Everyone who loves craft beer needs to take the time to absorb the hundreds of stories posted to Instagram over the last few weeks by women in the industry who say they faced sexism and misogyny.
Don’t gloss over them — really read.
It will not be easy. There have been more than 1,000 posted so far, a seemingly never-ending cascade of toxicity.
Outrage, sadness, disappointment are three emotions commonly felt after viewing these anonymous stories pinned to Brienne Allan’s Instagram account, @ratmagnet. On May 11, Allan, production manager at Salem’s Notch Brewing, asked if others in the beer industry had experienced sexism. A surge of responses followed. And she has posted them nearly nonstop since.
You might see your favorite brewery or brewer mentioned alongside allegations of harassment, assault or rape, misogyny or workplace discrimination.
Last week, Wormtown Brewery was named in multiple posts, including two alleging sexual harassment.
One person said a “palpable ‘boys club’ mentality” pervades the brewery. Another, an Asian-American, reported discriminatory behavior based on race, saying one brewery owner joked in a mocking Asian accent about making a beer and calling it “Me So Thirsty.”
Still another said one owner of the brewery often drinks excessively in the taproom, openly berates female managers and “has made female staff feel a sense of obligation to drive him home or to hotel rooms when he is intoxicated.”
A Wormtown employee summed up their experiences working at the brewery: “It is a toxic environment across the board, and something needs (to) change, and fast.”
In a message to staff last Friday, Wormtown General Manager Scott Metzger wrote that the brewery has created a committee let by Katrina Shabo, director of marketing, to recommend ways to systemically improve its culture.
All current owners save for brewmaster and co-founder Ben Roesch have stepped down from “any day-to-day or direct involvement in the operation of the brewery,” according to Metzger.
The trade publication Brewbound reported that the ownership group stepping away consists of Wormtown managing partner David Fields, CFO Kary Shumway, Rich Clarke and Jay “Digger” Clarke. Roesch will retain ownership, but report to Metzger as an employee.
Instead, the brewery will be run by “an advisory board comprised of a diverse and inclusive group, with the right skillsets to help us steer the business, by filling experience gaps, improving innovation, instilling better management practices and overall strategic guidance,” Metzger wrote.
The brewery pledged to investigate the allegations and launch mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training, along with “enhanced leadership training for all persons in a supervisory role.”
“Wormtown Brewery is successful because of our passionate and committed team. That any member of our team may have experienced the harassing and discriminatory behaviors described, is not acceptable,” Metzger wrote. “While there is work to do, we know a critical first step is to make room to listen and learn, and in turn, to provide support in the most helpful ways we can.”
Even one of this state’s oldest and most successful breweries, often used a model for others, has harbored such pernicious behavior. It was sobering, but not surprising.
Still, I trust that the core people remaining at Wormtown will listen and learn and grow.
I know Roesch, one of the kindest brewers around, will. I know Shabo, likely deeply hurt by these allegations, will. I know others, like Metzger and head brewer Scott Drake, will.
Going forward, Wormtown must be as transparent and honest as possible with the results of its investigation into these allegations and with what actions it will take to substantively improve its culture, even if that process gets in the way of its distillery opening.
Now, not just Wormtown, but the entire brewing industry must look inward.
“While there have been a few breweries that have been focused on, when we hold up a few totems and say just these few breweries are really bad, and we need to punish them, that sends the wrong message,” said Dani Babineau, CEO and co-founder of Redemption Rock. “The truth is, it isn’t happening at a few bad breweries, it’s happening everywhere. This has shown how pervasive this behavior is in the industry. Everyone needs to take a deeper look at themselves: The entire industry is due for a reckoning.”
It does not shock Babineau that the behavior exists despite the beer industry being more inclusive today than it ever has been.
“Most of my experiences have been more along the lines of crude jokes, macroaggressions, and not being taken seriously, which is not innocuous, but doesn’t threaten my physical safety,” she said. “Most women who are reading these are not surprised because it’s part of our daily existence.”
So how does the industry respond? Already some of the larger breweries named in allegations have fired employees and started internal investigations. Breweries have to create means for employees to file complaints. Consumers, too, must demand change and turn away from brewers who won’t.
As chair of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee, Babineau has been working to develop a code of ethics for member breweries, including adding a complaint process for employees to report violations. That would give the MBG power to expel members that violate its code.
“The code of ethics touches on sexual harassment and racial bias; it’s also very much encompassing of safety issues, fair pay, and fair business practices,” she said. “We’re really trying to create a document that isn’t just wide-reaching, but that also can effect change within the industry in Massachusetts.”
Allan, according to the Boston Globe, has started work on creating a national certification program for breweries that have worked to educate employees on how to prevent sexual harassment and assault. She is working with Craft Beer Professionals, a Virginia-based networking organization with over 12,000 members, the Globe reported.
The kind of stories Allan has shared on her Instagram account have played out again and again in the beer industry for decades.
As a young brewer just trying to learn the craft and break into the industry, Maureen Fabry remembers the occasional snide comments about women being less capable than men as brewers.
Those comments occurred 20 years ago, and yet that attitude clearly still exists.
“It was easy for me to discount it as just offhanded comments,” said Fabry, who co-owns Milford’s CraftRoots Brewing with her partner, Robin Fabry. “But any comment that is making a point that women are less capable or can’t do the same amount of work, anything like that discrediting women’s contributions is something we need to pay attention to.”
Fabry believes Allan’s amplifying of these stories will prove instrumental in holding people accountable and spurring action.
“In a lot of these breweries,” she said, “the reasons that these brewers are coming out is there is no avenue for women to speak out in their organizations, or they may not feel safe doing so or may not know what the outcome would be. So the next step is to provide a safe and inclusive and respectful workplace.”
You can read Wormtown’s full statement on the allegations against its brewery here: wormtownbrewery.com/combatting-harassment-in-the-workplace. Read the Massachusetts Brewers Guild response to the stories being shared on Allan’s Instagram here: massbrewersguild.org/news.
Another Instagram account was created to catalogue and post new stories about sexism in the beer industry: https://www.instagram.com/emboldenactadvance.
June 02, 2021 at 02:41AM
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The Next Draft: Stories of misogyny, harassment in craft beer spur reckoning in industry - Worcester Mag
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