THE GIST
Copenhagen-based company Mikkeller has lied about the timeline of when its leadership was aware of incidents of harassment, bullying, and pervasive misogyny at its San Diego brewery.
The company now says it knew of such problems as far back as 2017 and has acknowledged an employee culture survey conducted at its California location in May 2018 showed “alarming” workplace issues. Three weeks ago, Mikkeller leadership denied any awareness of the 2018 survey.
An internal Mikkeller letter obtained by Good Beer Hunting says the company learned of problems with workplace conditions in San Diego four years ago. The letter, sent Oct. 13, 2021, states: “In 2017 we were made aware of the culture issues related to the work environment at our brewery in San Diego.” It’s not clear what, in 2017, led to leadership’s recognition of those problems.
As recently as Oct. 28, 2021, company founder Mikkel Borg Bjergsø told Good Beer Hunting via a Mikkeller spokesperson that he “was not the point of contact for the brewery in San Diego and has no knowledge of the survey.” After the release of a 10-part podcast produced by workplace consultancy Hand & Heart that featured a former Mikkeller director discussing the survey, a Mikkeller spokesperson reversed course. Almost three weeks after Bjergsø’s original denial, the spokesperson told Good Beer Hunting on Nov. 16 that Bjergsø and Jacob Gram Alsing, Mikkeller’s former COO, did actually know about the survey in 2018. The spokesperson describes the survey as showing “a bad working environment.”
[Editor’s note: For a timeline of relevant dates, see the bottom of this story.]
WHY IT MATTERS
How and when Mikkeller’s leadership was made aware of what it has called “severe harassment and misogyny” that former employees say occurred between 2014 and 2020 at several of the company’s 23 global locations has been a key question in recent months. During a public meeting held Oct. 21, Bjergsø said that accounts of harassment shared over the summer by former employees on social media were “a big wake-up call for me,” despite evidence now showing Mikkeller HQ knew of problems years ago. The company did not formalize new safety protocols and procedures, form a safety committee, or hire external human resources for San Diego until, at the earliest, mid-2019.
Backtracking from statements made this summer, Mikkeller now asserts that leadership did try to make changes at San Diego in 2018. A Mikkeller spokesperson tells Good Beer Hunting that in 2018, when Bjergsø learned of the results of the San Diego employee survey, he acknowledged the situation was “extremely sad and alarming and needs quick action.”
The former Mikkeller San Diego director who administered the anonymous survey says otherwise. He says results were sent to Bjergsø in May or June 2018 and that no structured action plan was developed at the time.
This former director, who was the global director of supply chain for Mikkeller when he was hired in April 2018, says he conducted the survey via an online platform to gain information that could help identify operational issues at the company. The survey included both quantitative survey questions as well as open-ended questions about how to improve the work environment.
The former director, who asked that his name not be used so as not to affect his future employment prospects, says the complaints were serious but weren’t seen as such by company leadership. He says responses to the survey included comments like:
“I don’t feel safe here.”
“I don’t feel that Mikkeller cares about me as a person.”
“I feel like I’m being harassed every day.”
“I go home [from work] and cry.”
“I really wish there was more done about it. … If I was Mikkel and read some of those responses via email, the first thing I’d do would be to close my laptop, and get on a plane, and fly down to San Diego,” the former director says. “But he didn’t [come to the brewery]. And he didn’t come for more than an entire year.”
The former director asserts that the issues raised in the survey were pervasive, obvious, and deeply rooted.
“This culture issue in San Diego existed for a long time before I got there and I was very surprised Jacob and Mikkel didn’t uncover it themselves much sooner,” he says.
The former director says he copied and pasted, in full, the most severe complaints conveyed via the survey in an email to Bjergsø and Alsing, writing that: “Your number one issue is workplace culture.”
Erika Raye, Mikkeller San Diego’s quality assurance and quality control coordinator from December 2017 to February 2020, says she recalls taking the survey. Another Mikkeller employee, who asked not to be named because they are still employed at the company, also confirms receiving it, though they are not sure whether or not they filled it out.
After the survey was conducted, the former director says Alsing was prepared to fired the San Diego brewery’s general manager; that general manager instead resigned. Alsing subsequently named the director as the interim replacement, giving him authority to terminate employees. In his role as interim general manager, he says he fired five people: one for job performance issues, and four for issues related to workplace harassment, including repeated bullying and screaming at co-workers. Two of those four people were also accused of gender-based harassment.
“All of this stuff was not at the direction of Jacob [Alsing],” the former director says. “It was me saying, ‘It needs to happen,’ and him saying ‘OK, then do it.’”
In an internal company email sent in mid-August 2021, Mikkeller CEO Kenneth Madsen announced that Alsing would “step down” from the company to pursue other opportunities. The tone of the email was laudatory and celebrated Alsing’s nine-year career with the company.
“On behalf of Mikkeller, we want to thank Jacob for his relentless support,” Madsen wrote. “We wish him the very best for the future.”
How seriously Alsing and Bjergsø took employees’ complaints is critical to the ongoing reconciliation Mikkeller is attempting to forge with former employees. Mikkeller held public forums in October to address allegations, to mixed results. Most of the former San Diego employees who came forward publicly this summer to share their stories of discrimination and harassment did not attend those meetings. Now, after years of unanswered questions from employees, the company has connected with those former San Diego employees via email to try to resolve them.
But there is still a disconnect between the timeline of events now supplied by Mikkeller leadership and that of former employees. A Mikkeller spokesperson said via email on Nov. 16 that “the results of the employee survey started the change process in management and culture at Mikkeller.” Erika Raye, who says that male co-workers at Mikkeller belittled and ignored her without reproach, rejects that.
“Based on my personal experience, there was no improvement in the company culture in 2018, or even 2019 to that matter,” Raye told GBH in an email. “I had multiple issues with the same person (who to my knowledge is still employed at Mikkeller San Diego), which were brought to HR and the current GM in 2019.”
The director who administered the 2018 survey also says the problem wasn’t a lack of awareness, but a lack of concrete action.
“Jacob and Mikkel definitely cared more about, ‘When are the new fermentation tanks coming in?’ ‘How’s the capital expansion going?’” they say. “When Mikkel took on this brewery [in San Diego], I don’t think he took on the full responsibility for putting the right people in place. It took way longer than it should have.”
TIMELINE
April 2016: Mikkeller San Diego opens to the public.
2017: Per an email sent in Oct. 2021, Mikkeller HQ says it was “made aware of the culture issues related to the work environment at our brewery in San Diego.”
May 2018: Mikkeller’s former director of global supply chain conducts an online, anonymous survey of San Diego employees that finds serious problems with employee safety and well-being.
May or June 2018: The former director sends those survey results, with a note saying that, “Your number one issue is workplace culture,” to Mikkeller COO Jacob Gram Alsing and company founder Mikkel Borg Bjergsø.
Summer-fall 2018: Former director is given authority to fire five employees in San Diego; this former director also assumes the role of interim general manager of Mikkeller San Diego.
Mid-2019: The earliest point at which Mikkeller says it implemented a formal HR process for reporting harassment, bullying, and safety complaints.
July 2021: Four former Mikkeller employees, of Mikkeller San Diego and Copenhagen-based brewpub Warpigs, speak to Good Beer Hunting, alleging Mikkeller created a workplace where gender-based bullying, harassment, retaliation, and indifference to quality control and employee safety protocols went unchecked.
October 10, 2021: Dozens of breweries begin to withdraw from the Mikkeller Beer Celebration Copenhagen (MBCC) beer festival in opposition to the brewery’s response to former employees.
October 13, 2021: Bjergsø sends an internal letter to Mikkeller employees to address the MBCC controversy. In that letter, he writes: “In 2017 we were made aware of the culture issues related to the work environment at our brewery in San Diego.”
October 21 and 25, 2021: Mikkeller hosts two public meetings to address allegations against the company, —to mixed results. Most former employees who spoke to GBH did not attend.
October 28, 2021: Bjergsø says, through a company spokesperson, that he “was not the point of contact for the brewery in San Diego and has no knowledge of the [employee engagement] survey.”
November 5, 2021: The first episodes of Super Cool Toxic Workplace, a 10-part podcast series about Mikkeller, are published by workplace consultancy Hand & Heart.
November 16, 2021: A Mikkeller spokesperson tells Good Beer Hunting that Bjergsø and Alsing, Mikkeller’s former COO, did actually know about the employee engagement survey in 2018 and that its findings indicated “a bad working environment.”
Words by Kate Bernot