CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Some Charlotte brewery owners are teaming up in hopes of making the industry more inclusive through an internship program that will introduce new people to craft beer.
Only 1% of breweries nationwide are Black-owned. The new program, which includes three breweries in the Charlotte region, is working to change that. The idea is to bring on interns and help them learn everything about the brewery business, from making their own product to the financial side of things.
The beer industry is booming in Charlotte with dozens of breweries, regular crowds and big dollars, but there's one thing you don't see much of: Diversity.
Brian Quinn, the head brewer of Town Brewing Co., brewed up the Many Faces Initiative.
"We really do need to bring people in to craft beer both in terms of people employed by the craft beer industry and people who sit down at a bar," Quinn said. "The Many Faces Initiative was founded in 2020, in the wake of protests of the killing of George Floyd. I started to think about what we could do, as craft beer industry professionals, in terms of increasing diversity and promoting more inclusivity."
It's an internship for people of color. Each participating brewery will have one intern learning everything possible. Click here to learn more about the internship.
"We don't cast a wide net with our hiring practices, so a lot of people that work in craft beer look like me," Quinn said.
Dave Hamme, the owner of Lost Worlds Brewing in Cornelius, admits they need to work at diversity.
"For us, it's soup to nuts," Hamme said. "Give them an opportunity to see what the craft brewery is. We realized there's a segment of the population that, quite frankly, isn't in our network today. We want them to be our customers and employees, we have to be deliberate to reach out and pull them into our family."
The keynote speaker for the Many Faces kickoff is Marcus Baskerville, owner of Weathered Souls Brewing Co. in San Antonio, Texas. Baskerville founded the Black is Beautiful initiative, which raised awareness for the injustices people of color face and raised funds for police brutality reform. Weathered Souls is also set to open a Charlotte brewery in South End later this year.
"I really want to encourage brewers to reach out and expand the community and expand people we can bring into our ranks," Quinn said. "That will really help broaden the inclusivity of the craft beer scene in general."
Breweries in Cary, Charlotte, Cornelius, Wilmington and Winston-Salem are participating in the initiative, including Resident Culture, Wrightsville Beach Brewery and Pitt Street Brewing Co. in Greenville.
The Many Faces Initiative is a paid internship. The interns will spend the summer brewing their own beer and some of the money from that release will help pay them. Any person interested in applying for the Many Faces Initiative internship can click here for an application and a list of participating breweries.
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