Orpheus Brewing CEO Steps Down to Focus on Brewmaster Role
Orpheus Brewing’s Jason Pellett announced Thursday that he will step down as CEO of the Atlanta, Georgia-based brewery to focus on his role as brewmaster.
“I only became CEO a few months before the pandemic, but undertook a pretty aggressive strategic and cultural shift,” Pellett wrote in his announcement on Twitter. “Now it’s time for someone to run with that and me to focus on making beer after a long nap.
“If you know someone ready for a big job who cares about making beautiful things and wants to expand the culture of craft beer, send them my way,” he continued. “I’d love to not have to choose between a bunch of white dudes.”
Pellett took over as CEO in late 2019, but never planned on staying in the position long-term, he told Brewbound. He said the previous CEO had a business background but lacked beer industry experience and knowledge. Pellett became CEO to make changes to both the company’s business priorities and its culture.
“At that point, I just felt like some things were going in the wrong direction, or some things just as we grew were never put in the right direction,” he said. “And so I just had some specific things I wanted to set straight.
“Some of the beer direction stuff moved into too much of a ‘aim for cheap beer, cut costs’ kind of mindset, and that’s really not what anybody is actually looking for from Orpheus beer,” he continued. “And [in] some interactions between departments there was tension, and I felt like I should be able to make this a place that feels like everybody’s respected and voices can be heard.”
Pellett said he feels like he’s accomplished most of what he tried to do as CEO, and now it’s time to pass the role onto someone else, who is not just a replacement, but someone who is “better than [him].”
“I’m not naturally an administrator or upper management type person, so it’d be better to find somebody who can just take all of this and run with it,” he said. “And I’m also just tired.”
Pellett informed the company’s board two months ago of his plans to resign from the top role, and he said co-workers have been supportive. Pellett will continue with his CEO duties until a replacement is found. While he hopes that transition will happen “soon,” he noted that figuring out the funding for the role has slowed the process down.
“There’s so much that actually has to be done, people who need attention, and I can really only focus on a small percentage of that at the time,” he said. “We can go much more aggressively in the direction of making the new beers that we’re trying to make, it’s just hard to fully commit to everything when I’m spread so thin.”
Orpheus produced 6,375 barrels of beer in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available from the Brewers Association (BA).
Elysian GM Kyle Fitzsimmons Promoted to VP of Brewery Operations for A-B’s High End and Brewers Collective Business Unit
Kyle Fitzsimmons has been named VP of brewery operations from Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B’s) High End and Brewers Collective business unit.
Fitzsimmons took the new position in February, according to his LinkedIn page. He spent seven years in various management roles at A-B before taking management roles with the company’s Seattle, Washington-based craft brewery, Elysian Brewing Company, in 2019. Fitzsimmons most recently held the position of general manager.
In his new VP role, Fitzsimmons “will be helping support expansion and growth for multiple regional breweries,” a A-B spokesperson told Brewbound. He will remain acting GM for Elysian until the position is filled.
Following A-B’s 2020 acquisition of Craft Brew Alliance (CBA), the company reorganized its Brewers Collective structure to accommodate the eight CBA brands. Under that structure, Fitzsimmons was one of four GMs leading national brands. Last month, A-B merged the sales teams of its Brewers Collective and High End under Brewers Collective president Andy Thomas.
Jim Birch Named COO of The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery
Jim Birch, the former GM of New Orleans-based Faubourg Brewery, has been named chief operating officer of Charlotte, North Carolina-based The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery.
The COO role is new for 13-year-old Olde Mecklenburg, which began selling to wholesalers during the pandemic for the first time.
“OMB is the oldest brewery in Charlotte right now with really successful retail operations,” Birch told Brewbound. “They transitioned from self-distribution to wholesale distribution right in the middle of the pandemic. We’re about one year into using wholesalers.”
Olde Mecklenburg has several new locations planned in greater Charlotte, so founder and CEO John Marino tapped Birch to lead the company’s existing operations.
“[Marino] really loves the visionary side of the business, and he’s going to be very much involved in the build out and the expansion with these new locations and so that’s where he wants to spend most of his time,” Birch said. “He’s passed off the sales and marketing, production and the retail operations at the current location to me, and he’ll be very involved in it, but I’m the day-to-day manager.”
For 2022, Olde Mecklenburg is aiming to sell 20,000 barrels of beer, which will return it to pre-pandemic levels.
“They hit a high-water mark about three years ago,” Birch said. “A good portion of Olde Meck’s business was on-premise, just incredible on-premise presence everywhere. So, the pandemic has forced a shift into package, but luckily [Marino] had purchased a canning line and Olde Meck started canning beer right at the beginning of the pandemic.”
Birch worked at Faubourg, then known as Dixie Beer, from 2019 until he joined Olde Mecklenburg on February 21. Birch helped relaunch the company, including a 100,000-barrel production brewery, and facilitated the Dixie’s rebranding to Faubourg due to the former’s Confederate connotation.
The move to North Carolina is a homecoming of sorts for Birch. Before Faubourg, Birch spent more than three years at Morganton, North Carolina-based Catawba Brewing Company, working as director of sales, and later VP of operations.
Britt Burke Joins Craft Collective
Britt Burke, former events manager for Next Glass-owned Beer Advocate, has joined Stoughton, Massachusetts-headquartered wholesaler Craft Collective as events and special programs director.
“We have a lot of really incredible opportunities coming out of the pandemic to really reshape events and reshape our role in events,” Burke told Brewbound. “I’m going to be doing a lot of work with our partnerships with existing events that are out there and making certain that we’re good partners to them, and finding opportunities to get the suppliers who are already in our portfolio involved with some of these events, and also create new relationships with suppliers coming in from out of the market for these events.”
Craft Collective, a craft-centric independent wholesaler, operates in Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island and, this week, expanded to Vermont. The wholesaler hosts no events of its own yet, but facilitates the presence of several of its suppliers at festivals in its territories.
Burke joined Beer Advocate as events manager full time in 2016. She began volunteering at events in 2011, before Next Glass’ February 2020 acquisition of the company. She planned and executed Beer Advocate’s Extreme Beer Festival, Belgian Beer Fest and IPA Fest, among others.
The pandemic, which began about two-thirds of the way into Burke’s Beer Advocate career, made her rethink her role completely, and she hopes to carry that new mindset into her role with Craft Collective.
“For me, a lot of the last two years was spent online, and the virtual component for a while was a stopgap that then became an opportunity to really make beer festivals and events more accessible to a larger group of people, be it folks who don’t live near a major city where beer events are often had, be it folks who have some mobility challenges that might make it more difficult for them to stand in line for three and a half hours to be drinking beer, or just folks who want a different pace of things,” she said. “Taking some of what we learned and what we did in the pandemic, and applying it moving forward is definitely going to be something that is an opportunity. We shouldn’t see it as that door is shut and we’re just moving past it.”
Dale Katechis Joins CBD Sparkling Water Maker Weller
Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis has joined the leadership team of Boulder, Colorado-based sparkling CBD water maker Weller, the company announced Monday.
“Dale’s experience scaling Oskar Blues from a disruptive small business into one of the world’s largest and most distributed craft brewery brands is an analog to Weller’s ambition of becoming a leader in cannabis beverages,” Weller co-founder John Simmons said in a press release. “Dale’s experience successfully building a new category, educating consumers and guiding innovation into the mainstream make him the perfect complement to our team.”
The addition of Katechis to Weller’s leadership team comes as the company prepares to launch a line of THC sparkling waters in Colorado this April, with additional states to follow in Q3.
“The beverage space is in the beginning stages of a shift toward accepting THC and CBD beverages as mainstream, available to and enjoyed by people from all walks of life,” Katechis said in the release. “We’re going to see parallels to the trajectory of craft beer two decades ago, and Weller’s consistency and approachable brand will positively impact the industry as a whole. Cannabis beverages will be widely adopted and quickly become the largest growth driver for cannabis.”
Katechis is also an advisor and investor in Longmont, Colorado-based Bootstrap Brewing Company.