The annual Craft Brewers Conference returns April 20–22 in Philadelphia, bringing together thousands of brewery professionals like yourself looking for practical strategies to strengthen their operations, marketing, and leadership. With a packed educational schedule, it can be difficult to decide which sessions deserve a spot on your calendar. Here are five seminars that stand out for their relevance to today’s challenges facing breweries, along with why they’re worth attending and who on your team would benefit most.
This lineup offers something for every department inside a brewery. Whether the goal is improving leadership skills, refining marketing strategies, strengthening financial literacy, or brewing more stable beer, these five seminars promise insights that attendees can bring directly back to their teams.
Inspiring Professional Acceleration (IPA)
- Tuesday, April 21 | 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
- Grand Hall Stage
Speakers Joseph Isaac (Third Window), Jill Olesh (Pizza Port), Bailey Borzecki (Golden Hour Consulting), Amber Otteni (Dogfish Head), and Julie Tridente (Precarious Beer Project) will explore how leadership skills become essential as breweries grow and teams expand. Facilitated by a leadership development expert with 15 years of experience, the session focuses on the transition from technical brewing roles to leadership positions and the realities of moving from peer to manager.
Panelists will share personal experiences about developing coaching skills, improving communication, and empowering team members through delegation and accountability.
“I hope attendees walk away realizing that while technical skills may get you into brewing, leadership skills are what help you grow within a brewery and help the brewery grow around you,” Tridente said. “As teams expand, success becomes less about doing everything yourself and more about how effectively you support, communicate with, and develop the people around you.
“As a panel we’ll share real experiences about the transition to manager, the challenges that come with that shift, and how delegation and team empowerment can strengthen both brewery operations and workplace culture. Our goal is for attendees to leave with practical ideas they can apply immediately.”
Isaac said his specific section of the seminar addresses some of the common challenges for managers in a brewery context, including the shift from being a peer to becoming a manager, being caught between ownership’s goals and your team’s needs, and how to persevere with optimism and hope.
“We’re all really hopeful that by inspiring professional acceleration in the seminar’s attendees,” Isaac said,”they’ll be able to go back to their breweries with a renewed vigor for creating a positive impact on their teams, ultimately contributing to brewing better beers as well.”
The biggest reason to attend, they say, is to better understand how leadership development directly impacts operational success and team culture. This session is especially valuable for head brewers, production managers, and emerging leaders who are beginning to supervise teams.
Crafting Better Content: Photography and Video for Craft Beer
- Wednesday, April 22 | 10:15–11:15 a.m.
- Room 204-B
Strong visual content is a critical part of modern brewery marketing, and this seminar focuses on practical ways to improve photography and video without requiring a major budget. Nick Bridges (Boxing Bear), Allison Duffus (La Cumbre Brewing), and Natasha Souther (formerly with Bosque Brewing) will walk attendees through approachable techniques that can elevate beer imagery and storytelling. Topics include lighting, composition, color theory, and building simple sets or props that make product photography stand out. The panel will also discuss how breweries can create a sustainable content plan that highlights key releases and seasonal campaigns while integrating short-form video to increase digital reach.
“Our seminar will focus on giving breweries a practical, achievable approach to creating content within real-world time, staffing, and budget constraints,” Duffus said. “We’ll outline and walk through the full process; from planning and defining your brand identity to shooting and sharing the final content – the goal of giving attendees a repeatable framework they can scale up or down depending on their resources.
“Ultimately, we hope people leave with a clearer, more approachable way to consistently create and share content that supports their brewery’s story.”
The main takeaway for attendees will be how small improvements in visual storytelling can significantly strengthen brand connection and engagement online. Marketing managers, social media coordinators, and taproom staff responsible for digital content will find immediate value in this session.
Invested Leadership: Building P&L Literacy and Management Who Own Key Metrics in Your Taprooms
- Wednesday, April 22 | noon–1 p.m.
- Room 201-AB
Brandon Sharp, general manager of Fort George Brewery, will outline how giving managers a deeper understanding of financial metrics can transform the way they lead their teams. Instead of treating the profit-and-loss statement as an owner-only tool, Sharp said he will share methods for teaching staff how labor costs, margins, and sales performance influence the overall health of the business.
“The core idea behind the session is that most taproom and brewpub managers already make decisions that affect the P&L every single shift, but they often don’t have the context to understand how those decisions show up financially,” he told Brewer. “The goal is to change that. I want attendees to walk away with a clearer framework for building financial literacy into their manager development, not just as a one-time training moment, but as an ongoing culture of ownership.”
The session focuses on translating financial concepts into practical knowledge that managers can use in daily decision-making. Sharp will also discuss how to connect metrics like labor efficiency and sales performance to coaching opportunities while avoiding burnout among managers tasked with hitting those goals.
“Some of the highlights I’ll be covering include which metrics matter most, how to present P&L data to managers in a way that hopefully sticks, and how to connect day-to-day operational decisions to financial outcomes,” Sharp said.
Brewery owners, taproom managers, and operations leaders responsible for profitability will benefit most from this discussion.
“If managers understand how their choices affect labor cost, pour cost, and revenue, they make better decisions without feeling micromanaged,” Sharp said.
Data for Differentiation
- Wednesday, April 22 | 1-2:15 p.m.
- Room 108-B
The Brewers Association’s Staff Economist Matt Gacioch and Matt Roth of Lawson’s Finest Liquids will examine how breweries can use market data to stand out in an increasingly crowded and price-sensitive environment. The session challenges the idea that small brand differences are enough and instead argues that successful breweries “own” a clear concept or identity in the minds of consumers. Using examples from distribution-focused breweries, the presenters will explore how panel data, scan data, and depletion reports can reveal opportunities in packaging, pricing, and brand positioning.
Roth notes that breweries today have access to more data than ever, but the real advantage comes from interpreting that data in ways that reinforce a brewery’s core values and strengths.
“The brewing industry today is collecting and has access to more data than ever before,” he said. “How can we use this data as an opportunity to make informed decisions? At Lawson’s we look at data through the lens of our commitment to quality and freshness while leaning into our core values.
“From using panel data, scan data, depletions data we will discuss brand, package and pricing and how it helps us understand where our beer belongs and how we can show up in an impactful way for our drinkers and partners.”
Roth hopes attendees can walk away with some practical examples of how data can be used to help sharpen their focus, while staying true to the DNA of their brewery and use data to enhance what makes them different from other breweries. Sales managers, brand managers, and brewery executives working in distribution will gain practical insights from this session.
Stability by Design: Brewhouse Decisions That Matter
- Wednesday, April 22 | 1:15–2:15 p.m.
- Room 201-AB
John Rehm, director of brewing operations at Two Roads Brewing Company, will guide brewers through practical brewhouse decisions that influence long-term beer stability. The session focuses on the three pillars of stability — microbial, colloidal, and flavor — and how brewhouse practices can determine success or failure downstream. Rehm will demonstrate how choices involving malt selection, mash design, lautering, and kettle management affect fermentation performance, clarity, and shelf life. He will also highlight how small breweries can leverage their flexibility to prioritize quality while reducing the hidden costs associated with inconsistent beer or rework.
The key reason to attend is the opportunity to walk away with a practical “stability playbook” that improves beer quality while reducing operational inefficiencies. Head brewers, production brewers, and quality managers will find this session particularly valuable.
