Teri Fahrendorf and the Pink Boots Society
In the final installment of my interview with Teri Fahrendorf, we discuss the fascinating story of the Pink Boots Society. On the off-chance you haven’t heard about it, Pink Boots is a nonprofit dedicated to help women find each other, network, and advance their careers in the brewing industry. It has helped empower thousands of women, and has been one of the major forces in bringing women into brewhouses in the US and abroad.
If you recall, early in her career, Teri went on a road trip up the West Coast visiting breweries—the first step in becoming a brewer herself. After leaving Steelhead, she went on another road trip, and again, the outcome was something she never envisioned at the start. Teri picks up the narrative there.
Road Brewer
“I had this fantasy: wouldn’t it be fun to go on the road and visit all the breweries where my friends brew? I have all these peers and friends I’ve known—from judging and conferences and festivals and everything. Wouldn’t it be fun to brew with those friends and taste their beers at home? I put up a post on the BA Brewers Forum saying I was going on this trip and if people wanted me to visit their brewery, let me know.”
“A bunch of those breweries had invited me because they had a woman working there—though I didn’t know they had a woman working there. My friend Mitch Steele down at Stone, I wanted to visit him, but it ended up being a Saturday, when he couldn’t be there. He said, ‘I’ll make sure you have someone there you can work with.’ So I get there and they say, ‘You’re going to work with Laura today.’ Laura You have a Laura?”
”We were just having the best day and she said, ‘What are you doing tonight for dinner?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m parked in your parking lot and I’m having a granola bar.’ She said, ‘No, no, I’m going to buy you dinner in our bistro.’ So we had dinner and she asked me these awesome questions like, ‘Teri, tell me we’re not the only women brewers. How many of us are there out there?’ I didn’t know but I told her I’ll start counting them up. I’ll collect the names. That’s when Pink Boots started, that day.”
“Before I left on this trip, I had the first half of the trip penciled out with dates and everything. I knew that for a lot of them I would be the first women brewer that they had ever met. I knew that when I walked into one of these breweries, they’d say, ‘Hello, are you lost?’ As soon as I open my mouth and start talking brewer lingo, I would be instantly one of the boys.”
“I’ve worn black boots my entire career, my brewing boots. I thought, ‘I wish they made boots in pink. Because I’m going to be going into these places where they’ve never met another woman brewer and when I walk in there, they’re going to do the hello-little-lady. But I felt like I needed to represent women on this trip, so I mentioned to my husband that I wish I had a pair of pink boots to wear.”
“I felt this sense of responsibility to represent my gender. I have felt that throughout my brewing career. I’ll give you an anecdote. I was a GABF judge starting in 1991, and for many, many, many years, I was the only woman judge. These rooms were filled with testosterone, and I felt like I had to balance all that testosterone from all those judges. I did it by wearing a dress. I wore a dress for years to every judging table. And when I went to the craft brewers conference I wore a dress or a skirt. I did it because it felt like when I opened my mouth and started talking beer lingo, I was one of the boys. But I felt like I needed them to remember that I wasn’t a boy. I was always proud to be a woman brewer and a woman beer judge, and I always hoped there’d be more [of us].”
“My husband, unbeknownst to me, talked to his mother and she found a pair of pink boots and shipped them to me. So right before I left on the trip I got a pair of pink rain boots—not steel-toed or anything because they didn’t have pink steel-toed boots. So I mentioned on the Brewers Forum that I’m going to be wearing these pink boots on this trip. My first brewery visit was Deschutes and I camped in their parking lot the night before. The next morning I’m looking at these two sets of boots, the black and the pink. I thought, ‘I can’t wear those bubblegum pink boots—they’re too flashy.’ I put on my black boots, the same color I wore every day for 19 years, and I walk in the building and the brewers look at my feet and they go, ‘Where are your pink boots?’ And I said to myself, oh, they’re going to want to see the pink boots. So I wore those pink boots the rest of my trip. In my head I started calling it the ‘Pink Boots Tour.’ Then I made sure that whenever there was a picture taken, that those boots were in it.” Those boots are now so ratty and yet so famous, that they are an artifact in Oregon State University’s Hops & Brewing Archives and were once shown in a museum exhibit.
Finding Women Across America
“I’d met a bunch of women and I’d asked if people knew women brewers, and somebody might say, ‘Oh yeah, there’s one in Indiana.’ ‘Do you know her name?’ ‘Nope.’ I’d get closer. ‘Yeah, there’s one in Indiana—she’s in Bloomington.’ I’d get to Bloomington and ask, ‘Is there a woman brewer in this town,’ and someone would say, ‘Yeah, her name is Eileen Martin.’ Okay! I need to meet her and put her on the list.
“I wrote down every name that anybody ever told me in the world and it’s on this list. So I get out to Tröegs Brewery in Pennsylvania, and this gal Whitney Thompson is working there, and she says, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one.’ Just like Laura Ulrich at Stone Brewing said. They were all telling me this. They all thought they were the only one. They felt very alone. Whitney said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I said, I’m parked in your parking lot and I’m having a granola bar for dinner.’ She said, ‘No, I’m taking you out for dinner and I have the boss’s credit card.’ She asked me how many women brewers there are. I had an answer by then! I said, ‘I’ve been making this list since I left and I have 60 names on the list.’ She asked who they were and said she really wanted to network with them. And I thought, ‘Oh, is that where this is going?’ So I told Whitney that I would put together a list of these brewers, these sixty women, and their names and I’ll post it on my webpage. At the top I wrote ‘List of Women Brewers,’ but I thought, jeez, that’s such a boring name. I need a snazzier name. Well, this is the Pink Boots Tour I’m on, so I wrote Pink Boots Society at the top and posted it.”
“All of a sudden I started getting emails. It was like a lightning rod. ‘Hi, I’m a woman packaging manager, can I join?’ ‘Hi, I’m the lab tech, can I join?’ ‘I’m a beer writer, can I join?’ Whoa. I didn’t know it was something you could join. I said, ‘I don’t know—I’ll just keep your name and email. Thanks.’ I was getting email from guys! ‘This is a coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve got a daughter—I’m going to post your list.’ All of a sudden my list was getting all this attention. It was even getting media attention, a little bit. It was so odd.”
The Society Forms
“So I get back from my trip, 139 days, 13,000 and some miles. CBC [the Craft Brewers Conference] was coming up in San Diego that year. So I called up Laura Ulrich, the first woman I really connected with, and I asked if we should have a meeting of the ladies on the list. She said, ‘Definitely.’ So she and Jessica Gilman arranged our first meeting at the Gordon Biersch brewpub down there. Oh my! They had pink tablecloths and pink flowers on the tables and I brought my pink boots, and others wore boots with pink flowers on them. We told these women to bring their beer. The ladies were sharing their beers with the other women, and that had never happened before. There were 16 women brewers in the room and I invited some women writers I knew, and there were six of them. Of course the male beer writers wanted to cover it, and I said no—but you can send a woman. I said, ‘Sorry, guys, but we’ve never had anything in the beer industry where it was all estrogen the room, and we don’t know what that feels like. We need to see what that feels like.’ It was 100% women in the room and it was amazing.”
“I said a few words to them and asked, what do you want it to be? They voted to become an organization. Second question: who are we? Look around, there’s six women beer writers and they want to join. There was a lot of discussion. Can men join? Two of the women there wanted to have men join. One of the things I said was that if we don’t stand for something, we stand for nothing. And we don’t want to replicate what was already out there. We discussed craft breweries-only or big breweries, or breweries only—what about allied trades? Do they have to brew or can they be in the lab? They voted that we stand for three things: Women Beer Professionals. The first definition of professional was you have to earn money from beer somehow.”
Creating a mission and defining membership is a big deal for any organization. Pink Boots made the difficult decision to limit membership and focus on professional development. They decided against including hobbyists like women homebrewers or consumers. It was an important decision, because it began to create the expectation that women weren’t marginal: they were professionals and deserved to be paid. “All throughout history, who are the volunteers? Women, women, women. Women always volunteer. They volunteer for childcare, volunteer for clubs. It was really important to me that the women earn income. From beer.”
“One woman came to me and said, ‘I do all the tweets and all the social media for the brewpub my boyfriend works at, but I do it for free.’ So I said, ‘A buck a tweet until you hit fifty and then after that they’re free. You have to make some income.’ Another woman said, ‘My husband is a beer writer and I edit all his stuff, can I join?’ I said, ‘He’s got to pay you for the editing work—and it’s worth it!’ And I made him pay her five bucks on the spot in front of me and told him he had to pay it every month. A woman emailed me they were really upset they couldn’t join. She wrote, ‘I’m the president of our homebrew club; I teach homebrew classes; I’ve taken the Cicerone. Why can’t I join?’ And I wrote, ‘That’s all great, but you gotta be charging at least ten bucks for your homebrew classes. You’re wasting that Cicerone degree if you’re not using it, so I recommend you go to three different restaurants and tell them you’ll write a beer menu for them for free in exchange for a good recommendation. Then you write beer menus for money.’ They were all like, ‘Thank you so much! I had no idea I could make money at this.’”
“I suggested becoming a nonprofit charity to get tax-exempt donations. I had to do the 501 (c)(3) myself—my mother-in-law helped me—and the application was 98 pages long. It took me four years. I am not an administrator! Besides raising money for scholarships, one of my goals was to elevate the standing of beer in society.”
Pink Boots Grows
“Starting about a year ago, Pink Boots Society got a new definition. Women are still the focus; you have to self-identify as female. But now it’s not just beer, it’s all fermented beverages. You still have to earn money. On the professional side, you have to earn at least 25% of your income—or own one of these businesses. We tell the owners, we know you get paid last. You have to sell your first pint, then you’re a pro. Those are the current definitions. And that’s it. Anheuser-Busch does not send women to join us; Molson Coors does. As far as membership goes, they are all welcome to join. Even if you work as an accountant for a brewery—you’re welcome to join. If you work for Great Western Malting or any allied trades, you can join.”
“We have our own conference every two years, and it’s incredible. All the speakers are Pink Boots members, and the wealth of knowledge and depth of experience that is in every Pink Boots chapter is astounding. Women are connecting with each other. These women are networking in a way I only could have dreamed of when I was practically the only woman brewer I knew. The collaboration brew-day that we do every March 8th for International Women’s Day—it’s phenomenal. At Great Western, where I work, we generally have about 25 women brewing. They come from all parts of the company—IT, finance, warehouses, receptionists—everyone wants to come brew for the day. It’s super fun.”
As we came to the end of our conversation, Teri reflected on her career, and how the pieces fit together. As she told the story of her life, she painted the picture of a woman with remarkable self-assurance, a trailblazer who has left brewing a more accessible place for women. Yet she brought that experience back to her earliest experiences, recognizing how important it is to have heroines and professional exemplars. Being inspired and receiving help along the way helped Teri succeed. As she looks forward, that’s the prescription she sees.
“We need role models. When I attended that homebrewer’s conference and GABF in 1988 and I saw Mellie Pullman get on the stage, I thought, ‘If she can do it, I can, too.’ I could identify with somebody who already had that job. We need more BIPOC women so a young Black or Native American woman could see someone and say, if they can do it I can do it. The more you can picture yourself in that role in your mind, the more likely you are to pursue that as a career.”
These posts come from a long interview I conducted with Teri a few months back. In compiling them into these posts, I edited and trimmed them, and in one case rearranged the order of a few paragraphs. I sent the edited transcript to Teri before posting so she could correct errors and fill in gaps I missed. In the end, though, she only made a few minor corrections.
I hope you can hear Teri’s voice in these transcripts. She has a joyful, optimistic way of thinking and speaking. I learned a lot about her life I didn’t know, but equally, what an important influence she has been, whether as a boss, a beer-community organizer, or an example. No doubt many brewers, men and women, saw her success and thought to themselves, “Hey, maybe I can do that, too.” In an industry so often defined solely by what a brewer makes, Teri offers an even more important example of leadership—who you can help. It is a tremendous legacy.