Sightglass: Mosaic State Brewers Collective
This is the latest chapter in an ongoing collaboration between the Beervana Blog and Reuben's Brews. Today's topic is the Mosaic State Brewers Collective, a stipended mentorship program about to start its second year. A collaboration between Metier Brewing and Reuben's, it helps underrepresented people build careers in the beer industry.
The spring and summer of 2020 was one of the darkest periods in American history. It was just months after the global pandemic shut down daily life. The politics of a nasty presidential campaign worsened divisions and isolation. And then came the searing violence, culminating on May 25 when police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. It was a moment that left many of us feeling bereft and helpless.
Fortunately, not everyone was paralyzed. A few leaders stepped forward to turn the trauma into positive change. In New York City, Brooklyn Brewing master brewer Garrett Oliver established the Michael Jackson Foundation to train BIPOC brewers. In San Antonio, Marcus Baskerville launched the Black Is Beautiful fundraising campaign, and now plans to follow it up with program to guide women and BIPOC brewers to launch their own breweries. And in Seattle, a discussion between Reuben’s Brews and Metier Brewing led to a mentorship program called the Mosaic State Brewers Collective. A multi-level, immersive program, it provides networks of support and mentorship as well as hands-on, applied experience working in the brewing industry. Supported by the Reuben’s Brews Foundation and Metier Brewing, it even offers participants a stipend to help make it possible to attend the program.
I spoke with the two people spearheading the project, Metier’s Dreux Dillingham and Reuben’s Grace Robbings, about how the project got started and what it offers. Importantly, the project is about to start accepting applicants for year two, so if you’re a member of an underrepresented group who wants help in your career, see the information below about how to apply.
The Walls Had to Come Down
Dreux Dillingham currently works as the General Manager at Metier, Washington state’s first Black-owned brewery, but before that, he spent 13 years in the wine industry. He ran up against a barrier familiar among talented young people who weren’t White men. “As a person of color, I never really felt seen in my career,” he said. Although beer has myriad, well-documented problems with diversity, Dreux saw opportunities at Metier not available to him in wine. Rodney Hines had just founded the Woodinville brewery, and with his background in corporate social entrepreneurship, it seemed like a great place to be seen—and to help others be seen.
During the brewery’s first two years of startup mode, Dreux and Rodney were focused on building the brewery, but when the summer of 2020 landed, that changed. “We were really frustrated about what we were seeing in the world and locally and regionally,” he said, describing those months. “We were disappointed that while all that was happening, with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, that no one in the brewing industry reached out to see what they could do.” It was a confusing time, he explained, and this was way outside most breweries’ area of expertise.
“There’s this really casual go-along, get-along bro culture which wasn’t necessarily exclusionary, but they hadn’t thought about how to be welcoming. I felt like in beer the walls had come down, but no one knew what to do.”
Actually, it wasn’t complete silence. Two breweries did make contact. One, Hellbent, wanted to do a collaboration as a variation on the beer made for the Black is Beautiful campaign. The other brewery was Reuben’s. “They called because they were feeling the same energy of frustration,” Dreux said.
Thanks to the wonder of podcasts, you can actually hear an early discussion between the two breweries. Just a month after George Floyd died, Adam Robbings posted a Sightglass conversation with Metier’s Rodney Hines, homebrewer and writer Annie Johnson, and Larry Rock, a Reuben’s salesman. In it, Rodney describes an embryonic idea for a fellowship that would “create more leaders like us in the industry.” As he talked, he outlined some of the ideas would carry on into the Mosaic State project. Then, immediately after describing his vision, he added, “But I think it would be thoughtful for us to not do it in isolation. If there was a collective effort, we could have a far greater impact than each one of us trying to do it in isolation.” It became an invitation to collaborate on something ambitious.
An Immersive Program
Before long, the two breweries began roughing out a plan that would become the Mosaic State Brewers Collective. Grace Robbings, Reuben’s Korean-American co-owner, joined Dreux to lead the project. What began as a fellowship idea turned into a mentorship. “We wanted to do multiple things with it,” Grace explained. “We wanted to bring new people into the industry, and then help advance their careers and skills.” They created a three-tier program. Participants didn’t have to do all three, and in fact, the second, applied level, was limited in the first year to four people.
Photo: Annie Johnson
The first level offered direct mentorship. Participants were connected with people in their area of interest. Mentors included Georgetown’s Manny Chao, Ninkasi’s Nigel Francisco, and Stoup’s Robyn Schumacher, among others. Level two, which Grace described as the capstone project, was an immersive exercise in bringing a beer to market, starting with a recipe and moving through sales and marketing to release. Finally, Mosaic State partnered with the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and participants were able to get classroom instruction in a consulting program and management course. “For six weeks they’re focused on marketing, branding, management, leadership, even accounting and finance,” Grace said.
It all sounds enormously helpful, but the second level sounds flat out fun. I would love to participate. Here’s how Grace described it.
“In level two, which started in the fall of 2021, they got to see a beer from start to finish. They worked on the concept of the beer, designing the recipe with Annie Johnson, and then came up with a creative brief. How do you hand this off to a designer to create a label to match what we’re envisioning? They talked about branding. They shadowed a brew day—they shadowed a few brew days, actually—and then were able to observe things in the cellar and the lab and see packaging. They did a sales day, a ride-along with Larry Rock, and got to visit accounts and see the interaction from a sales rep’s perspective. They did a day focusing on the service side, talking with Jackie Dodd (the Beeroness). They helped people think about what kind of experience are you trying to create when people walk in the door. How do they feel and how does everything feed into that? That was a great way to see the full life-cycle of a beer and see all of the different pieces that have to fall into place to make it happen.”
It all culminated in the release of Lily of the Nile, a flavored stout. I spoke to Annie later, and she said it was a blast spending time with the group coming up with a beer. “I had them come over to my home brewery and then I took them through the steps of tasting and figuring out the style first, and then dosing beers with the things they wanted.” The 6.3% stout had a dash of molasses and chicory in it.
Funding People to Learn
Internships offer excellent experience—for anyone who can afford to suspend their lives for weeks. For people who have jobs and families, it can be a huge barrier. Recognizing this, Mosaic State offered participants of level two $3,500 for their time. “We know it’s not easy to take time out of your life,” Grace acknowledged. “Often the people who have the least access are the people of color who have not been as represented in the industry.” In the first year, the newly-created Reuben’s Brews Foundation funded these stipends. “I think the two most powerful things we’ve done is create a mentor network and the stipend—which we’re looking to increase,” Dreux said. He mentioned that they’d like to boost the stipend in the future, as well. “We’d like to get that closer to a $10,000 grant,” he confirmed.
The application period is about to open. Level one of the program will start in July. If you would like to participate, click on the link in the box below.
The Mosaic State Brewers Collective is taking applications now. To learn more about the program levels, participating mentors, and how to apply, please visit the Mosaic state website. And good luck!
As anyone near the beer industry knows, it is overwhelmingly White. That is especially true at the leadership/owner level. Talented people from underrepresented backgrounds often have many obstacles to overcome. One of the most pernicious is that networks form around the people already there. On that podcast episode, Larry Rock, who is Black, put it very eloquently. “One thing I have experienced, though, is a neutrality, people not really looking to hire people of color. They basically hire people that they’re familiar with. It’s not necessarily racism, but it’s just if most of your friends are white, most of the people you know, and that’s what you’re going to lean on.”
When she was working with last year’s cohort, Annie was effusive in her praise. “It was a great group of young people,” she said. “I was really impressed with them—they were smart, super-smart. It made me hopeful for our future!” The people who worked with these young people will remember them and recommend them, whether they stay in beer or move on to coffee or restaurants or any new pursuit. Given the opportunity to impress, they did.
These mentorship programs are critical in recreating those networks so that when an owner or brewer is thinking of hiring someone, they recall that impressive person they worked with. Everyone involved in this project I spoke to invoked the Pink Boots Society as a model of creating new networks. “That’s what we want to do for people of color in the beer industry,” Grace told me. In its first year, the Mosaic State project helped only a handful of people, but Dreux would love to see the network stretch up and down the I-5 corridor. And, like the slow-starting Pink Boots Society, it may take a minute to grow. But the success of Pink Boots is a hopeful sign that if Metier and Reuben’s can build the program, it will eventually begin to transform the beer industry.