Wednesday, 19 Jun 2002

OLYMPIA, Wash.

The rain has returned, but that is probably a good thing under the circumstances. By the looks of my schedule, my work day is going to be gloomy as well. We are bottling today, and I need to take my position on the bottling line soon. Although bottling will consume the vast majority of my time today, there will no doubt be any number of planned diversions and unexpected interruptions.

While Marty and the brewing staff prepare the bottling line for action, I take the opportunity to check my email and phone messages. The key to having a successful day is to minimize the surprises. Fortunately for me, the only new issue which arises from my messages is a request for free beer. We give away a lot of free beer here at Fish Brewing. The primary recipients are nonprofit organizations doing environmental work, especially those associated with water resources. In any given week, I might donate a few cases to the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, or any number of local watershed protection groups holding a weekend cleanup. For the most part, the beer we donate is consumed by the happy volunteers of these worthy organizations. In other cases, they will offer our beer as an auction item in their annual fundraising activities.

Thank goodness it is legal in Washington State to give free beer to qualified nonprofit organizations. For a company such as ours, this is the ideal form of marketing, involving no direct cash expenditure. Effectively, we are placing Organic Fish Tale Ales into the hands of our core demographic group — and receiving their grateful appreciation in the process. Everybody wins in this situation, and I am certain that over the years we have gained many loyal Fish Tale followers through these donations.

At 10 a.m., the bottling line is ready to go and I am at my position. I work a float position on the back end of the line, alternating between watching the drop-packer, pushing cases through the taper, and stacking finished cases on a pallet. This is an old technology, but if handled with the right balance of force and love, we should be able to turn out 1,500 to 2,000 cases today. Each major piece of equipment on the line has a person operating it and a good luck icon mounted on it. The bottle-filler is operated by Jeff, who is protected by a Kenny doll from South Park. Marty is at the labeler, where a small image of Buddha looks over his shoulder. I work at the end of the line assisted by Sarah and Bill, not to mention an African fertility goddess and Sponge Bob Square Pants. I can assure you that bottling is wholly unpleasant. It is fast, loud, monotonous, and dangerous all at the same time. We need all the protection and good juju we can get from the powers that be.

At 11:30, one of those little unexpected interruptions arrives. Ron the tap handle man is making a delivery and hopes to get paid. Although his arrival today was unexpected, Ron is almost always a welcome diversion. Ron is a wood-carver and all around artistic type who leads a pretty colorful life. He is one of those people who makes Olympia a better place to live. I met him 10 years ago at the Olympia Farmer’s Market where he occasionally has a table. For as long as we have been in business, Ron has carved our tap handles. He carves a beautiful 10 inch salmon tap handle out of Alder. They are perfect for us and we have received a lot of recognition for them over the years. The problem is that these handles are almost too nice. People like to collect them. Bar owners, distributors, beer drinkers, fishers — you name the group and I am sure that they are stealing my tap handles to adorn their garages and basements.

Consequently, we never seem to have enough tap handles. Our distributors are always calling up to ask for two dozen more handles on the next truck. I know through years of experience that Ron is making the tap handles as fast as he can, which is never fast enough. Our distributors and even some people at Fish Brewing frequently suggest that maybe it is time we went to a professional tap making company in order to assure a more regular supply. But I just can’t see putting Ron out of work. His handles have been the symbol of our draft beer for years. He is a local entrepreneur (loosely defined) and he will rush orders in return for low-fill beer bottles that get rejected on the bottling line. I believe that if we take this job away from Ron, we will lose a little bit of our soul.

Back to the bottling line, but at 3:30, another diversion shows up in the form of Ken Desmarets. Ken is the hardest-working beer salesman I know and we are lucky to have him. With that said, I always anticipate his arrival with some trepidation. When Ken arrives it means we need to get his truck filled and help him on his way as quickly as possible. Unfortunately we almost never have all the beer that Ken is hoping to deliver. This makes Ken angry.

The problem is that we are victims of our own success. Since converting most of our brands to certified organic, we have not been able to keep up with demand. In response, we have raised our prices and cut back on the territory we are delivering to, all in an effort to dampen demand. In April, we decided to pull out of California all together. We just did not have enough beer for all of the distributors we were working with. Fortunately, our pro-environmental strategy helps in decisions such as this. If we need to reduce the number of distributors carrying our products, we simply begin by eliminating those at the furthest distance — that is, those which need the most fuel to get the beer to market.

Personally, I love this situation. It is always best to sell a fragile product such as beer as close to home as possible. If we can sell all of our beer in the Pacific Northwest, so much the better. We even market our beer as “Brewed in the Republic of Cascadia,” which we print on every package. Beer is best consumed fresh. The further it is shipped, the less fresh it becomes. We did not invent the concept of “thinking globally and drinking locally,” but we do try to live by it, and the logic is difficult to deny.

Despite our efforts to reduce the brand’s geographic territory, the summer is upon us and we are definitely low on product. Ken knows the pressure we are under to keep up with demand when the weather turns warm, but he is unsympathetic. Ken is a beer salesman in the best tradition. He has a strong ethic of customer service and he hates to see a shelf or glass go unfilled for lack of product. All I can do is to encourage him to sell more draft beer and less packaged beer. We make a much better profit margin on draft beer –and it doesn’t necessitate my having to work on the bottling line.