Your brewery may have been built on passion, but sustaining that requires the development of an intentional strategy, especially when it comes to internal education to your staff. Teaching your brewery’s staff how to represent the brand accurately, how to understand each other’s roles, and how to continue to want to keep learning over time is one of the smartest investments a brewery can make in its employees.
When done right, it not only empowers your staff but it can enhance productivity, improve brand alignment, and ultimately drive business success.
According to Aaron Gore of Beer30, effective staff education not only ensures that customers receive consistent and accurate information, but these dives into education can strengthen team cohesion and create new opportunities for employee engagement and growth.
“The more we get into it, ironically, the more we get into it,” Gore said during a session at the 2025 Ohio Craft Brewers Conference. Having employees learn more about your brand’s beer and the company they work for can mean their understanding and interest will grow, which often leads to increased involvement and professional development.
“It’s also a great way of providing opportunities for your team,” Gore said, noting that while the industry lacks broad upward mobility, education can open unexpected doors, like bartenders becoming brewers or a brew team member moving into sales.
Allowing professional agility is especially important in this industry.
“There’s not an enormous amount of verticality to our hierarchies and structures,” Gore said. “Education creates those opportunities where someone might start behind the bar and end up brewing.”
But having that cross-functional movement doesn’t happen by accident; it has to stem from those in it to understand the ecosystem of a brewery.
For breweries focused on the branding of the company, education can play a critical role in shaping your message that reaches consumers from employees.
“If you’re putting someone in front of a customer and they can’t tell you what your flagship is, or who the founder of the company is, or that you’re a German-style Reinheitsgebot-only brewery, that’s a problem,” Gore said.
Employees who aren’t prepared to guide conversations may misrepresent the brand, weakening your company’s market position.
One of the foundational principles Gore stressed was meeting employees where they are in education.
“We have this terrible habit of assuming that everybody is coming in as a Master Cicerone,” said Gore, who is an Advanced Cicerone himself.
Not everyone on staff will be, or needs to be, a ’beer geek.’ Some, he said, may bring in valuable skills completely unrelated to brewing, and assuming deep beer knowledge only alienates and overwhelms new hires.
Effective onboarding, he added, should be about building a foundation tailored to each employee’s role.
“If you don’t build that foundation, it doesn’t matter what you build on top of it. It will not stand. It will not be retained,” Gore said.
Different departments require different types of knowledge. Sales teams don’t need to understand mash temperatures; front-of-house staff don’t need to memorize dry hopping schedules. What matters is equipping each employee with the specific understanding that will help them perform better in their own roles.
“Teach them about beer in ways that focus on how they’re going to, in turn, use that knowledge to do their jobs better,” Gore said.
That process should start on Day 1. Early education avoids the buildup of misinformation and gaps in knowledge. But it doesn’t stop there.
“Education has to be a continuous process,” Gore said.
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As your brewery evolves with expanding portfolios, pivoting styles, and adapting to consumer trends, ongoing education ensures that your staff stays aligned with whatever the current goals and offerings are.
The format of education matters just as much as the content. Tangible experiences, like brewing days, sensory training, or hands-on ingredient demos, all can leave a lasting impact.
“For every word you say, what people can touch is going to be so much more valuable,” Gore said.
Participatory learning not only helps with retention but also fosters a deeper connection to the product and the process. Equally important is creating a culture where employees feel safe to ask questions.
“If someone has a question and doesn’t feel comfortable asking it, it doesn’t mean they don’t still have that question,” Gore pointed out.
Be open to open dialogue that can help reveal blind spots in your company’s training and offer insights into how employees apply knowledge in real-world settings.
Encouraging curiosity and conversation turns the learning environment into a shared space of growth.
“If we can’t make learning about beer fun, we have a problem,” Gore said.
Retention is tied to enjoyment, he said, and when education is dull, it becomes a chore. When it’s engaging, it becomes part of the culture.
That doesn’t mean training should lack structure.
“We treat this industry a little too much like a hobby,” he noted. “It should be a job, though — not just a hobby — and that means our training needs to be as well.”
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