ProBrewer Expert Topic • Volume 2024, Issue 5
Continuing Education in the Beverage Industry
Advancing your skills and knowledge for growth and advancement in the alcohol beverage industry
supported in part by Siebel Institute of Technology
Editor's Introduction to Continuing Education in the Beverage Industry
This month’s ProBrewer takes a deep dive into Learning and Development for those in the alcohol beverage industry.
Learning and Development will help guide you in furthering your education and knowledge for advancement and growth within the industry. And for those who are looking to enter the alcohol beverage industry, this section will provide you with the techniques and strategy to help you find the ideal job.
This month we feature a wide range of articles, including scholarship programs such as the ongoing Falconer Foundation and the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling scholarship programs. There are also articles on how to improve your skills such as through the Cicerone Certificate Program or online courses.
For owners and management, we have a wide variety of resources to help you elevate your staff such as how to Create or Improve Your In-house Tasting Program for Employees, Developing a Successful Mentorship Program for your employees, articles on Staff Retention, the Advantages to Offering Your Employees a Sabbatical and much more.
And don’t forget to check in to the ProBrewer Classifieds Help Wanted/For Hire, the most active and comprehensive job board in the industry.
Featured Articles in Continuing Education in the Beverage Industry
Cicerone Certification Program Offers New Course on Selling Beer to Retailers
The Cicerone Certification Program is offering a new online course designed specifically for brewery and wholesaler sales teams and will emphasize how to become a trusted advisor to retailers by promoting the beer category and improve profitability. (more...)
Mental Health: How to Take Better Care of Your Employee
The beer industry has been slow to recognize the challenges to employee mental health posed by its unique set of characteristics. Any job can be stressful, but mix in long hours in industrial work spaces and routine and frequent access to alcohol and it is easy to see how mental health and substance use issues can arise. (more...)
How To Create Or Improve Your In-house Tasting Panel
Creating an active, engaged in-house tasting and sensory program should be top of mind for brewers of every size. You spend so much time planning, brewing, cleaning, and often just trying to survive, outsourcing the beer sensory element of your business to consumers in your taproom or even machine or lab testing can be tempting. While there is great value in using lab work or your frontline tasters as part of your overall mechanism for ensuring product quality, it remains crucial to have a diverse array of brewery employees routinely taste and assess the quality and consistency of the beers that you produce. Let’s take a look at some key points in creating a tasting and sensory program. (more...)
Developing a Successful Mentorship Program for Employees
The American craft beer industry likes to talk about being small and independent and removed from big business culture. Living in the realm of small business it cultivates a scrappy and local image that resonates with a lot of consumers. (more...)
Staff Retention – How to Keep Employees for the Long Haul
Small companies will put a lot of work into hiring employees. The successful businesses will spend time researching the marketplace to come up with competitive wage and benefits to attract the best candidates. (more...)
Extended Time Off – Offering Brewery Employees a Sabbatical
The human condition is designed for wandering and exploration. To expand the mind, horizons, and to collect experiences as we hurdle through life. We are also the only species that pays to live on the planet and as such need employment to keep us stocked with basic necessities and shelter. At times the desires and needs can be in conflict. (more...)
What to Consider in Starting a Brewery Career
Every beer drinker has been there at least once. It’s a great day at the local taproom. Pints are flowing and everything just tastes great. A sense of desire creeps up and the entrepreneurial spirit rises. The idea to open a brewery of your own, or at least work at one, is born. (more...)
How to Maximize Your Employee’s Craft Brewers Conference Experience
Business trips are not as common in the beer industry as other industries, so as the annual Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America approaches next month breweries that are sending employees to Minneapolis should take the time to implement company policies and expectations to make sure the conference is a professional success as well as a bit of fun. (more...)
How To Go Pro in the Beer Biz (Blast from the past Article)
By Teri Fahrendorf
© Teri Fahrendort, reprinted with permission of author (more...)