How Creature Comforts Brewing Co. Stays Value Driven As Their Footprint Grows

Creature Comforts is a certified B-Corp craft brewery based in Athens, Georgia with a social purpose rooted in fostering human connection.

Founded in 2014, in recent years the company has expanded significantly in the Southeastern United States and will soon open a brewery and coffee shop in Los Angeles, CA. Throughout its growth, it has prioritized maintaining its values.

While many companies struggle with mission drift as they grow, I wanted to learn more about how Creature Comforts is keeping values ​​and purpose front and center as it has scaled. My recent discussion with Fenwick Broyard, VP of Culture at Creature Comforts Brewing Co. offers a range of insights into how businesses can address this challenge.

Christopher Marquis: What are the values ​​of Creature Comforts Brewing Co. and why was it important to outline them from the beginning?

Fenwick Broyard: In all honesty, we didn’t really have our values ​​mapped out from the start. We had some pillars on which we built our business, such as quality, professionalism, community, balance and creativity, but our values ​​weren’t articulated until three years later; and, once they did, it was equal parts aspiration and discovery.

We see our values ​​as the answer to the “how” question for our purpose and mission. We achieve our purpose of “fostering human connection” by staying true to our mission to “be a force for good by developing industry-leading beverages and experiences.” Our way of staying on mission is by adhering to the values ​​developed by a cross-functional Board group, as well as the associated behavioral expectations outlined in our Code of Conduct. Specifically, the values ​​we have set ourselves at Creature Comforts are:

• Desire curiosity: A curious mind leads to a better life.
• Moderation is important: In life as in beer, balance is best.
• Be for people: Be inclusive. Defender of equity. Extend respect.
• Extend Kindness: It starts with trust. No gossip. Give grace
• Do it better: Whether it’s your job or your community, make it better. The best idea wins.
• Leave a legacy: Set your successors up for success.

Marquis: Creature Comforts is based in a small town in Georgia, but has seen growth in distribution in the Southeast and is now opening in Los Angeles. How did you maintain your values ​​during the climb?

Broyard: I think it’s been an area of ​​opportunity for us. We experienced almost meteoric growth early on, adding almost 20 employees a year for the first six years. In fact, I would say that in a way the market took us out “on skis”… and then there was the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I’d say we were doing a good job of maintaining our values, precisely because they were derived from what our staff loved most about our product, which was that it “fosters human connection.” We built a culture around having difficult conversations face-to-face and over a beer; and then, against all our instincts and desires, we had to close our offices and promote social distancing while trying to “foster human connection” virtually. Along with every other company, we’ve struggled to recreate the organic connections that innovation and teamwork depend on; however, with the opening of our first headquarters in a few weeks, I’m sure we’ll be able to recapture our cultural magic. We are at a unique moment in our company’s history where the best we can do is return to our purpose and use it as the North Star by which we navigate the treacherous journey of climbing.

Marquis: What made Creature Comforts pursue B Corp certification? How has this affected your day-to-day life?

Broyard: We like to joke to ourselves that the B-Corp certification came to us, because it was through observing a member of the University of Georgia Business School that we even learned about the certification. We were contacted by a program director at UGA’s Terry College of Business, who gave us a book on the subject, along with his claim that (in his estimation) “we were already a B Corp.” And even though we had never even heard of a B Corp before we received this recommendation, our CEO and then Community Manager agreed that it would be worth getting certified.

We specifically sought B-Corp certification to impact our day-to-day operations, as the B Impact Assessment has served us as a repository of best practices across the five impact areas. We’ve mined several ideas and written dozens of policies, based on an ongoing commitment to evaluation, led by our current Community Manager and self-proclaimed “resident B-Keeper,” Ally Hellenga. Finally, in addition to program and policy ideas, we have also used evaluation to set goals by establishing certification points as targets for our internal and external efforts. We’re excited to showcase all of this with the release of our first impact report, released to celebrate annual B Corp Month.

Marquis: How is sustainability prioritized in your brewing process? How do you balance making a great product while mitigating waste?

Broyard: As we have done in the other five areas of the B impact assessment, we have set ourselves aggressive sustainability goals. In fact, our current company-wide sustainability KPI is to reduce our carbon emissions by 2023 to the equivalent of what they were in 2020… when we produce 30,000 fewer barrels of beer than we are ready to to produce this year.

We also recently achieved TRUE Silver Level certification for our zero waste efforts in our production facilities, with a 99.8% diversion rate. Achieving this requires us to commit to identifying efficiencies at every step of the brewing and packaging processes, as well as across our fleets and transport, and everywhere else we consume energy. Keeping track of all of this is the job of our full-time Sustainability Manager, Jacob Yarbrough, who literally teaches us all something new every day. But ultimately, I have to say that our commitment to sustainability is really the result of the heart of our co-founder Adam Beauchamp, for whom sustainability is as high a priority as quality and safety in the production of our product.

Marquis: Creature Comforts has several employee-led impact programs. How do you foster a company culture that prioritizes community involvement?

Broyard: As important as it is to take advantage of our resources as a organizationit’s just as critical to motivating ours people to engage with their community, becoming not just residents, but citizens. To this end, in 2022 we introduced an employee volunteering program with the aim of facilitating service, creating accessible and meaningful touchpoints for all employees throughout the year. We assembled a cross-functional team of Community Impact Ambassadors to help identify service opportunities that their teams might be excited about and that fit their respective work rhythms; Again, our goal is to make our community as simple and accessible as possible for all creature comforts. employee as possible. We also created and launched in 2021 the eudaimonia award, to annually recognize the employee who best exemplifies our commitment to improving our community. In 2022 alone, 73 individual employees (55% of the company) served a total of 1,785 hours or more, serving a total of 87 beneficiaries, a combination of non-profits, inquiries corporate and long-term tutoring. And, in 2023, we hope to do even better, having set as our community KPI increasing the percentage of creatures served in a given year from 55% to 75%.

Marquès: What makes a brewery a great vessel for positive social impact?

Broyard: According to historian Stephen Mansfield, corporate citizenship was born in a brewery. In his 2009 book, The Quest for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer That Changed the World, Mansfield set out to discover who was the first company on record to take seriously the call to serve. And this search took him to 18th century Dublin, at the gate of St. James and the Guinness.

Anyone who reads Mansfield’s account seriously will conclude that Guinness was first business to add strategic value to your community. We believe that craft breweries are ideally positioned to continue this legacy, both because of the potential for gathering our product and spaces and because of the collaborative spirit in which our industry operates. And, because it’s largely place-based, craft beer has the opportunity to take deep roots in the community. And, our belief is that because we will be a force no matter what, we can also be a force for good.