New Belgium Brewing's supply-chain leader started September 24, 2024, then Hurricane Eileen flooded the Asheville brewery three days later, destroying 30% of production. Competitors like Anheuser-Busch sent equipment and help. The brewery was fully operational again within months and hit production records.
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So we've talked about New Belgium's growth, but it hasn't come without challenges. There's, um, some crises that you've had to overcome. Why don't you share a little bit about that?
Yeah, thanks, Lindsay. Um, I'll take you back 2 years. It was actually September 2024. Um, I started on Tuesday, September 24th, and if anybody remembers, Hurricane Eileen happened 4 days after that, uh, Friday, September 27th and Saturday, 28th, and dumped an incredible amount of water, wind, just devastating to that area of Asheville, North Carolina, which is where we have one of our facilities. And the facility is in a beautiful location in the center of Asheville, but it's right on the French Broad River. And unfortunately, in that area, the French Broad overcame its banks, hit above a 500-year floodplain, and our brewery ended up with, in some places, 6 feet of Really silty river water. And what a, you know, for me being new to the company, showing up there, trying to get there for almost a day, being denied and finally getting there, it really put the— humbled me one because you saw the devastation. You saw what was happening to the people of the company, the people that I just, I didn't know many of them. In fact, Right. Luckily, the general manager there, her and I worked at Anheuser-Busch together, so I knew her. I hadn't talked to her in many years, but just seeing her for the first time and the emotions that she had when she first saw us made me realize, boy, this is really bigger than what even I was expecting. And we had no lines of communication. There's turmoil in the city. There's all sorts of things going on that I actually believe a little bit in weather sensationalism where people blow up the weather because it's like a good news story. But this was absolutely not that. This was real and it was very, it's quite sad. And for me as a supply chain leader, you look really quickly here. I am new to this business. Within 5 days, 30% of my production was going to be down and it was going to be down for a long time.
Right.
In fact, the first assessment that some people had is it could be as much as a year.
Oh my.
And even considering why, you know, the why would we do this to ourselves and fix this up because we knew this could happen again or how much work was going to have to go into it. But we didn't want to hear any of that. We knew we could do it, you know, but it was scary. It was scary for a lot of people. And I think if I could get into a little bit of the, like, The postmortem for me.
Sure.
What I realized after that is the first thing you have to do is take care of your people. And taking care of your people is making sure that they're okay, both physically and mentally. And you can't expect them to go to work and try to help you get something back up and running or do assessments because they have to focus on themselves and their family and each other, to be honest with each other. With so many great stories of how they cared for one another. In that. And actually, that's what they want to do. That's where they feel most impactful is you go out and help your peers, help your teammates. For me, it was like, hey, what can I do? And everybody wanted to help. The people in Fort Collins, the people in Daleville, Virginia, the people in Comstock, even people, competitors, called me up right away and said, hey, how can I help understand the situation we were in? And we really, really Worked hard to bring those people in so that the people at the site in Asheville didn't have to worry about the business. They had to worry about each other. So that was like one big learning I had from that moment. The other thing I would say I learned is relationships do matter. And it's amazing when you have, you know, this industry's really small, to be honest with you. It feels really big in the brewing industry, but people know each other. And to have a competitor call you up in the moment that happened and say, how can I help? Versus saying, oh boy, there's a crisis happening there. I'm going to take advantage of this crisis and sell more product. There was more about help than anything else. Even the company I just left, Anheuser-Busch, helped. You know, FXMAT quickly came to brew for us. We had companies offer us equipment that we knew that we had synergies on. We had vendors offer up, you know, $50,000 worth of chemicals from Ecolab. There's so many people to thank. But just the outpouring of support because this team here had so many great relationships, it really, really mattered in that recovery effort. And then the third thing, I think that probably the most important thing is the way this company treated its employees or treats its employees really benefits you in the moment of crisis. Once everybody was safe, Man, we couldn't keep people out of the brewery. They just wanted to see their place of work, the people that they work with feel supported, but also they wanted to see it run up and running again. And never did I ever hear anybody complain about what they had to do or what they didn't have to do. And really it wasn't even us pushing, the people did it because they wanted to see the brewery back up and running. And that to me was the amazing part of this company is We truly are a human-powered business because if you don't treat people right before the crisis happened, they're not going to come and support you as a company when the crisis happens. And it was amazing for me to see, especially being new to the company, made me realize the company I just joined was the right company for me, for sure.
That's an incredible story. And it's always wonderful to hear that during a time of crisis, There are people that are using it to lift humans up rather than to knock everybody down and be like, this is my market share. I'm going to take this now. Everybody really just wants everybody to succeed. And at every human core, we're hissing, taking care of human beings, helping one another along the journey. So I'm happy that that was your experience. And Asheville is up and moving and running. Fully restored.
Fully restored. In fact, they've had an amazing summer for us. Um, they actually have broken records on production the last few months and super proud of that team. And, um, yeah, and now more than ever, you know, this company needs them because we are growing and they are, you know, really coming through for us as a business. So really, really proud of that team. And, um, yeah, it, it's kind of funny. I, I've been with this company 2 years, but I feel like I know every nook and cranny of that brewery because, you know, I, I threw there with a headlamp on or, you know, yeah. So. But in the people the same way, I feel, I think anybody in this company is really connected to each other. But it was amazing to see the support from the peers here. I just can't say enough, Lindsay, about like we had an employee assistance fund that got record donations for the people that lost a home or had their basement flooded or needed help. Donations from our trucking service to bring a truck from Fort Collins back and forth to deliver supplies, whether it be generators or brooms or just diapers and things like that. It was just, like you said, it was just so great to see humanity come through in that situation.
How long did it take before Asheville was fully functional again?
It was an amazing 3 and a half months. We brewed our first beer January 17th of that, or January, yeah, January 17th of 2025. And so, I couldn't have been prouder of the team. And yeah, it was an amazing, amazing effort by everybody. And I was just one piece of the pie, but man, the team was absolutely amazing.
