“Community” is a word that has become clichéd in craft beer. Its overuse suggests that the industry’s culture is broadly warm, inclusive, and accepting—that it’s true that “beer brings people together.”
But that notion of “community” is being called into question—particularly as it becomes clear that few breweries are taking the time to understand who it is they’re welcoming and who remains stuck on the outside looking in. Since COVID-19 has prompted new calls for “community support” for breweries and other beer businesses, the question has become even more urgent: just who is that community meant to include?
[Read The Time Is Now, Part One — Understanding the Origins of Beer’s Inequity
Illustrations by Colette Holston
The truth is that there is no cozy family at the heart of the industry. Culturally speaking, there isn’t even one, unified beer industry to speak of.
For some, craft beer’s current “community” feels like home. A sea of whiteness with just the right amount of Blackness sprinkled in. Blackness that includes hip-hop blasting in taprooms, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) used in beer names and descriptions, and culturally appropriative images on packaging. All the Blackness without the people. The urban street life without the “thugs.” The rhythm without the blues.
Many who inhabit this domain don’t acknowledge that craft breweries often act as catalysts for gentrification. That those breweries are staffed with suburban commuters and lead to droves of middle-class white customers inundating neighborhoods of color. Those businesses are likely to see their “community” as those whom they employ and those who patronize their taprooms, often at the exclusion of the neighborhoods they reside in. They generally do very little to attract the people whose neighborhoods they’ve encroached upon.
This tension results in many cringeworthy industry norms that Black workers in beer are forced to confront. Sales teams avoid Black neighborhoods because there is the assumption that “Black people don’t drink craft beer,” or “We’ll be pricing these people out of our beer.” Sometimes breweries feel distributing in their own backyards is out of the question, because the neighborhood is too “dark.” Other times, kegs are dumped into on-premise accounts in these same neighborhoods, only to be left to collect dust while reps working in middle-class white neighborhoods hold events and tastings aimed to encourage consumers to try new products or to tempt accounts with specially curated portfolios.
Andrés Muñoz, who formerly worked as a distributor representative in Boston, Massachusetts, recounts holding an event to open an account in Dorchester, a primarily Black and Hispanic neighborhood. It was an accomplishment that left some of his white industry counterparts shocked. Muñoz insists that their inability to accomplish the same is a result of bias. “A lot of reps carry this inherent bias of what a beer consumer looks like,” he says. He also recalls reps for distributors of larger brands placing beer that was near its expiration date in accounts in Black neighborhoods with no follow-up. “They didn’t support it. They didn’t have a tasting. There was no merch. They did nothing,” he says.
[Disclosure: Andrés Muñoz owns Fermentum PR, which hosted Toni Boyce’s recent “Making a Statement” webinar.]
Daniel Gerow, a brewery sales rep in New York City, mentioned that the idea of accessibility deters some “upscale” accounts from placing certain brands on tap. His experience with attempting to sell beer to a high-end bar ended with the buyer declining, saying that the beer’s availability in bodegas made it “too accessible.” Gerow also believes that sales tactics in current markets translate to newer markets being underdeveloped. “There appears to be a lack of desire to expand the current market share in communities breweries are already in,” he says. “Expanding into historically underserved communities is farfetched for brands with this limiting mindset.”
Jordan Rail, a founding partner and director of sales and marketing at Lake Austin Ales in Austin, Texas confirms that perspective from the brewery side. “It's a historical issue,” he says. “Preference is changing, but everyone is basing their marketing strategies on the same demographic data.”
The gospel of craft as preached by the late beer writer Michael Jackson never made it to Black neighborhoods, yet the industry treats Black folks as wayward souls who were offered the good word and just didn’t believe. A community excluded from craft’s evangelical crusade can’t seriously be expected to carry on the industry’s message or inconvenience themselves to support the industry that excluded it, let alone convince others to do so.
Meanwhile, the homogeneity of beer’s customer base has slowly been coming back to bite the industry, with COVID-19 acting as an accelerant. Growth in craft beer sales has slowed in recent years, with the BA reporting a 7% increase in retail dollar growth in 2018 over 2017 data, and a 6% increase in 2019 over 2018 data. With an increase of over 1,600 breweries between 2017 and 2019, there was only a 4% increase in volume for both 2018 and 2019.
Fast forward to 2020, and the industry is adjusting to the largest social and economic changes we’ve seen in our lifetimes. For those who were either actively excluded from or treated as afterthoughts within the industry, seeing breweries long for the good ol’ pre-COVID-19 days feels like hearing middle-aged white men proclaim, “Make America great again!”
What’s happening in beer is just a microcosm of the more widely known tale of the “two Americas”—a tale that may be new to many white listeners, but which has grown trite for the longsuffering. This divide has become glaringly apparent after the tragic murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd (only two among countless Black people killed by police), and the nation-wide protests that have followed. As the public protested the unjust and barbaric murders, demonstrated for the right to walk down the street without fear of being brutalized by police officers, and made calls to action to support the Black Lives Matter movement and defund the police, some entities in the craft beer space responded with their own messages of support, while others were completely silent on the matter.
On June 2, the Brewers Association released a lukewarm statement of its own on social media communicating that they “stand in solidarity against racial injustice” and “don’t have all the answers.” Responses to the post on Instagram pointing out racism perpetrated by member breweries and asking for actionable steps the trade organization was taking to improve race relations were met with silence.
Nearly a month later, after the elimination of the BA’s Guilds Manager position, several member breweries took to Twitter to voice their displeasure, including Bret Kollmann Baker of Urban Artifact Brewing. BA CEO Bob Pease eventually reached out to Kollmann Baker and his business partner Scott Hand, offering to discuss their concerns. Bret looped in multiple Black voices active in these conversations on Twitter (including Boyce, the author of this piece) who had voiced their concerns by tweeting at the BA, but had not yet received a response. On a follow-up phone call with Baker, Hand, and Boyce, Pease mentioned that his concern was his voting brewery members, and not Black consumers, emphasizing that economic issues were more important to the former.
Meanwhile, the events have revealed deep tensions and inequities within beer, even in places which, at surface level, didn’t appear to be fostering racism. ONE Fermentary & Taproom, frequently touted as the first Black-owned brewery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, issued a statement in an Instagram post challenging readers to “take some sort of positive action” by educating themselves on the history of inequality that POC have faced, and financially supporting organizations that fight injustices. Nearly a month later, its Black head brewer and 5% minority owner, Ramsey Louder, announced his resignation via an Instagram post. In the statement, he highlighted that his vision and values differed from those of the majority owner and that he wanted to be in a “space that can proclaim that Black Lives Matter.”
It was later reported by The Growler, a food, drink, and culture publication, that the public statement released by ONE in response to the murder of George Floyd had been originally written by Louder, but was edited by majority owner Sally Schmidt, a white woman, prior to its release. This illustrates the detestable trend of businesses, especially breweries and other beer-related brands, tokenizing Black minority owners to present themselves as Black-owned as a convenience or marketing ploy, yet stifling the voices of those same Black owners.
Black owners aren’t the only ones who struggle to carve space out in beer. As was highlighted in the BA’s Operations Benchmarking Survey published in August 2019, the industry is overwhelmingly white, and of the small percentage of Black folks who do work in it, the majority are in front-of-house service positions. Dismantling the various hurdles that keep Black people from working in beer will be one of the most important steps in changing its culture.
One persistent barrier to entry that Black applicants face is that job qualifications and descriptions are often structured in a way that excludes those who haven’t had the opportunity to gain experience in beer. Many Black folks are unaware of the types of positions available at breweries, and those who are aware often grow discouraged due to constant rejection. Despite having relevant professional qualifications—from degrees in engineering and leadership experience to backgrounds in other areas of hospitality and comfort working with specialized equipment like forklifts—Black folks are still told “no” due to “a lack of beer experience”—as if they don’t hold transferable skills, and as if every white person who gets the job was born into a brewery.
Looking for other pathways into the industry to avoid the catch-22 of needing experience to get experience, some turn to beer education and credentials, including programs like the Cicerone Certification. However, many find that employers critique these credentials as being less valuable than experience, enforcing a form of gatekeeping that ensures beer’s homogeneity. Even once they make it inside the industry, Black folks have their knowledge and competency called into question frequently, and hardly ever receive the benefit of the doubt that they might know something—a huge contrast from their white counterparts, especially white males.
“My vision within this role has been that we must move from the ‘all are welcome’ approach to ‘we created this with you in mind.’ There needs to be intentionality accompanied by change,” says Patrice Palmer, New Belgium Brewing Company’s diversity and inclusion specialist.
As a Black, queer, trans educator working on a doctoral thesis in intersectional workplace inclusion, Palmer believe theirs is the first simultaneous academic and corporate position in this space. Their responsibilities at New Belgium range from creating the first affinity LGBTQ+ group and implementing a gap analysis to measuring metrics of all inclusion initiatives, revamping the internal D&I council, and much more.
[Disclosure: New Belgium Brewing Company was an underwriter of Good Beer Hunting’s “Into the Wild” series; Toni Boyce is also a former employee.]
“There is NO quick fix to this issue,” they explain via email. “We must address this intentionally with monetary resources, a value driven strategy and a set 3-5 year goal backed by research and intention. There has to be an investment in change, if not you will waste money and time never getting the results you want. NBB is doing just that, rebuilding our infrastructure, asking the hard questions of ourselves and our work around D&I, creating mandatory D&I trainings on Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI), unconscious bias and a host of other inclusionary workshops and facilitations for ALL our employees. We can’t stop there — we have committed to connecting with our neighbors here in Fort Collins who have been historically marginalized within BIPOC communities as well as looking at our impact from a social space by growing our community and philanthropic engagement.”
Other breweries that are interested in establishing such roles should take care not to parachute someone into an inclusion-focused position without accompanying support systems. Graci Harkema, Founders’ former diversity and inclusion director, departed the brewery less than a year after accepting the position, criticizing the brewery’s handling of a contentious racial discrimination lawsuit by former employee Tracy Evans. Evans, a Black man, alleged he was passed up for promotions due to his race, and cited numerous instances of racist language and culture. In her public letter of resignation, Harkema cited a systemically inauthentic interest in actual change that extended beyond the lawsuit.
“Diversity is everything we bring to the table. Inclusion is ensuring we have a seat and a voice at the table,” Harkema’s letter reads. “Your actions have explicitly shown you are more interested in the optics of my face than the impact of my voice. I have dedicated myself to a life and career of equity, ethics, integrity, and morals. I cannot represent a company who doesn't stand for the same.”
Despite a double-digit surge in demand for positions related to diversity and inclusion in 2019, many of these potential roles were placed on the chopping block at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Washington Post. Openings for roles like “chief diversity officer” tumbled nearly 60% in just three months. That’s roughly twice as many positions slashed compared to all job openings, which fell 28% in the same timeframe.
For many Black workers in beer, labor doesn’t end with their job descriptions.
The unquantifiable emotional work Black folks end up doing by having courageous conversations about both overt and covert racism with colleagues is hardly valued or compensated appropriately. Burdens like dealing with coworkers who are closet racists are heavier than the demands of any full-time job. Combating microaggressions—including constant explanations of why dog-whistle language is inappropriate, how hiring practices are discriminatory, and how Black people are held to a different standard in the industry—add up to enough stress to make even the most even-tempered explode.
Beyond this, Black visitors to taprooms often look to Black employees for assistance, no matter their roles at the brewery. This puts an inordinate amount of strain on the few Black workers who are present. Think how it must feel to know you are the only reason a customer is comfortable in a space, and trying to balance making them feel welcome with returning to your actual job responsibilities. Envision heading to the parking lot to leave after a shift, only to be flagged down by Black customers entering the brewery inquiring whether or not it is a safe space for them. These are only a few examples of the additional labor and burden that Black brewery employees face, and which many white owners and colleagues are ignorant of.
The lack of Black employment also begets a lack of Black patronage. Tasking white people with creating marketing campaigns and packaging in an effort to reach Black folks leads to inauthenticity or perceptions of pandering; often, such campaigns end up causing more harm than good. Creating a hostile work environment in which Black folks are subjected to anti-Black racism is enough for Black employees to forgo inviting friends and family to join them at their workspaces. This is just another way in which inequity is fostered, and in which a homogenous face of the industry is perpetuated.
A lack of accountability regarding training white customer-facing employees in how they interact with Black customers also plays a role. Glaring biases when serving Black customers range from overexplaining beer descriptions and making assumptions about a customer’s tastes to regarding people as “sketchy” because they don’t fit the industry’s established norms.
Even when beer does support Black individuals, it frequently presents only the most polished and seamlessly assimilated Black folks as valuable to the industry. This causes feelings of inadequacy among those who are less palatable to white people, those who refuse to blend into white environments, and those who have had less opportunity. Correlating the value of Black folks to the industry with their education levels, their appearances, their speech, or how closely they mirror the norms of whiteness is dangerous. It drives similarly situated consumers to the conclusion that they don’t belong.
The new normal needs to be replaced with a newer normal—one vastly different from the pre-COVID-19 normal. Many breweries posted black squares on Instagram in “solidarity” with Black Lives Matter, yet reverted to business as usual the next day as if they were returning to work after a holiday.
But there is no solidarity if allies don’t fight alongside the oppressed. That means white business owners, brewery employees, and others in the industry share the active responsibility of supporting Black business and dismantling racist, structural barriers.
When Stacey Ayeh, a Black man who launched Rock Leopard Brewing Co in London, originally tried to break into the U.K. beer scene a few years ago, he recounts barrier after barrier to entry. “I applied to about 60 breweries and no one would give me a job,” he says during a recent call. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to start one myself so I can ensure my own future.’”
But getting people to even taste his beer proved challenging. So Ayeh decided to identify and contact the best breweries near him to solicit direct feedback. “I particularly loved the stuff Cloudwater was making, so I stalked [owner] Paul [Jones] online for years and eventually tracked him down at a pub in London and handed him one of my beers for feedback […] he started paying attention and we started corresponding.”
Jones was blown away by two things: both the quality of the beer and the hurdles Ayeh described in his efforts to get his product into bars and shops. So at this year’s Friends & Family & Beer festival in Manchester, which is run by Cloudwater, Jones made sure to highlight the Black-owned brewery as well as launch what he calls a “forever collaboration”: a Stout called Step Up.
“Half of the proceeds from that go to Stacey to build his business up and half of it comes to us,” explains Jones, adding they also donate a portion to a charitable organization. “We've got this scenario where we’re not just collaborating with someone because they're a really cool brand and we want a piece of that hype. No, we've got a platform that's strong enough that we want to use it to build other people up.”
The effect this collaboration had on Rock Leopard was monumental. “Cloudwater stepping up to allow us to perch on the tip of their platform has been a life-changing experience. Our sales have gone up nearly 1,300% from this time last year,” says Ayeh. “They didn’t have to do what they did, shining some light on us. But when you think about it, it shouldn't be a thing. It should be something everyone should be doing. Craft beer to me infers some kind of wanting to do good. If you’re literally just involved to make money, then it’s great, but I think you’re missing something. It will enrich you personally and fulfill you more than financial gain.”
Ayeh and Jones agree that most in the industry are positioned to make a difference, if they want to. “Anybody who owns a brewery should make themselves available to people of color who are passionate about wanting to get involved. It’s no skin off their nose. I’m sure people today are thinking, ‘What can I do?’ It’s literally just responding to an email someone has sent you,” says Ayeh.
He challenges everyone in the beer industry to find ways to leverage their privilege and use it to help others. “If you can only point to a brand or people who transcend the struggles of the everyday person, then maybe you are not really doing enough. That is just lounging in apathy. If you’ve got 400 different beers on your shelf and not one of them is from a minority-owned business and it’s never occurred to you why that is, Step Up. Just think about that for a minute and ask yourself—why is that? What can you do about it?”
The degree of cultural change that the industry must make, if it truly wants to be equitable, is enormous. That may sound daunting to many. But look at the complete structural realignment the brewing community accomplished in 40 days when faced with the threat of COVID-19. The pivot from taproom to off-premise sales, and the rise of brewery-run webshops, proved to be a difficult but necessary change in the face of a global pandemic. If it’s possible to adapt in order to survive, why not exercise the same skills in order to thrive?
The momentum from the racial reckoning that the nation, and by association, the beer industry is having needs to be harnessed before the old normal rears its ugly head yet again. Change has to start with more meaningful representation. Part of the work of anti-racism is ensuring that Black folks have a voice in the space. Right now, that voice is all but silenced.
Up next: The Time Is Now — Why Inclusion, Equity, and Justice Could Determine Whether Breweries Flourish or Fail, authored by Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham.
Words, Toni BoyceContributing Editor,Beth Demmon
