New Belgium Brewing Chief Supply Chain Officer Tom O’Connell | Aligning 800 People (Podcast 609)

In 25 years in any organization, you get to know people. I worked at 7 different facilities, almost built like a little bit of a reputation, but I, I knew people's names, I knew their families. Coming to a new organization at the level that I'm at, it's really hard to get to know people. And as I get older, names are coming harder and harder, but I always try to remember names, try to remember, you know, some sort of connection to that person. It's important for us as leaders, like you said, in the second unit in command, is to make things— know that you're the same as anyone else. You're no different. You connect with people the same way and know that if someone needs something, they can always at least talk to you about something, you know, not feel like there's a barrier.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Second in Command podcast. My name is Lindsey Smith, and I'm very excited to bring to you our guest, Tom O'Connell, the Chief Supply Chain Officer for New Belgium Beer. As New Belgium's Supply Chain Officer, Tom O'Connell manages the company's brewing operations and supply chain strategy. Bringing more than 25 years of brewing experience and a deep technical understanding of beer production. Tom joined New Belgium in 2024 to oversee operations at New Belgium's 4 breweries in Fort Collins, Colorado, Asheville, North Carolina, Comstock, Michigan, and Daleville, Virginia. Tom looks forward to contributing to New Belgium's continued innovation with Voodoo Ranger and in the Beyond Beer category. Originally from Southern New Hampshire, Tom began his brewing career at Muddy Nose Brewing Company during college at the University of New Hampshire, where he studied chemical engineering. Before coming to New Belgium, Tom was Vice President of Brewing and Quality, North America for Anheuser-Busch, where he led a team of more than 1,400 employees across 46 locations. He also has had roles as brewmaster, brewery general manager, brewery operations director of Eastern United States, and Vice President of Supply for Craft and Imports. I am very excited to have our conversation today. Welcome, Tom.

Thanks for having me, Lindsay.

Oh, it's my pleasure. So let's answer everybody's first burning question. How did you end up in the world of beer?

Uh, a little bit by fate, I would say, um, which is a pretty neat story. Um, I was in college at the University of New Hampshire, um, studying chemical engineering. And, you know, I've had a lot of discussions with my dad because he was an engineer and like, what, what am I going to do next? What field do I want to get into? Beer never came up, although my dad was a big beer fan. I imagine if you had thought about this, it would. But I needed to work when I was in college, and I had an acquaintance that worked at a small brewery called Snowy Nose Brewing Company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was about 20 minutes away from where I was going to school. And it was just a job. You know, I showed up, I did everything from shoveling spent grain to clean kegs to putting labels on 22-ounce bombers to all the fun stuff you have to do, if you did in the world back then. This was in 1997. in the beer industry, in the craft beer industry. But I fell in love with it and I didn't know it could take me as far as it has, you know, coming up on almost 28 years in the business. But it was the start of like this passion for beer. From there, it turned into an internship at Anheuser-Busch, which is in really about 20 minutes from my hometown in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the brewery's no longer making beer anymore, but It was like a dream come true for both me and my dad, I think, because my dad would take us there when we were kids because he liked to get the free Budweiser. But here his son is now working there. And that turned into a 25-year career at Anheuser-Busch, all supply chain, kind of bouncing around the different breweries, different roles inside the enterprise organization. And, you know, super thankful for what Anheuser-Busch did for me. And then Shawn, the CEO here, came in New Belgium and he said, You know, I've got this opportunity for somebody that like has your experience. What do you think? And I'd heard so much about New Belgium and had known a few people that worked here over the years. And I thought, man, this is a great chance, an opportunity for me to spread my wings a little bit, do something a little bit larger. And here I am as the Chief Supply Chain Officer at New Belgium.

That's pretty incredible. And see, when I heard you started in college, I had wondered if it was in the basement of a frat house learning how to make beer. At least your beginnings were more legit than that.

Yes. Yes. I did love beer. Let's just put it that way, in college.

That's really wonderful. And so, as a second in command, it's really interesting because there's a vast variety of titles that people have, and yours is specific to Chief Supply Chain Officer, right? And they oversee operations. Talk to us a little bit about what that entails and what you have domain over.

Yeah, I like to explain to people, it's everything from the procurement of the raw materials, coming into the brewery to make beer all the way through to that last mile of the truck onto the dock floor at the wholesalers. And so everything in between, so it's production, it's safety, it's quality, it's sustainability, you name it that's inside of those 2 barriers, that's what I'm in charge of in the scope of my role. Obviously, I've got great leaders beneath me that manage each one of those departments, but it gives you huge, diverse perspective of the business, especially when it comes to having the entire operations supply chain. But I felt like I was well equipped from my experiences in the past that allowed me to make, help the team make some decisions, make progress in each of their areas.

And so how many people are at New Belgium today?

Total of business is right around 1,400 employees. Inside of supply chain, we're just short of 800 employees.

So you've got significant oversight in terms of the number of people and the number of processes that you're working with.

Yes, exactly. And then having 4 sites to manage, you know, has its complexities, but also has its— it's great to be able to see the benchmarking that you can do between sites to bounce things off each other, to see the differences in culture. But yeah, I think when you get into any kind of organization, a supply chain where you start to have multiple sites, It gets even more difficult as the leader to really communicate, to get the objectives across, make sure everybody's on the same page. But yeah, it's a good crew. It's a great crew actually.

What's the cadence of communication that you have with your various physical locations?

So I try to get to them at least once a quarter. Probably at this clip, I'm about there every other, like twice a quarter to most. I'm based here in Fort Collins, which is our main site here for the company. It's the enterprise location. And it's right off to the brewery. I'm standing here just next to where the brewing operations happen. So, it's really get to those 3 other sites on a regular cadence.

Okay.

I try to go very beginning of the year, right when we launch the 1-year plan to make sure they know the direction and make sure they hear from me what we need to do as a supply chain to be successful in that coming year.

And so, you meet with them once or twice a quarter. What type of communication do you have in between visits?

That's great. Yeah. So, I always do, we do one email a month. It's called Supply Chain 3-2-1 Update. The idea being there's 3 things that you should know, 2 successes to celebrate, and one ask of your team members. So, one thing around how do we get everybody on the same page if we've got a gap in a KPI? or we need help from them in safety or quality. Really kind of hone that message to them in one succinct thing as an organization. And then obviously I do a lot of, you know, we do a lot of little celebrations within each category. So we have a, you know, a winner for safety, a safety player of the month. And then that's more personal for me to communicate to the teams, like congratulations to this winner. And then, you know, regular cadence, when I go to a brewery, I try to meet with the leadership team. And once a quarter, every brewery has what they call a production operations meeting where they shut down the brewery, get everybody together. I try to be at least once a year to those to kind of share the, you know, share the supply chain goals and objectives, also how we're doing. But anytime I can get in front of the entire team at a specific, specific site, I'll try to do that. I'll try to get that, that moment in time with that group to be able to hear from me because I really feel it's important Email's very, very hard to communicate the priorities, even though we try to. But at the same time, there's a lot of like personal connection that you can have when you stand in front of a group and say, hey, this is what we're trying to do this year and here's your contribution to that. I think is really important. And I try to do that routinely to make sure that one, they know who I am. I'm a human. I'm not way up here in this pedestal. You can kind of, you see me, I try to add a little comedy to the act, even though that doesn't really go over very well sometimes, but try to put a little humanity into it. And I think it's, for me, actually coming from Anheuser-Busch where I've been there for 25 years, even though it was a much larger organization, I mean, 25 years in any organization, you get to know people. And I worked at 7 different facilities and had built, almost built a little bit of a reputation, but I knew people's names. I knew their families. Coming to a new organization at the level that I'm at, it's really hard to get to know people. And I've really tried to put a lot of effort into it. And as I get older, names are coming harder and harder, but I always try to remember names, try to remember, you know, some sort of connection to that person. Because I think it really, it's important for us as leaders, like you said, in the second unit command is to make things, um, know that you're the same as anyone else. You're no different. You know, you connect with people the same way and, um, and know that if someone needs something, they can always at least talk to you about something. You know, not feel like there's a barrier.

I love that they shut operations down and make people work on the business because I feel like all too often people get wrapped up in what it is that they're doing, their particular task, that they lose sight of being able to really figure out how they fit into the vision or what the next steps need to be taken are. And when an organization really supports that step away from production and move to Let's work on some strategy together and how you fit into it. I think that's really huge for the people and for the organization.

Completely agree. Yeah, we're actually coming up on a really unique thing that New Belgium does even more to that extent, where we actually take a moment where the entire senior leadership team travels to each site and the sales from that region, the marketing teams from that region all get together at the site and we have what's called a retreat. And the retreat is not only talking about like what our goals and objectives are for the The coming year, giving a status update of where we are as a business. And then this comes from Sean, from the CEO. And then I have a piece and the CFO has a piece and the people, the culture team has a piece. But, and then we have an event where the teams can go out and just bond with each other. So it's a, it, and then it ends with a party like any good brewer does, you know, you end it with a party at each site. My liver hurts after the couple weeks that it takes place to happen, but. It's an amazing thing that this company's done since it began. And it's a moment in time where you really, really get that connection to people and you understand we're a business of people first. We're a human-powered business and everything we do is based on the people, especially that group at the front lines. And how can we continue to foster an environment where we share with them how important they are?

I really love that. And I used to do something similar when I was in corporate America, and we would take our teams and pull them offline for 2 to 3 days. But I always started off with a social event, and I always ended with a party because I felt the same way. If you just were these, you know, meeting, meeting, meeting, numbers, numbers, numbers without that human connection, you lost an opportunity that you had when you were together with people.

Absolutely.

I used to make my leadership team do parody videos, so they would have to do a dance to a song that we changed the lyrics to, and I put it on these ginormous screens. So you can take that one back to Sean and let him know that next meeting you're going to be dancing. I love it.

Yeah, that's great.

So let's talk about the culture. You mentioned a few moments ago that there's different culture in all of your sites. How do you manage and control that? While still being true to the new values?

Yeah, that's a great question, Lindsay. I think understanding, you know, first of all, it can be regional just because the region you're in versus like, you know, the culture of the site driven by the leadership team too. And I think there's a little bit of both in there. Um, I grew up in the Northeast, you know, the, uh, the— oh, there you go.

Yeah.

Um, and I, it's funny because I, I know that personality really well. Spent the first 22 years of my life there. And that's great. I mean, actually, to be honest with you, I think the people in Northeast are very direct, which I love when it comes to being a leader because you know exactly where they're at. But in the Southeast, they're a little bit different. They're much usually a little bit happier in general and happier. That's not the right thing to say, but a little, you know, a lot of hospitality there, a lot of like, you know, tell me what you want to hear. So sometimes a little harder to get deeper into what their issues are, but at the same time, it's so fun to interact with people that are in that area because they know what they need to do, but they listen to you and they really want to do what's right. So anyway, each region of the country has different backgrounds and then the development of the culture by the leadership team, I think is a real thing as well. So feeling that when you go to a site saying, okay, this one's a little bit different because of the leader I have. I truly believe in being an authentic leader. You are who you are. You can tweak your leadership skills, But you can come, there's no perfect leadership breakdown. There's no person that comes with, it's really about being yourself, but also tweaking the things that you know you need to work on, taking feedback, but not changing who you are. Because if you change who you are, it doesn't come off as authentic and people see right through it. And it just doesn't, it doesn't work out for you as a leader in the end when you do that.

100%. And I think that's one of the hardest things for leaders to learn because they feel that there's this perfect box that they should fit in or that they should aspire to be. And the reality is you are who you are. You can't say it any more clearly than you did.

Yeah, I completely agree.

So New Belgium's having a moment right now. You're seeing some tremendous growth. Talk to us about what that looks like.

Yeah, no, it's exciting to be a part of the company right now. I think, If you look at the beer industry as a whole, it's struggling and it's been struggling now for a few years. And, when I say struggling, there's a lot of people that are moving towards health and wellness or moving to spirits-based cocktails and just away from beer and craft beer in general. What we've been able to create here is a brand in some of the brands we have, whether it be our Bell's brand or our New Belgium portfolio brands that are showing growth outside of the normal the New York normal brewing industry, which is great. And to be one of the top, one of the only companies growing in the top 10 brewers in the country is something we take pride in and we're excited about. And also know during this time, the one thing about beer is it has withstood the test of time and people will still drink beer, which is great for us in the industry. And when we come out of maybe this dip we're seeing in overall beer consumption, that we'll be better off as a company. And stronger because of the things that we did during this time of maybe a little bit more challenges. But yeah, it's exciting to be a part of this company. This company has grown off innovation and has some really great innovations that have really done well this year. And we see the portfolio next year evolving with even new, greater new products. So we're excited about what the future holds as well.

So what would you attribute the growth to?

I think it's just that, Lindsay. I think The innovation that we've been able to work with the marketing and sales and the supply chain, right? Because we're the ones that have to develop the recipes from the ideas that the marketing and sales team come with has been a strength of our company for the last 35 years. And when you think about the things that we've been able to do in the last 5 years during maybe a little bit more challenging time for beer, it's really stretched the envelope. Things that people would say, ooh, I don't know if you can make a great beer at that high alcohol level, or I don't know if you can really get convince people that this flavor is something that they'll want, they'll desire. And, you know, we're stretching ourselves in things like RTDs. We're going outside the box. We have a, you know, a line of teas that we did. So we're not just about beer, not just about craft beer. We're about other things that we know that the beverage, especially alcoholic beverage community, they're looking for and they're seeking. And I think that's our secret sauce. It's really about how we're able to innovate, how we're able to be flexible at supply chain level, right? Some things, those are hard. Like, you know, anyone's in supply chain says, hey, I just want to make that one SKU all day long that's really easy to make. But we have to be flexible, we have to be agile, we have to adapt to what the business needs from us. And I think that's one thing that this entire supply chain team and the entire company's been really, really good at.

Well, you're pivoting, right? Just like the scene in Friends where Ross is pivoting the sofa, you're pivoting to what is needed and the spaces that you need to fit into to continue to bring growth and success. What would you say is the most unique product that you're currently offering?

Boy, that's a good one. I think the one that's had really good success for us is the G-Force brand inside of the Force Family portfolio. When you think about brewing beer, the higher you get in alcohol, the more difficult it gets to keep the yeast happy, right? And, you know, we're all taught as brewers, one of the most important things you can do with the brewing industry to make great beer is to keep your yeast happy. And we've been able to work through some different challenges. You know, we've all had them, and I think the team's done a great job developing a product that really meets those needs, a great tasting product with a little bit higher alcohol. So that's an exciting product for us, and that's something that we see in the market doing very, very well. But we are experimenting with RTDs, right? We have some really, really neat— the Vandal is a new product, vodka-based, that we're trying out in different areas of the country right now to see how it how it does. But it's really full flavor, no beer. It's acai-based, like I said. So, it's very different from our normal portfolio. Exciting, different. We'll see how it works. Early indication is there's some success in some areas. And then, the other thing I think that's pretty exciting for us is our partnership with our parent company, Kirin. We are brewing Kirin Ichiban for them in the U.S. here. And so, we produce, distribute, and sell for them here in the United States. We've had great success being able to brew a great quality lager. And they've, you know, told us as such. We— and that whole portfolio of brands that Japanese imports is growing in the United States. And we've got one of the— we've got the second biggest player and we're excited about what that can do for us as far as our portfolio of Kirin products as we come to the United States with that.

That's really exciting. So if we go back to your RTDs for just a moment, are you distilling the vodka in-house or have you partnered with somebody?

No, we've partnered with different suppliers and then those suppliers, yeah, we'll bring it in. You have, when you think about the industry, we've got beer, wine, and spirits. There's different licensing. We've got this amazing facility in Daleville, Virginia where they can produce the spirits-based products with the technology they have, but also the right licensing. And it's almost, it's very, very small volume right now, but exciting, right? Because we know these things are where the You look at the growth in the industry, there's a big growth in the ready-to-drink spirits-based cocktails, and we want to be a player in that. And we know we can. We've got the right people to come up with these somewhat crazy ideas. And, uh, but we know we can deliver a product that the consumer's gonna really love and enjoy.

How does your marketing and sales team bring ideas to the table for new things for New Belgium to explore?

Yeah, that's a great question. It actually, Something we've been really, really working on because as we've grown, those ideas are— there's more of them obviously because you have more people and the ideas are coming in, but they can come in somewhat disorganized and they'd come in from left field and have it now, have it later. We've actually been working really diligently on our processes of stage gates, much like any company would. But the most exciting thing, the change, the transformation we did is we created what's called Stage Gate 0. So, that's that intake of funnel where any idea can come in that anybody has. And obviously, we have to parse through it, make sure it's the right for the business, fits our strategy. But we really know an idea can come from anybody, and it can come from a frontline employee on the lines, it can come from a brewer, it can come from our marketing and sales team. But then taking those ideas, funneling them down to the things we're going to work on. And then some of those are really zany ideas that maybe 2 to 3 to 4 years out, But you say, oh boy, if we can do this, if we can create something that meets this description, boy, that would change the business. And you have to work on those things while you're working on things like the routine 1-year innovation process where you've got to continue to support your brands coming in with new innovation, right? And then when those 3 to 4-year ideas come to fruition, there might be only 1 or 2 that you end up doing, but they're impactful enough that they can make a big difference for our business.

I love that ideas can come from anywhere in the business because you're right, anybody can have the idea. And how fun would it be for, you know, somebody who's a frontline in the store or even a brewer to have an idea that then they get to see made as a product or explored? That's gotta be pretty exciting.

Yes, definitely. Very exciting. Yeah.

And so each of your 4 locations, are they making different Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think Daleville's a little bit unique because they have the licensing and the capabilities to make the RTDs. So they kind of, they're our RTD portfolio producer in Daleville, Virginia. Um, the Bell's portfolio is mainly made up in Comstock, Michigan. Um, mainly because Bell's is a very regional beer, but they also make incredible products up there that, that's built. The Bell's brand has been built on that brewery. While Asheville and Fort Collins, they kind of make the New Belgium side of the products and they make a lot of them. Obviously, Fort Collins mainly focused east or sorry, west of the Mississippi, whereas Asheville is distributing east of the Mississippi in that locale. But yeah, everybody and then everybody makes a little bit different mix. You know, so you know, I think Fort Collins makes some unique products here. We've got some unique products in Daleville, unique products in Asheville. But everybody's got that kind of flexibility and that understanding that they need to be nimble and make the SKUs that do best in their regions.

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Are the New Belgium products distributed just worldwide or just in the United States?

We're mainly in the United States. We are, we are expanding a little bit outside of the United States, slowly and carefully. We've exported, just recently exported some product to Japan, where our parent company is, but, and we do a little bit outside the borders south in Mexico. We have exported to Australia at times, but really, 99.9% of our business is here in the US right now. Um, but we do see an opportunity with our brands to explore outside of the US.

Are you looking at establishing other sites, or is the vision really to keep the 4 active sites that you have and just grow them individually?

Yeah, I think right now we're, we're probably sticking to the 4 sites because we have some capacity available in the network. But, um, There's always, you know, you're always looking. I think there's always an opportunity if the right facility were to come for sale, if we needed to expand a, like if an RTD takes off for us. Currently in the licensing in the state of Colorado, you can't do spirits-based where you do beer. And that's a really hard, you know, hard state legislation to get over. So we'd need to do something probably in the West Coast inside that RTD if we were to see something really take off, right? Which would be exciting for us. Put a little stress on the supply chain. But at the same time, we recognize that if we had to move quickly, there might be something where we'd have to do it, but nothing we see in the future that's growing at a rate where we're like, ooh, we're probably gonna need to buy another facility or build another facility somewhere in the US.

So we've talked about New Belgium's growth, but it hasn't come without challenges. There's some crises that you've had to overcome. Why don't you share a little bit about that?

Yeah, thanks, Lindsay. I'll take you back 2 years. It was actually September 2024. I started on Tuesday, September 24th. And if anybody remembers, Hurricane Eileen happened 4 days after that, 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, 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 humbled me, one, because you saw the devastation. You saw what was happening to the people of the company, the people that I didn't know many of them. In fact, 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 you know, 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, you know, we had no lines of communication. There's turmoil in the city. There's all sorts of things going on that, you know, I'm a— I actually believe a little bit in weather sensationalism where people, you know, 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 was quite sad. And for me as a supply chain leader, you know, you, 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 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, 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 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 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. But so many great stories of how they care 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. 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 $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 Their place of work, the people that they work with feel supported, but also they wanted to see it 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.

100%.

When the crisis happens. And it was, 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 human beings 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 and fully restored.

Fully restored. In fact, they've had an amazing summer for us. They actually have broken records on production the last few months and super proud of that team.

And Yeah.

And now more than ever, this company needs them because we are growing and they are really coming through for us as a business. So really, really proud of that team. And yeah, it's kind of funny. I've been with this company 2 years, but I feel like I know every nook and cranny of that brewery because I threw there with a headlamp on or, yeah. So, but in the people the same way, I feel, I think anybody in this company is really connected to each other. But, and 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.

What would you say has been the thing you've learned since you've been in at New Belgium? You've been in the industry for quite some time, but what lesson did New Belgium teach you?

Yeah, I think that, I think that's it. I think, um, you know, business is, business can be, I don't wanna say cutthroat at times, but business can be challenging at times, whether it's, you know, pushing a vendor on a contract or, you know, telling the team that, you know, we have to be more nimble and, you know, we have to be more flexible and we have to do more with less. But ultimately it comes down to how you treat people in general, right? How you treat them. And it's not just, it isn't necessarily at all financials either. Like it, that's an important piece. I don't want to say that that's not important. They have to feel supported in that way, but they have to be in a community. They have to feel listened to, they have to feel heard, and they have to be able to come to work and know that it's not necessarily a job that they do, but it's something that's part of their life and that they enjoy working with the people they work with. And I think that's probably what I've learned the most, a little bit from that crisis moment, but more so as I've been into my second year, it's about the way we are getting things done is with a people-first mindset, a human-powered business. That's the only way to make progress. And sometimes that might cost a little bit more, but it's more important that you have the right care for your people, the right direction that they get the right direction from you. But really, that's what it's most— that's taught me the most.

Interesting to me is at its most basic core, you are a manufacturing company, manufacturing beer products, but yet you're talking not about the manufacturing, you're talking about that human element and the way you treat people. And that's just so important, I think, for leaders to recognize that no matter what your business, Those humans can be and should be first. And absolutely, you're demonstrating that really, really well. So kudos to you and the New Belgium team.

Yeah, absolutely. And I learned that a lot from the team I'm surrounded by.

So, you've been in the industry for 28 years. How much or how little has changed in the way beer is brewed?

Ooh, that's a great question. Tech. Yes, technology has advanced from when I first started. For sure. And like, I think the big thing to me is there's more data than ever before.

Okay.

Even though with ABI, we had a plethora of data really from when I started. But if you just look at the information you can get now, it is amazing. And there's a— and the one thing I also learned is data can be hard to process. You can have all the data in the world, but if you're not processing it the right way, Then it doesn't benefit you, right? So it's the education piece around data. Why do we look at something? Why is it important? What can I do about it? Like if I get a data point that's outside of norm, what do I do about it? And I think as much as we evolve as an industry around data and information and what are we learning and whether it be AI and trying to use the data in a faster way, we still have to train our people. And I think for It's one thing to train people on the business they do, like how does a lauter tub operate or a mash cooker operate? But it's also that mindset of troubleshooting and problem solving based on the data that's coming in. And there's a true thing as data overload. You can have analysis paralysis, you can have too much data coming in that just gets hard for people to process because they get frozen. And so I think what part of my job is also making sure people are focused, but also understand that I need to train the people and make them understand why this data is Why are we looking at it every day? What does it drive in the business? How does it impact them? And so, I think that for me is probably what the biggest thing is, just data information has really, really changed. I think the raw materials change every year, which is part of excitement and artistry of the job because we are dealing with living organism and yeast. So, there's always that component of it which makes it fun. But, I think as we evolved in technology as an industry, That data coming in is just going to be harder and harder to process. And so making sure our teams are fully qualified to process that information at the front lines too, very much at the front lines.

And how do you make sure the front lines have all of this information?

Yeah, that's great. I repeat myself a lot and you can never, it is hard to get your message as a senior leader, is that second to commit all the way down to the front lines. So that's, One, it's a game of telephone, right? Is your message getting down to the right person with the right context, right? And so often I could say something and I'd go to the frontline and say, hey, we're focused on this, right? And they're like, yeah, but I don't understand why, or I don't see how that benefits us as a company, or I don't see the why to that. And so, we're constantly repeating myself, whether it be in front of the entire organization or in front of a group of a leadership team or even in front of the frontline operators when I'm walking around a site. And really being able to talk to them about what they're doing and why it's important. To be honest with you, it's important for me to repeat myself, ask those same questions, but it's also important for them to hear it from me because then they know it's really, really important to me. It's important to the business and it's what they're doing is important to drive the business objectives and why we're all here. And so I do repeat myself a lot trying to get the message across. In a meaningful way with a good why behind it so that they can feel connected to the business and they feel that they've got the understanding of what's important.

What does your relationship with Sean, your CEO, look like?

It's great, actually. So, Sean, his background is marketing. And what I love about Sean is he's very, very humble. He wants to learn and he wants to learn about supply chain. Because he knows his background is something that's maybe his strength is marketing. He's done an amazing job as he come in, but as he's come into the CEO role, which he's in his second full year now, almost third, I should say, but he is constantly asking questions, learning from us. He's on the floor, which I really, really love. Sometimes you can get a CEO who doesn't necessarily want to interact with the frontline teams. John is in front of people He's doing the retreat. He visits every site at least twice a year and is in front of the people communicating with them. So he's very, very present, easy to connect with. But yeah, I feel like it's almost like a partnership, right? And I'm really, really impressed with his desire to find out more about supply chain because he knows it's not one of his strengths. And then he supports me in the sense that he trusts me, but then also questions me and allows me and makes sure that I'm making the right decisions for my team. And so the more he learns about the supply chain, I think he's, the better he's gonna be as a CEO. But I have no doubt. Yeah, I have no idea. I have his support along with his challenging me to make sure we're the best supply chain we can be.

That's incredible. And would you say that he's really the visionary behind what's happening in the organization?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, the, to that extent, I think we've got a great routine where we get a lot of our senior leaders together to shape a lot of what we're trying to do. Obviously it's his vision in a sense, but it's also collective. It's a collective gathering of the information to say, hey, what should the vision shape and look like? In fact, we're going through an exercise right now where we're kind of looking at our values or our company values and are they the right values? What should we do? But it's not just Sean's perspective. It's not just my perspective. It's actually trying to gather as many inputs and outputs as we can from our team members. Especially at that couple layers of leaders down, like, what are we trying to do as a team? And put together a vision, a mission, and values that really we think we can get behind for the next 5 years.

And how do you cascade messages down to have the right buy-in?

Yep. No, that's great. I think we've gotten really, really good in my time here about developing a 1-year plan. That is very digestible by the team. And so we get together in October as a supply chain team and we only look forward. We were really focused on looking at our 5-year vision and saying, hey, this is where we want to be in 5 years. And then putting that together in a 1-year plan that's really taking the next step to get to that 5-year vision. So where do we want to be We do a lot of the headline exercises, like what do we want to be proud of in 5 years? We know we can't do it in 1 year, but what are, what are we physically doing in the next year with our team members, with our, with our breweries, with our— what are we going to do to get us to that goal? And we're really good at developing that 1-year plan that we can all get behind. And, uh, we try to make a 1-year plan a plan that everybody in the supply chain can contribute to.

Okay.

Sometimes it's got really specific goals and objectives at breweries, but we create that vision of 4 pillars. These are the 4 focus areas that we're going to do, communicate that to our team members at the beginning of the year. And then every quarter we update those with the results where we're at, have our GMs present to their teams in those production meetings to really drive home the point of like, this is our 4 main objectives that we're trying to go accomplish this year. Are we on track to do that? And I think we've gotten much, much better. It is the hardest. Like I said before, we're constantly repeating ourselves. We're constantly telling the same stories. And if there's one thing that I can do as a leader is get those 700 plus, almost 800 employees to understand how they contribute to those 4 one-year plan goals that are contributing to the ultimate goal of the company. And for me, that's The hardest part though, it absolutely is the hardest part, is to get the team to understand what we're trying to go for. But it's worth the effort because once you have the multiplier of those 800 people all heading in the right direction and the same direction as the business needs them to, it's a multiplier on your progress.

Hurricane Helene aside, what has been the most interesting or difficult piece of your job as Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Yeah, I think, um, this is a— we're in a weird moment in time of the brewing industry where we've got this downtrend in product, uh, in total beer sales, but we're also facing a lot of, um, costs, um, things coming in. So the price of aluminum has almost gone up 5 times. Obviously, that's our preferred container— preferred, but it's a big container of what we, we put our beer in. And so it's It's really challenged the entire industry to be more thoughtful in how they're looking at their business. And I think that's that, you know, plus there's a lot of climate change, whether it be a flood in your location or whether it be a dry season for the malt crop or smoke taint in your hops. You know, there's things that are coming at us in the supply chain in general. And I wouldn't just say the beer industry, but in general. I was at a conference in Houston just about a month ago and they showed this graph of the amount of supply chain disruptions in the last 20 years versus the previous 50, and it's gone up like 10 times. So whether it be aluminum shortage or COVID or tariffs or whatever you're looking at, those things are happening more often than they ever have before. A lot of it's climate. A lot of it might be something else. But just being able to adjust the supply chain nimbly and look at your business a little bit differently when those things come, I think is going to be really important for anybody that's in my role or any sort of manufacturing business. Because the one thing that we all agreed on in Houston was that this is not going to decrease. It's not going to go back to the way it was 50 years ago. It's only probably going to get a little bit more challenging. And so the companies that are going to survive are the ones that embrace those changes, but make changes to offset them.

And how are you managing making decisions with rising material costs while keeping your product accessible?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's hard, right? I'm not going to lie. I think it's hard and it's tough. Some of them are tough decisions that you have to make. I think, just to be honest with you, I think the big thing is just giving clarity to your team. Not holding those things in, sharing the challenges you have with the team. And sometimes it can be a little bit like, I don't want to say depressing is not the right word, but it's like, oh, here we go again. We were just thinking this year was going to be the year where we didn't have a major crisis with supply or we didn't have a shortage of barley or, you know, like this was supposed to be the year everything was going to come together. And I think sharing with the team that's okay to be a little bit, you know, a little bit frustrated or a little bit like, hey, why does this happen every year? Because it's going to. I mean, it's actually like why we're here. It's part of what we do. And the winners, and I really do feel like we're a winner right now being at New Belgium as far as what we're doing in the market with our products, the winners are the ones that are gonna come out stronger in the years to come. And I think if you have that mindset of, hey, let's embrace those challenges that come in at us and let's turn 'em into something that we can be proud of, even though sometimes it's hard, it's okay. Like we did our best. And if we can honestly tell ourselves we did our best, Then, then I think that we did our best and that's just going to make us stronger on the backside.

So looking ahead, what is in New Belgium's future for the next year?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of new innovations that we're really excited about. So making that happen in the next year is always a challenge for us, being nimble enough to be able to do it at all of our facilities or one of our facilities, which is pretty exciting. We do have some pretty exciting capital projects that we're working on specifically in the next few weeks here in the Daleville site that'll really upgrade how they make beer from a quality perspective, from a safety perspective, but also future-proof them, make them ready to be a bigger part of our supply chain in the future, which I'm really, really excited about. And then we've got some great sustainability initiatives and I'm really excited about CO2 recovery. We just installed it here in Fort Collins. We're looking at one in Asheville and eventually in Comstock. So we have some great sustainability greenhouse gas initiatives that we're working through. And yeah, it's just, it's an exciting time to be a part of this business because I think we are showing that we can be nimble, aggressive, and make some big adjustments to the business that'll make us sustainable for a long time as a company.

How many products are in New Belgium's portfolio today?

Oh boy.

When I include the Belgian and bells, I believe we have close to 700 different SKUs. Don't quote me on that, but I believe it's something around that. Pack sizes, different products and things like that. So, but, and when you think about that, you're like, oh wow, that's a lot. And so the other piece I would say is being disciplined to say, hey, this SKU has got to go is something that we're really trying to focus on because And it's not just a benefit to supply chain. I always say that because I always feel like I'm the one like, ooh, do we really want to do this anymore? And, but it just simplifies the business for everybody. So when a salesperson is looking at a shelf set, they don't have to look through 750 SKUs. They can look through a few key ones plus a couple extras. Finances gets a little bit easier because there's not as many of the smaller SKUs where you're trying to develop a budget and things can get missed. And so I think as a business, if you can come up with the new innovations while also making sure that you rationalize your business, maybe at the things that are holding you back or drawing you down, that's a good— that's as important as having a good innovation program is having the ability as a company to say, hey, we shouldn't do that anymore, if that makes sense.

What is your favorite New Belgium product?

It's got to be for me the triple. It is just such a quintessential Belgian beer. It's got tons of flavor. It's not something you can sit down. It's a little bit of a sipper because it's a higher alcohol percentage, but I just it's just super well balanced, super clean, and just I love it inside my portfolio. And then I do love an Arpels portfolio, though just the two-hearted. It's just such a clean IPA, but it also is it's not overpowering. It's it. It, it's just really, really drinkable across the, across its entire, the entire glass.

Can't thank you enough for sharing your story and the company's journey with our listeners today.

Thanks, Lindsay. I appreciate it. It's great to be on, great to meet you, and, um, really excited to be a part of this.

I know there's great things to come for New Belgium. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lindsay.

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