​Incorporating, Empowering Your Interns

The younger​​ people ​a brewery can recruit and inform​, the more the craft beer industry can succeed pointed out Cascade Lakes‘ Andy Rhine. That’s why the Oregon brewery loves working with college interns. Not just to increase its workforce for a short while, but to educate and empower a new generation of brewery workers.

The brewery has been opened for a quarter of a century yet this year was the first step into an internship program.

Hop & Sting uses students that are taking or have taken an accredited brewer’s class. Brian Burton said the Texas brewery tries to pay for the work.

“We mainly use interns on the production side brewing, packaging, and cleaning,” Burton said.

Rhine, the brewery’s Brewing Operations Manager said he gave the intern a role as a production assistant.

“He plays an integral part in packaging and transferring product,” he said. “We have involved him in safety meetings, supply chain management, logistics, and marketing.

“His positive attitude and enthusiasm for craft beer have only benefited our work culture.”

In turn, Rhine noted, their intern has learned the process and relationships of the craft beer industry’s three-tier system, strengthened communication skills, and learned what it takes to be successful in a manufacturing facility.

​Orpheus recently ​took on two interns in ​the Marketing Department​ said Alicia Fortino​.

​”​Our entire Marketing Department was a one-woman show and we wanted to grow, but we did not have the budget to hire any experienced marketers​,” she said, pointing out that each day ​they would need to put out new content on a variety of social media platforms, as well as keeping our website up to date.​

After redesigning ​the Atlanta-based brewery’s website with an online store, and adding a few new features, such as MailChimp, ​the staff realized this job was bigger than one person —​namely Fortino —​ could manage.

​”Internships are just as important for the interns as for the companies that hire them,” she said. “As an intern, you gain invaluable experience to add to your resume and to show future employers what you’re made of.”

Fortino, the brewery’s marketing and social media manager, added that as an employer, they can teach a potential future employee how things are done and gain knowledge from them about areas in our company that may have been stretched too thin.

“This gives us an inside look on how we can improve our business structure, and what we can do with a few extra helping hands,” she said.