One of the attractions of craft beer is its diversity – particularly the diversity of styles (the Brewers Association recognizes over 150 styles of beer), flavors (Black Cherry Porter anyone?), and strengths. Walk into any craft brewery and the chances are that your choice will include Brown Ale, Stout, Pilsner, Pale Ale, several different IPAs, and a host of other different styles, while the strength of the beer on offer may range from a sessionable 4.2% ABV to a more intimidating 12% ABV. No one can deny, that when it comes to offering the beer drinker diversity, craft beer is king.

There is, however, another type of diversity that is sorely lacking in the craft brewing industry, and that is, what I term demographic diversity. When we look at any population, we can break it down along a number of different parameters – age, gender, race/ethnicity being three of the more important ones. If we look at the U.S. population, for example, 50.8% are female, 16.5% are 65 years of age or older, 18.5% are Latino or Hispanic, 13.4% are Black or African-American, and 13.5% are foreign born (I am part of that 13.5%). No matter how you look at it, America is a diverse place. According to the Population Reference Bureau, “the U.S. population is significantly more diverse racially and ethnically now than it was in 1900“. And as the 21st century progresses, America will become more diverse.

A 2019 survey by the Brewers Association showed, not surprisingly perhaps, that ownership and employment in the craft brewing industry is disproportionately White and Male. Starting with race/ethnicity, 88.4% of brewery owners are White. In contrast, Whites only comprise 76.3% of the U.S. population. Of the various racial/ethnic groups in the United States, the one that is most underrepresented in the craft brewing industry are Blacks or African Americans. Despite compromising 13.4% of the U.S. population, only 1% of craft brewery owners and 0.6% of production brewers are Black or African American. When you walk into a craft brewery taproom, it is unlikely that the bartender pouring your pint will be Black or African American – only 4.2% of non-managerial service staff are Black or African American. When an African-American bartender serves the newly released IPA, the chances are that the person he or she is serving is White – in 2018, 85.5% of craft beer drinkers were non-Hispanic Whites.

With the recent widespread protests over racial injustice, the issue of demographic diversity within the craft beer industry has come to the fore. To their credit, the Brewers Association had already established a number of initiatives (prior to the events of 2020) to encourage, support, and facilitate diversity within the craft brewing industry. These include the establishment of a Diversity Committee, the appointment of a Diversity Ambassador, the creation of Diversity and Inclusion Event Grants Program, and a number of Diversity Best Practices resources. All of these initiatives and resources are extremely important and have the potential to make a difference. They are not enough, however.

As I ponder the issue of diversity within the craft brewing industry, I think that the ideas of Hayagreeva Rao are instructive. Rao (his friends call him Huggy) is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford University. Rao is an expert in collective action within organizations and in markets. In 2009, Rao published a book titled Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. Rao is primarily interested in how innovations (e.g., personal computers, hybrid cars, craft beer – yes he does devote a chapter to craft beer) become a market success. Many innovations, such as craft beer, challenge the status quo. Successfully challenging the status quo requires challenging and overcoming cultural values that are often deeply entrenched within society, or a sub-group thereof. The two keys to successfully challenging the status quo are what Rao calls hot causes and cool mobilizations. According to Rao, “hot causes mobilize passions and engender new beliefs, and cool mobilization triggers new behavior while allowing new beliefs to develop.” Hot causes “inspire feelings of pride or anger“. Take the craft beer revolution as an example (which Rao does in his aforementioned book) – the hot cause was dissatisfaction with mass produced beer, while the cool mobilization were the homebrew clubs and then brewpubs and microbreweries that were established as a response. Now let’s take these two ideas and apply them to the issue of diversity (or lack thereof) in the craft brewing industry.

The hot cause is quite apparent – there is a lack of diversity within the world of craft brewing. So how do we change that? To begin with, any successful challenge to the status quo requires activists; folks who feel passionate about the cause. In the beginning, these activists are often few in number. Therefore, they have to be able to grow the movement by inspiring others to join them. Identifying a hot cause, while necessary, is an insufficient condition for change, however. Change occurs when the hot cause leads to cool mobilization. Put simply, cool mobilization is when you actually take action to bring about the change that you desire to see. Cool mobilization, as Rao notes, “requires conscious participation—indeed, participants have to ‘fill out’ the experience through their actions and experimentation.”

So with respect to increasing diversity with craft brewing, what does cool mobilization look like, and who is going to undertake it? These are important questions. When it comes to increasing diversity with craft beer, no single person or entity is (nor should they be) charged with making it happen. As I said above, the initiatives and programs started by the Brewers Association are excellent, but are insufficient. Real change is going to be grass roots and bottom-up. “Be the Change You Wish to See in the World” is a phrase we sometimes hear invoked. Erroneously attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, this maxim does, I believe, provide clues as to the way forward. What is the change we want to see? It seems astonishingly simple – we want to see more Black-owned breweries, more Black brewers, more Black brewery staff, and more Black craft beer drinkers (have I missed anything)? Now this is a blog entry (not a doctoral dissertation), so I really do not have the space to address all of these in the detail that they deserve. But take something simple, like having more Black bar staff at a craft brewery taproom. It is incumbent upon brewery owners to make this happen – they, after all, are the ones making hiring decisions. This is where the Diversity Best Practices resources available from the Brewers Association can be tremendously helpful. They provide breweries with strategies, tactics, and benchmarks for creating a more diverse and inclusive brewery staff. For example, to enhance the diversity of an applicant pool, one tactic offered by the Brewers Association is to “strategically list advertisements in locations that will increase the size and variety of your labor pool”. When it comes to creating benchmarks, the BA suggests that brewery staff should “reflect the demographic diversity of the surrounding community”. It is clear, from reviewing the Best Practices resources on the Brewers Association website, that increasing diversity within the industry will not be easy; nor will it happen overnight. It will require effort on the part of breweries. It will require them to be strategic. It will require them to be intentional. Will enough breweries be willing to step-up and do what is necessary to change the status quo? The hot cause exists. Whether it is hot enough and/or whether the necessary cool mobilization will occur, only time will tell.

Further Reading:

Rao, Hayagreeva. 2009. Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.