, it's actually been much easier to get the word out about buying the beers than it has about redeeming the beers, and, um, and so yeah, we, um, we let, we, you know, we, we promoted that we had the beers available, but the happy hours really helped kind of. Um, provide a sort of, you know, place where they could come and, and know that, that, that at least the first beer was on us or on a stranger actually, but

Speaker 1 [08:12] Amazing. Well, I don't have to tell you that times are tough across craft beer right now for a variety of reasons, but I know the, the, the heart of the craft beer industry really is one of community and giving back and at a time when maybe it feels difficult to do something for others, how can your fellow craft brewers assist those in their communities in a way that isn't detrimental?

Speaker 2 [08:34] The other great thing about this is that we, so we already had a pay it forward meal program where people could buy meals that we would distribute through mutual aid, um, organizations in the, in the neighborhood, and this program also helped boost that. And so we've seen um a huge increase in those, and so we've about 500 meals have been purchased this year, um, and, and we distribute those through. Um, through mutual aid groups and, um, uh, harm reduction groups and LGBTQ plus Center in DC and so that's been a really, um, you know, even more powerful way to sort of provide, and I, you know, when times are hard, and, and this, you know, when everyone's sort of losing their jobs, you know, you kind of just, OK. What can we do? And you feel pretty helpless, you know, and so something like this, it felt really small, but it felt like just something that we could do. And, and also, I mean, we were struggling too, right? So we, you know, as, as a lot of craft brewers are right now, like we couldn't really afford to front the, you know, we can't afford to front the meals and to front the, the beer like we maybe could have, you know, 5 years ago. And so I, I, my advice would be to lean on your community to help your community. Um, because they really, you know, to coming together is, and we can help them come together, right? We can be that middle, that liaison, um, between those who can help and those who, who need the help. Um, and so that, that's just been really great to, to, to see it come. You know, full circle like that. Um, and then, you know, it's just focusing on the next right thing, you know, when you get, you get overwhelmed and you feel helpless, and, OK, what is one thing, the next right thing that we can do that we actually have control of to help our, our community and And DC feels, you know, like a small town in a lot of way, you know, Kyle's a neighbor of ours. We live about 2 miles from, from the RooPub, um, and, you know, so it's, it's, it's very, very local in terms of what do they need, what can we do to, to assist that need.

Speaker 1 [10:37] Awesome. Well, I know many craft brewers are gonna listen to what you just said and, and hopefully find ways to help out in their own communities. Leah, my friend, it's always great to chat with you. Thank you so much and congratulations. We're so pleased to be able to give you guys this award.

Speaker 2 [10:51] Thanks, Jess. I mean, it's, you know, like we said, it, it really, it started as something very simple and very small. And so, um, it's really cool that, that it, that it. Has grown, um, to this and, and it's, you know, we're not, we're not saving lives here, but, but like Kyle said, you know, people coming together over a beer in tough times is, is really important.

Speaker 1 [11:11] You certainly could be. Kyle, thank you so much for joining. Your perspective has really made this conversation an absolutely elevated thing and it's been great to get to know you. So thank you for taking the time.

Speaker 3 [11:23] Thank you, Jess.