2020 has been transformational for Beer Kulture.
In July, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based lifestyle brand reinvented itself as a nonprofit with a mission to introduce craft beer to communities of color.
In August, it started a school supply drive using breweries as drop-off locations for donations.
In September, it launched a job board to introduce breweries to job seekers outside the stereotypical craft beer realm of young white men.
By November, the board featured more than 85 jobs.
“We get a submission pretty much daily,” CEO and president Latiesha Cook told Brewbound. “We’ve got resumes locked and loaded in the vault, so lots of good stuff to connect owners with community members.”
Craft beer — in terms of both the people who make, market and sell it and those who drink it — is overwhelmingly white and male. Cook created Beer Kulture’s job board as a way to combat one of the most common responses from breweries give to why their staffs aren’t representative.
Have you heard “We can’t get anyone of color to apply”, or “Its impossible for me to find a brewery to hire me”? We have too! And guess what? That is no longer an obstacle that we have to cross! pic.twitter.com/0aSKUaZhUU
— Beer Kulture (@beerkulture) September 9, 2020
The job board, which is free for employers and candidates to use, has twin benefits: Job seekers know their application will be welcomed and considered, and potential employers can trust they’re receiving applications from a diverse array of candidates.
“We do not want to have any barriers in place for people to say that they can’t use it,” Cook explained. “So I volunteer hours posting positions that people update, uploading resumes, connecting people with employers, just because I don’t want there to be any excuses whatsoever.
“And so we don’t charge anything,” she continued. “We don’t expect anything. All you have to do is go to the website, submit your posting, and you’re done.”
Based on the enduring lack of diversity in the craft beer industry, Cook had low expectations for the job board.
“It’s been many years of people just talking and nothing happening, no change,” she said. “And so I honestly didn’t expect anybody to post anything. I didn’t expect people to seek out candidates at all. I expected candidates to post resumes because I know people, they trust us, and they’re looking for work.
“But I didn’t expect any industry response whatsoever,” she continued. “The first day, I think we got one post, and I was like ‘OK wow.’ The second day, we got another one. And then it was like, by day three, we had 10.”
This year, as the nation began a reckoning with racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, businesses across virtually all industries began to take stock of the diversity of their staff. Many found they were lacking diverse workforces. In the beer industry, a flurry of scholarship funds and entrepreneurial initiatives were launched with the goal of bringing more people of color into the business, including Garrett Oliver’s Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling, Crowns & Hops Brewing’s 8 Trill Pils, Constellation Brands’ Focus on Minority Founders, Anheuser-Busch’s UNCF Budweiser Natalie Johnson Scholarship program and Molson Coors’ Tenth & Blake Brewing Education Scholarship Fund.
Within the craft brewing industry, breweries from coast to coast participated in the international collaboration beer Black is Beautiful, spearheaded by San Antonio, Texas-based Weathered Souls co-founder Marcus Baskerville. The initiative raised funds and awareness to combat police brutality and other injustices.
Many an earnest social media post went up, pledging allyship and action, but tackling complex social issues can feel daunting. However, Cook believes it doesn’t have to be.
“A big part of what we believe is engaging the community, educating and elevating them,” she said. “A large part of that is really simple, and a lot of brewery owners have these grandiose schemes about how they’re going to diversify their tap rooms and their staff.
“The step to start is very small,” she continued. “All it starts with is making yourself known and available, so utilizing the tools that we have in place, like the job board, posting those positions.”
Open positions on the job board reflect a cornucopia of disciplines — sales, brewing, packaging, taproom management, marketing, design. Employers are equally varied: nationwide companies such as New Belgium and Oskar Blues, small farm brewery Kent Falls Brewing and retailer Craft Beer Cellar.
Since its founding earlier this fall, Beer Kulture’s job board has cultivated a following.
“We have people who check our website everyday, who are going there specifically because they know that brewery owners are posting there with the purpose of hiring candidates like them,” Cook said. “Putting themselves out there and saying ‘Hey, look, we’re open and we want you’ is a great way to start.”
Beer Kulture has placed candidates at New York City-based Torch and Crown Brewing, St. Petersburg, Florida-based Green Bench Brewing and Gainesville, Florida-based Cypress & Grove Brewing. Cook recalled a job seeker whose resume she floated to breweries in his area after his search stalled.
“He put his resume together and threw it out there to the world, and he couldn’t get the time of day,” she said. “He heard about the Beer Kulture job board and put up his resume, so I shopped it to a couple owners who were looking for people in their area.”
The candidate was invited on multiple interviews and had his pick of job offers, a position he had never been in before.
“I shared it with the entire board, and we’re all on the phone in tears,” Cook said. “This is why we do this.”
In addition to full-time jobs, the Beer Kulture job board includes internships and writing opportunities. In alignment with its mission to “increase diversity, inclusion and equity through humanitarian assistance, educational programs and compassionate community services,”
Beer Kulture also offers scholarships for the Cicerone Certification Program’s BeerSavvy training program and Certified Beer Server exam. The organization is also following up this fall’s successful school supply drive, which supported 4,300 children, with a holiday gift drive for Tampa area families in collaboration with Green Bench.