Allegations of sexual, racial and other misconduct published on Instagram have rocked the American craft beer industry this week, prompting resignations, firings and promises for change at Bay Area beer businesses. One Oakland beer bar even had a window smashed after holding a solidarity gathering for industry women.
The CEO and founder of San Diego-based Modern Times Beer, which has a taproom in Oakland, resigned Tuesday night. Oakland’s Original Pattern Brewing announced it had fired an assistant brewer who was accused of misconduct. The owner of Beer Baron, a local bar chain, said it had severed ties with a contractor who admitted he had engaged in inappropriate behavior.
Humble Sea in Santa Cruz, which will open a taproom in Pacifica this summer, responded to allegations against a former employee. Frank Scott Krueger, a co-founder of the brewery, confirmed that a brewer at his company was fired in the past after being arrested in connection with an assault on another employee. He was “surprised to see us thrown into the same category with some of the other allegations,” he said, but said the company is responding by implementing changes, including updating its employee handbook and strengthening the existing complaint system.
The fallout this week occurred after a series of Instagram stories published by Brienne Allan (@ratmagnet), who works at Notch Brewing in Massachusetts. On May 11, Allan posed a question to her followers, asking about sexist behavior they’d encountered in the beer industry. So far, she’s received more than 800 replies. The allegations that she has reposted, many of them from anonymous sources, implicate breweries throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Already, the allegations have resulted in several personnel changes and public apologies from high-profile players in the craft beer industry, such as Jean Broillet IV, founder of Pennsylvania’s Tired Hands Brewing, who stepped down from daily operations.
For many women in the industry, the stories on Instagram feel familiar. Virginia Vaughn, a sales rep for Original Pattern, said she’s dealt with such incidents at breweries in the past. If anyone is truly shocked by the accounts, she said, they haven’t been paying attention.
“These events are crushing for women,” she said. “This is what’s wrong with the brewing industry as a whole and it’s time for it to change.”
Humble Sea Brewing is located in Santa Cruz, Calif. and serves up a variety of draught beers.
Brian Feulner / Special to The ChronicleA group of about 60 women who work in the beer industry convened at the Good Hop, a beer bar in Oakland, on Tuesday night to show their solidarity. Owner Melissa Myers said she’d wanted to organize the event because she was tired of reading through all the stories on Instagram by herself and wanted to be with the community. “I think it was obvious — we all needed to be able to come to a safe space to either tell your story or not tell your story,” Myers said.
Images of the gathering, which featured “lots of hugs and lots of crying,” Myers said, were shared on social media. The next morning, Myers returned to her bar to see the front window smashed. “It’s hard to think it’s not related,” she said. Friends set up a GoFundMe, though Myers believes insurance will cover the damage. She plans to donate all of the GoFundMe donations, currently around $9,000, to four Bay Area charities: Black Girls Code, Bay Area Women Against Rape, the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and the Pink Boots Society, which is an organization dedicated to women in brewing.
As more breweries were named on Instagram, Vaughn and Christy Goedekke, Original Pattern’s female tasting-room manager, never thought their Oakland brewery would be among them. They said they felt confident in their company culture, where there’s a zero tolerance policy for inappropriate behavior and more than half of the tasting room employees are women. Still, someone made an anonymous allegation against an Original Pattern brewer.
“I think for most people, it came as a giant shock,” Goedekke said. “Even though I spent a whole lot of time and energy cultivating a safe space for women, I feel on trial myself. What did I not do right? My heart is broken over it.”
Original Pattern CEO Max Silverstein told The Chronicle he conducted an investigation, which wrapped up Wednesday and ended with the dismissal of the brewer in question. He plans to convene a meeting with the full staff Friday to discuss next steps. Some ideas that have already emerged include ensuring a woman is always part of the hiring process, requiring sexual-harassment training on an ongoing basis and creating an anonymous way for people to file personnel complaints, according to employees.
“I think it was one individual … broadly, it doesn’t at all reflect what we’re about and how we do things,” Silverstein said. “Clearly we can improve, since we hadn’t heard about these allegations.”
Corey Bryce Welchel, the beer buyer who was a contractor with Beer Baron, posted a statement on his Instagram page acknowledging the “unacceptable behavior” he had been accused of. He apologized for “my behavior and the harm that I have caused.” Welchel did not respond to a request for comment.
Jacob McKean, the founder and CEO of Modern Times, which opened its Oakland taproom in late 2019, published a blog post on the brewery’s website Tuesday night explaining his resignation, saying he was “sorry that anyone has ever had to face harassment at Modern Times.”
McKean also wrote that “we parted ways with an employee that was named in an online report last week,” citing it as an example of the action that Modern Times plans to take in response to misconduct allegations going forward.
The blog post did not say whether McKean’s ownership stake in Modern Times would change.
As a result of the allegations, Modern Times’ Oakland employees closed down the Uptown taproom and announced they would no longer pour beer until the company takes appropriate action to prevent further discrimination and harassment. Workers declined an interview with The Chronicle, but said they have a meeting with Modern Times leadership on Thursday.
Krueger of Humble Sea did not go into details of the incident that was alleged to have taken place between two of his employees, citing their privacy rights. He said that the incident “happened multiple years ago between two employees outside of company property and time,” and said that the employee who was allegedly victimized was given as much time off work as they needed with a guarantee of their job upon return.
The Humble Sea leadership, Krueger said, is committed to fostering a more diverse workforce, and he said he felt “relieved that the toxic male culture that pervades the hospitality and brewing industry is being called out.”
The rift in the craft beer industry follows a similar reckoning in the restaurant world last year, when many faced anonymous accusations of misconduct. Last summer’s Black Lives Matter movement inspired workers to call out employers on social media. In some cases, they went on the record with allegations of racial discrimination against Bay Area establishments like Boba Guys and Dandelion Chocolate.
Despite finding her own brewery in the middle of the saga, Vaughn of Original Pattern said she’s glad to see so many of these stories come to light.
“I think there’s a lot of learning we all have to do,” she said. “My hope is this horrible thing that happened will turn us into a brewery that is on the cutting edge of equality.”
Update: This story has been updated to include new information from the Good Hop’s Melissa Myers
Esther Mobley and Janelle Bitker are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com @janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @esther_mobley @janellebitker
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