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ProBrewer.com An Online Resource Serving The Beer Industry News & Articles Beverage Industry News Business of Beer Commentary Crisis Response Distribution & Retail International Legislative & Regulatory Major Brand News News From The Breweries Packaging, Bottling, and Kegging ProBrewer News Quarterly Financial Reports Specialty Industry News Front of House Dispensing Kitchen and Food Serving Operations Brewing Education Finance Human Resources Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Marketing Shipping Packaging Bottles Cans Distribution Kegs Production Beverage Ingredients Hops Malt Other Ingredients Water Yeast Brewery Equipment Brewing Systems Filtration Keg Washers Malt Handling Nano Brewing Pumps Refrigeration Tanks Brewery Floors DIY Brewery Floor Distilling Filtering Quality Control Stupid Stuff Real Estate Planning Events All Events Essential Virtual Resources for the Brewing Industry Virtual Brewing Conference Guide Classified Ads Latest Ads Ads By Category Help Wanted / For Hire Search Ads Post Classified Ad Post Catalog Ad About Classified Ads Jobs Discussion Tools IBU Calculator Beer Specifications Water Chemistry Advertise Advertise & Sponsorship on ProBrewer ProBrewer Advertisers Allied Trade Directory Search Allied Trade Directory Your Companies Submit New Allied Trade Company Login / Register ProBrewer Login Register Password Reset Timothy Parker, Chula Vista Brewery Welcome to ProBrewer.com, a resource serving all trades of the beer business. Within the pages of ProBrewer.com, you will find numerous tools and materials to assist you in your endeavors within the beer business, from the technical side of brewing to sales and distribution - and everything in between. ProBrewer.com is dedicated to empowering the beer industry through the dissemination of comprehensive, current and relevant information. Latest Beverage Industry News from ProBrewer Alcohol Consumption Up 2% Last Year – Wine & Spirits Both Up While Beer Declines Beverage Industry News » Business of Beer posted Jun 17th, 2021 by Tom McCormick Alcohol consumption in the US was up by 2% last year, marking its largest gain since 2002. According to a report by IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, the dramatic uptick in off-premise sales more than off-set the on-premise closure due to the pandemic. The upward trend is on course to remain in place this year, with year-to-date volume sales in the US is still higher than 2019. Beer was down by -2.8% in volume with domestic beer volume down by -4.4%. Imports faired better with an increase of 3.1% in volume. Spirits in the US last year posted a gain of 4.6%, the largest volume increase for the spirits category since 1990. Wine sales grew slightly last year, up by 0.7% in volume. No surprise, RTDs (which includes hard seltzers in this report) were the big winner overall with an increase in volume of 62.3%, led by hard seltzers which grew by a staggering 130%. More details here. Not Sure How To Take Action on the #MeToo Movement? Start by Making These Four Simple Moves Now Beverage Industry News » Beverage Industry News posted Jun 17th, 2021 by Tara Nurin The following article was written by Tara Nurin exclusively for ProBrewer. Visit the ProBrewer Diversity, Equality and Inclusion resource page here for additional DEI articles and resources. When a Massachusetts brewer’s Instagram feed erupted with more than 1000 allegations of sexual and workplace discrimination, harassment and abuse in the beer industry in May 2021, some breweries and affiliated entities snapped into action. Others still haven’t acknowledged the situation. Whether or not your business has been named in the narrative or you’ve already issued your own internal response, your employees are very likely carrying more stress than usual — particularly if they’re female or come from an underrepresented population — as they attempt to adjust to lives upended by the COVID-19 pandemic; the great racial reckoning of 2020; and, now, craft beer’s better-late-than-never #MeToo revolution. In public and private conversations, they’re crying out for your leadership, telling friends they crave your empathy, and, most importantly, begging for your assurance they can feel safe coming to work. You’re not alone if you haven’t taken any action. Even the most well-intentioned employers can let uncertainty, paralysis or fear keep them from addressing the issue. But as the expression “the cover-up is worse than the lie” suggests, ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away … it simply compounds it. And in the 21st century, it’s not a matter of if ultimately successful beer-related businesses are going to de-center their owners, board members and upper-level managers in favor of employees and customers, but when . Americans’ expectations for job satisfaction are shifting, and the proof of a positive or poor environment presents itself in the bottom line. Low morale leads to high absenteeism — estimated to cost companies an average of 9% of payroll — and high turnover rates, whose costs can equal up to two years of salary. Workplace stress is a chief cause of low morale, as is a lack of trust between the ranks. Both can lead to a collapse of employee engagement, which translates to weak customer service. To put it in brewery terms, the Secret Hopper mystery shopping service has determined that taproom guests are only 40% likely to return if they don’t receive a sincere and friendly hello and goodbye. But they’ll return 95% of the time if they receive this type of warm interaction from an engaged and presumably content worker. Instead of hiding, addressing the #MeToo accusations directly and improving communication generally will help foster a higher degree of accountability, professionalism and comfort that patrons will almost surely feel, share and appreciate. As the late poet, musician and Buddhist monk Leonard Cohen wrote, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” So it’s okay if you haven’t done anything … yet. Get started by taking these steps now. Your staff, lawyer, accountant, and Leonard Cohen will thank you. Communicate with (not at) your employees Seventy-two hours after the #MeToo allegations emerged, the owners of Broken Goblet Brewing outside Philadelphia took to the WhatsApp thread they use to dialogue with employees to ask for input on how to handle the controversy, which did not target them. Some back-and-forth later, the majority agreed that they did not favor management making an external statement but that they did want to meet in June to talk about it in person. Until then, says co-owner Mike Lock, “They thought that we would do what we normally do, which is super-duper transparent conversation with everyone an equal player.” Though issuing a bland statement of support for victims and intolerance for bad behavior sends a more positive message than doing nothing, employees often learn to trust the establishment and each other when they can speak freely about their feelings without threat of judgment or repercussions from superiors or, ideally, their peers. By design, most employees at Wilmington, North Carolina’s TRU Colors Brewery have gang affiliation. After passing through a rigorous interview process , each cohort of new hires begins employment seated in a room with a dozen — often rival — gang members to talk to one another about their lives, families, hardships, heartbreaks, and aspirations. Though it usually takes a few days for the loud arguments to quiet down, Chief People Officer Khalilah “KO” Olokunola says the initiation is imperative to building a team. “We found the best way to build trust is to connect people by putting the tools and systems in place to have the conversations,” she says. To implement this at your business, schedule individual department meetings ASAP and appoint at least one trusted member of senior management to lead, in-person if possible. Small groups encourage members to share more vulnerably than large ones. J Ja...