The Brewers Association (BA) spent years helping to expand beer industry efforts on a local and state level, but has made another move to further lean into a national lobbying role.
After laying off multiple employees in late April and again June 25, the BA announced July 6 it had hired Marc Sorini, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer, as its first general counsel. Sorini had advised the BA as outside counsel for two decades, most recently in his employment at law firm McDermott Will & Emery, according to a press release. He began working for the BA on July 1.
The hire comes soon after the BA announced it would shed salaries and reduce funding and support to state guilds. The organization also said in April its administrators would take undisclosed pay cuts. The BA’s hiring of Sorini less than a week after its most recent layoffs signals that despite staffing reductions, lobbying and advocacy at a national level remain foremost priorities for the organization.
According to BA’s stewardship report, it spent $436,669 on legal fees in 2019, mostly in payments to Sorini. The BA joined the Beer Institute in advocating for extending tax reductions for breweries via the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, which was signed into law at the end of 2019.
“For approximately the same expenditure, having Marc on staff will allow the BA to greatly increase their capacity and abilities to promote and protect small and independent brewers,” the BA told Brewbound in an email.
A salary equal to prior legal expenditures could make Sorini the BA’s highest paid employee. CEO Bob Pease earned $341,950 in compensation in 2018, plus $44,370 in “estimated other compensation from the organization and related organizations,” according to the BA’s most recent IRS filing. The amount of Pease’s 2019 compensation is not known.
These changes come at an especially difficult time for the craft beer industry and as the BA has pledged to reduce operational costs. COVID-19 continues to batter on-premise beer sales and force the cancellation of beer festivals and other events, leaving many craft brewers and state brewers guilds struggling financially.
Yet while the pandemic poses significant challenges to state guilds and BA members, the national organization has reduced staff that provided direct support. Since April, the Brewers Association’s personnel moves indicate national lobbying is at the forefront of its strategy, while cuts were made to staff who handled craft beer education, state guilds support, the BA’s editorial website (craftbeer.com), leadership of the American Homebrewers Association, and events support. The BA characterized those layoffs as necessary to “maintain the long-term viability” of the organization.
Layoffs on June 25 included long-time staff members Julia Herz, the former craft beer program director, and Acacia Coast, the state brewers guilds manager. Herz had been a fixture at beer conferences, media appearances, and industry events, and had worked for the organization for 11 years; Coast was the liaison between state- and regional-level guilds and the national organization and had worked for the BA for nine years. In April, the BA cut its staff by 25% and announced tiered pay cuts for its management team.
“[Sorini] has played a pivotal role in our work in D.C., and has been a tireless and outspoken advocate for small brewer access to market rights, from franchise law modernization and self-distribution to ensuring that brewers are able to sell at retail from their brewery premises,” Bob Pease, president and CEO of the BA, said in a statement.
The BA has said that it takes marching orders from its member breweries in terms of how their membership dues are spent. Yet certain constituencies have begun to criticize the organization’s decisions.
Last week, the leaders of more than 20 brewers guilds sent a letter to Pease and the BA’s board of directors imploring them to reinstate the state guilds manager position. The letter bemoaned a perceived lack of support from the national organization, as evidenced by the elimination of the guilds manager position and prior cuts in financial assistance to guilds via a grant program. Brewers themselves have also taken to social media in criticism of Pease’s decisions, saying he’s “become what independent beer was supposed to be against” and calling on him to retire.
The BA has in recent years faced the challenge of representing a diverse group of members whose interests don’t always align. Some small brewers have asserted the BA doesn’t prioritize their interests and have taken issue with its definition of “small and independent” breweries, which includes national conglomerates like Boston Beer Company. Alternative organizations, mostly locally organized, have sprung up over the past couple years as a result as a way to represent smaller groups of like-minded breweries.
One thing is clear amidst the grumbling: The decision the BA makes now will come to define it for years. As the guilds wrote in their letter last week: “The sentiment sowed in the guild community as a result of Acacia’s dismissal will stretch far past this crisis.”
The pandemic and its economic fallout have necessitated difficult financial decisions. The path the BA charts during a crisis—who it chooses to hire and who it chooses to lay off—will not only shape its organizational structure, but will shape how the industry perceives the BA’s very mission.
Words by Kate Bernot