Join us in this engaging episode as Dave Burwick, CEO of The Boston Beer Company, dives deep into the role of resilience in steering a leading beverage company. With insightful commentary from Bob Goodwin, President of Career Club, this conversation explores how resilience influences business strategies and leadership.
Dave shares captivating stories from managing iconic brands such as Sam Adams and the innovative Truly line, highlighting how adaptive leadership and strategic thinking have been crucial in navigating market shifts and consumer trends. He also discusses the challenges of sustaining growth and fostering innovation within a competitive industry. Listen in for a rich discussion on the power of resilience in business and leadership, offering lessons that resonate well beyond the beverage industry.
Join us in this engaging episode as Dave Burwick, CEO of The Boston Beer Company, dives deep into the role of resilience in steering a leading beverage company. With insightful commentary from Bob Goodwin, President of Career Club, this conversation explores how resilience influences business strategies and leadership.
Dave shares captivating stories from managing iconic brands such as Sam Adams and the innovative Truly line, highlighting how adaptive leadership and strategic thinking have been crucial in navigating market shifts and consumer trends. He also discusses the challenges of sustaining growth and fostering innovation within a competitive industry. Listen in for a rich discussion on the power of resilience in business and leadership, offering lessons that resonate well beyond the beverage industry.
I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we begin, I just want to mention a couple things that we're doing at Career Club. If you are in job search right now, or know someone who is and who doesn't is, please check out careerclub. We are offering a free weekly coaching call every Thursday at one o'clock Eastern as our way of kind of giving back to the job seeking community. We know this is an especially hard time for folks in job search and we want to do what we can to provide high quality coaching resources to people at no cost. So again, you can register on the website at careerclub for this free weekly coaching call every thursday. And then, secondly, if you are an hr professional and looking to improve the candidate experience and build your employer brand, we would encourage you to check out our Journey Forward option as a way of driving candidate experience and again enhancing the employer brand. You can learn all about that as well at careerclub.
Bob Goodwin:So with that and the commercial over, please let me introduce today's guest. I'm really, really excited. We're very honored and pleased to have Dave Berwick, who, by the time you hear this, will be the very recently retired as of April 1st CEO of the Boston Beer Company, which are iconic brands that you know, like Sam Adams, twisted Tea and Truly Seltzer. So Dave is a visionary leader in the beverage industry, as you can tell, and with a storied career that spans across major brands like Peet's Coffee Tea, executive roles at PepsiCo I'm sure we'll talk about Mountain Dew somewhere during this. Dave brings a wealth of experience in leading companies through phases of significant growth and innovation and, again, I'm very keen to learn about some of his leadership principles in high growth companies. Under his leadership, boston Beer has embraced new challenges and trends, positioning itself as a leader in the craft beer and beyond sectors. So again, just join us as Dave shares insights into his approach to leadership and how culture and innovation drive success.
Bob Goodwin:And with that, dave Berwick welcome. Thanks very much, bob. I'm glad to be here. No, it's nice to have you when do we find you?
Bob Goodwin:today. Where are you?
Dave Burwick:Today I'm in my office in the seaport in Boston and it's actually my last day as the president and CEO of Boston Beer Company, after six years in this role, but actually 19 years associated with the company since I joined the board back in 2005. So it's been a really a wonderful long run with a great, great company, great people, and now I get to face that fork in the road again, which I'm very much looking forward to doing well, we'll unpack and explore that, but before we do anything else, congratulations.
Bob Goodwin:You have had a fantastic run there and driven amazing growth and with today being your last day there, there's a lot to celebrate and again, really appreciate you making some time for us, as is our want to do on Career Club Live. Dave, we'd just like to get to know you a little bit as a human being first before we dive into all the worky stuff. So where were you born and raised?
Dave Burwick:I was born in Worcester, massachusetts, which is about 40 miles west of Boston, and when you grow up in Worcester you call it Wista, and that's where I grew up, in Wista, and I grew up in the early in the 60s. I was an only child, so a little bit different from pretty much all my friends. My parents were divorced when I was very young, so a little bit different from most pretty much all my friends. My parents were divorced when I was very young, so I was really raised by a single mom in central Massachusetts.
Bob Goodwin:Wow, Well, I appreciate you sharing that Just side note. Then what are a couple of quick lessons that you learned from your single mom?
Dave Burwick:Yeah, I mean, you learn a lot.
Dave Burwick:And I think the first thing I'd say I learned was just how to be independent. First, as an only child, I mean, you have to learn how to kind of entertain yourself and to kind of seek your own path and to do you know to be, make a lot of decisions about what you're going to do. So I think independence, I would say, you know, with that comes some creativity, because you you're entertaining yourself and of course obviously you have friends you play with and stuff as a kid. But but the creativity piece came through, I think also, honestly, the resilience and, um, you know, and this was the time when you know people, couples really weren't getting divorced and and, um, I had no friends whose parents were divorced, who were only children, and my mom was very young when she, when she got married and she had me and so know she was a 26 year old woman with a, with a, with a son at home, who wanted to start a new life.
Dave Burwick:So it's not, it wasn't an easy environment necessarily to grow up in. I mean, I was very fortunate. We, I'd say we were probably like middle-class, upper middle-class family. We weren't. I wasn't wanting for anything, I wasn't didn't live a privileged childhood, but it wasn't unprivileged either, it was. I'd say there was definitely a safety net and I was very fortunate to have that. But at the same time you kind of have to, you know, chart your own path in that situation no-transcript.
Bob Goodwin:Wow, I appreciate you sharing that. It's interesting, dave. As you know, we work with people in job search, whether they just find us independently or through reductions in force, and what you just shared, I think, is so powerful because it humanizes you right and and it creates a narrative that for sure has informed your career, how you think about things, your drive. I love what you talked about with independence, creativity and resilience. You just told me three really important things about you that are very formative and durable about you that this is ironic.
Bob Goodwin:If I was interviewing you like, I would really gravitate to those things. It's not just sort of the X, y, z on a resume, or where'd you go to business school, kind of stuff, but it's like no, this isyz on a resume, or where'd you go to business school, kind of stuff, but it's like no, this is who defines him as a human being and it's going to take a lot to knock this guy over because he's already been through a lot and those are just really great qualities. I appreciate you sharing that stuff. I wasn't even expecting that.
Dave Burwick:That was awesome, yeah, well I think you know those formative experiences are really important. I think you only realize the benefit, like in hindsight, later on in life. You kind of realize when you look back, and I do think it's important to be reflective and self-aware and understand. And obviously as you get older you start to think about these things more and more. You think about things that happened and you wonder, you try to find meaning in them, and then it's interesting because a lot of times it all kind of comes together, somehow it clicks and you realize I get it. Now. That's that's why I am who I am and that's why I've been able to do these things. Maybe not to do those things, but it's been, um, it's been really beneficial for me. And I think I'm thinking back. I was just watching, you know, the academy awards and and, uh, you know robert downey jr, we know won for best supporting actor at Oppenheim and the first thing he said was I want to thank my awful childhood for this.
Bob Goodwin:And it actually honestly like it resonated with me.
Dave Burwick:I don't want to make it seem like his childhood was awful in different ways, but I think there's something about that that struck a chord with me because I realized that he internalized some of his experiences as a young child and as growing up and it made him stronger, it made him better and it made him more self-aware and it allowed him to be very successful and I think, for me I feel this, I feel in a way, very fortunate that I, that I had some of those, those challenges, because it made me who I am. Yeah, well, definitely embracing.
Bob Goodwin:And you know, a lot of people say well, you know, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do? And I think the wise answer is nothing, because that's made me who I am. And if that had been different, I would be a different person. And and, um, I'd like how this is all turned out, you know. So, um, there's a bunch of things we'll pick up on. Let's just kind of get through this a little bit. So, where did you go to university? Where did you go to college?
Dave Burwick:Yeah, so I went to a place called Middlebury College in Vermont which is, I think, where I lost my accent and I had a great experience in Middlebury. I played lacrosse for a couple years and then I decided my junior year that I was going to like throw it all away and go over and go away for the full year and I wound up going to University of Edinburgh for the year and had a tremendous time and I actually I was pre-med. I was on this pre-med course. My, my, I was very fortunate.
Dave Burwick:My mother's father, uh, was an MD and he had a great positive influence on my life and in a way, sort of a surrogate definitely a surrogate father is actually the best man in my wedding and I had always had that kind of impetus to go to be a doctor like him and a little bit of pressure and I got to. When I got to to to Edinburgh, I realized that there are other things I'm interested in. I love this international component. I'm interested, maybe, in business. One day I was a history major in the end, so kind of it was a decision I made that kind of led me down a different path, away from medicine, more toward business.
Bob Goodwin:And then you went to B school as well. Yes, I did so.
Dave Burwick:I worked for a few years. Four years after that I went to Harvard Business School and graduated back in 89. And that kind of led me down a different path which is more toward brand management, and then at Pepsi and then beyond.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, so let's just use that as a segue. Then, um, just like kind of give people just a little bit of a brief kind of picture of your career arc, so coming out of out of harvard where you went to pepsi next I did.
Dave Burwick:I went to pepsi. I really decided I wanted to be sort of a you know, a brand manager and, um, you know, there were a handful of companies obviously Procter Gamble and Pepsi and a few others, I guess more than a few others that really presented that opportunity for training and learning how do you build brands, what does that mean and can that lead to more of a general management path? And that's what I did. I was very fortunate I went.
Dave Burwick:It was a great era for Pepsi. I started in the summer of 89. And I started as the assistant brand manager on Diet Pepsi and then my career just went from there and I worked many different brands, many different types of roles channel marketing, field marketing. I spent a couple of years, a year in Tampa, a year in Orlando. At that time people from the headquarter marketing roles were pushed out into the field to learn how the business works and to do these field marketing roles and I think in the end that was actually really not a very glamorous job but very helpful to me in my career. So it's just a progression of brand management roles that led to eventually to more GM type roles at Pepsi and then after Pepsi, where did you go?
Dave Burwick:Yeah. So then for Pepsi I decided I needed to atone for my sins. We didn't realize we were harming people by selling sugar-laced products. I ended up going to Weight Watchers and I ran Weight Watchers North America. So my Pepsi progression was really through the brands. I was a chief marketing officer at Pepsi twice actually in North America. Then actually I went to International and was the CMO for international. Then I came back to North America, was a CMO again. I'd run the Pepsi Quaker Tropicana Gatorade in Canada. So a lot of great experiences there.
Dave Burwick:But coming out of that I knew I wanted to. You know I love brand building and marketing but I wanted to be more of a general manager and that's what Weight Watchers presented that opportunity to me. We didn't have to move our family. We had four kids all growing up in Connecticut and it was a great move at the time. And I stayed there for about three years during the Jennifer Hudson era and Charles Barkley and I thought we did some really exciting things to make that brand relevant and to grow the actually business group quite well during that time. But then I realized I really way watchers is a great company but it's also it's selling. It's really selling a learning process. It's really it's a services company and and um that that provides a lot of value to people. I really felt like for me, I wanted to sell something more concrete. I want to go back to something concrete and I ended up at Pete's.
Dave Burwick:Moving to California with our two youngest kids and my wife Carrie to to run Pete's coffee based in the Bay Area, and we did. I did that for what? Over five years, and that was a company that had just been public and been bought and taken private by a private equity company called JAB, who's a terrific company. I got to work with those folks and learned a lot from them and we took the business from about when I got there, maybe 350 million dollar business close to 900 million five years later. In that pete's coffee, I mean, there's a lot of um. You know there's coffee shops all over the west coast. There's some in chicago and dc and boston, but really the big, big part of Pete's business was selling beans through grocery stores around through the country and through what we call direct store delivery, where we roast the coffee, we put on our own trucks and deliver it to stores. We got it to stores more quickly and it's more, it's more fresh and ultimately the taste profile is is better, and so that was that was really interesting.
Dave Burwick:When I worked with private equity, I thought, thought was, it was definitely different and I learned I just learned a ton and it was you know it's, it's, there's a lot of distractions that you get working with big companies that might they're public companies and have all these these mechanisms in place to do certain things, certain ways. When you're, when you work for a private Equity company, you're trying to get growth. You're getting trying to get top line growth, bottom line growth and you don't want to. You want to reduce as much friction as you can and I think you're able to make decisions more quickly and um and kind of just go, just move, and then if you fail, you you you know, you try again, you do something else. So the peach thing was terrific.
Dave Burwick:Now, while I bet, while I had been at pepsi as the cmo, I joined the board of Boston Beer back in 2005. And at the time Boston Beer was looking at they were just you know, this was Sam Adams was growing tremendously. The craft beer business was really a renaissance for beer and they were looking for a marketer who could come in and help them with some of their stuff, because every day when they woke up the company was bigger than any company they'd ever run and they were doing things they'd never done before. So I was very fortunate to join the board of the company then and stayed on it, but probably too long and basically essentially 13 years later or so when I was running Pete's, the prior CEO had retired and was moving on and they were looking for somebody and Jim Cook is the founder. He owns 20% of the company.
Dave Burwick:It's public. He owns 20% of the company but he owns 100% of the shares, which is only kind of a deal that you would get if you were like Mark Zuckerberg or Brian Chesky right now. You wouldn't get it if you had a CPG company, but he did and so really it's Jim's decision on the CEO really solely. I mean the board helps and for Jim he really trust is so important to him and working with people and knowing them. He never really believed in the process of going outside to find a CEO because he felt like it's a 50% chance of failure and it's a much higher chance of success if you bring in somebody who's connected to the company and having been on the board for 13 years.
Dave Burwick:At that point he knew me, the board knew me, I understood the culture of the company, I understood the business. It turned out to be a really nice fit and actually a really good transition to go from the board to actually running the company. Actually, my successor here, michael Splane, is going to do the same thing. He's been on the board for eight years. Successor here, michael Splane, is going to do the same thing. He's been on the board for eight years and I think we've proven that it works pretty well and just your chances for success are so much greater. So, from just being a board member, I joined the company as CEO six years ago and just literally today, finishing up my run as a CEO.
Bob Goodwin:Well, there's so much to unpack in all this. But super quick, before we go off of this, what do we find Dave Berwick doing? And I guess we're going to find him doing a lot more of it starting tomorrow. What do you like to do when you're not at work? What are you interested in?
Dave Burwick:Yeah, you know it's funny. You know, during COVID, like a lot of people, I ended up on a Peloton and I was a runner. I'd been a runner before but I was getting to the point where my knees weren't holding up as much as I wanted. So I started on the Peloton and then, coming out of COVID, I realized you know what I want to get out on the street. So I started riding. So it's a bike. I have a road bike, I have a mountain bike, so I love to ride the bikes. I also rejuvenated my golf game, which I put on hold for like 25 years for four kids, because with kids, you know and I know you have four kids as well, bob like you can't go give a half a day every weekend to go play golf.
Dave Burwick:I mean you can, but I think it would be a very selfish thing to do. And so our kids were very active and I was very happy to kind of let their lives come do. And so our kids were very, very active and I was very happy to kind of let their their lives come first. And we put golf on the sideline. And then part of the deal when we moved back to Boston six years ago from Cal, from pizza in California, was commit to like you know, we're empty nesters at that point commit to playing golf. And I got my wife convinced that she would do it and now she plays more, she plays more golf than I do and um, and she's and she's become actually quite good. So I think golf is something as well we like to do. We um, we love dogs. We have, we had, we had two goldens as of last week. Now unfortunately we only have one golden um, but we love to do, we love to do stuff you know, outside with the dog. So it's that's kind of what we like to, not that complicated um and um, but it's something to try to stay active.
Dave Burwick:And you know, I read, obviously read a lot of different things and watch a little HBO, a little sports, boston sports, of course, what else, you know? Which is kind of a dark era right now for Boston sports, except for the Celtics. But maybe the Bruins are going to be okay, but not the Red Sox or the Patriots, that's for sure. But it's. It's kind of fun because I've lived outside of my, my native state for almost 30 years, so it's interesting to be like a Red Sox fan living in California. It's just not the same as when you come back in and you just get, you have all the camaraderie of everybody commiserating with you at the same time. It's been kind of interesting and fun that's fun good for you.
Bob Goodwin:I suppose you'll be uh getting a lot more uh game time in.
Dave Burwick:And I have to ask favorite, golf course uh, well, I would say that's a good question. I would say, like you know, pebble is kind of a nice place to play, so I think I like, I like that one a lot. That's probably my favorite course. There you go.
Bob Goodwin:And aspirational course, something that you haven't played, but you want to play. Well, I'd love to go.
Dave Burwick:Obviously, like everyone, I'd love to go to St Andrews. I lived in Scotland for a year, but I was a student. I wasn't running around my golf clubs, so I'd love to go back and play there. That's on my wish list, right now it sounds pretty awesome.
Bob Goodwin:All right, let's get into this. So I really appreciate what you were sharing about growing up and some of the things that you took away from that experience and that took away but integrated, you know, based on that. Um, the first thing that because you've been in this general manager role, ceo role, public company, you know what are, what are the leadership qualities or values that you think best, best describe your leadership style.
Dave Burwick:I'd say and this probably is rooted more sort of in my childhood too, I think one. I mean, I'm curious, like I just like I'd like to, I like to learn things and I always I'm very interested in constantly learning and I think that's really important because the world, particularly when you're in the consumer world, consumers are changing all the time and the marketplace is changing. You have to keep learning and the marketplace is changing. You have to keep learning and adapting as you go. But I'm just generally curious about things. I'd say, aside from the desire to learn, I'm pretty hardworking because I think I had to. One thing I had learned early is that you have to only rely on yourself to get to do things honestly. And if people come in and help you, if you have mentors like I said that my grandfather was wonderful to me that's that's you know all the better. You know that's gravy, but I've learned to become just self-reliant and hard-working, know that if you don't do it, it doesn't get done. So I think that's important. I think even, like at this company we're a little over $2 billion company, but I'm you know, I get involved in the. You know, in doing things I'm not just directing people, because sometimes there's no one else to do it, you got to do it. So I think that's, I think that's really that's that's important.
Dave Burwick:I think also I'd say connecting, connecting to people, I mean it's a very human thing. Businesses are right. I mean mean you don't get stuff done without you know working with and through people. And if you you have to know how to connect to people, you have to understand how to be empathetic, you have to be present and let people want to listen and truly listen to people. And I like doing that. I do because I think, again, like as a child I was looking for people to connect to, right, I I needed those connections so you learn, how do you have a conversation, how do you ask about, learn about people's personal lives that they're willing to share? That I think could be really important to understand them.
Dave Burwick:So I think showing the empathy and showing a willingness to connect, I think is really important and I think at the end, ideally, hopefully, you come out as sort of being perceived as real or authentic, um, and and humble and calling yourself humble is probably a risk right there because that, I think humility is really important, because I think, if you have to take the credit.
Dave Burwick:If you, if you think you have all the answers, then you're never going to get to the right place. And I think iq you know iq is important in life. Yeah, it is, but at some point it tops out pretty quickly and I think, uh, you know emotional intelligence, situational intelligence understand, how do you, how do you, how do you get stuff done with and through people and actually, at the same time, make them feel excited and motivated to do it again and and demonstrate to them that your help, that they're learning and they're growing as well. That's really important. So I think some of those skills I talked about are really again, and demonstrate to them that they're learning and they're growing as well. That's really important. So I think some of those skills I talked about are really essential to being successful in business.
Bob Goodwin:Maybe a comment and then a question. So I think curiosity and humility go together right, because curiosity says I don't know everything, which is a demonstration of some humility. Like I don't know everything, which is a demonstration of some humility, like I don't have it all figured out. And when you've got your Harvard Business School MBA, ceo, cmo of big companies that people have heard of the brands, know the brands, you can see somebody getting to a level of self-satisfaction kind of easily. You can see somebody getting to a level of self-satisfaction kind of easily. Have some of those values evolved over time, like you've learned some of these things, or has more of this been innate and this has kind of been, dave, all along.
Dave Burwick:That's a good question, I think.
Dave Burwick:I guess when I look back I think that I've always been that way.
Dave Burwick:I think, look, I do believe people change, I think people should always seek to change and get better, but I think your fundamental core, kind of, is your fundamental core.
Dave Burwick:I think over time maybe I've become more comfortable with who I am and more knowledgeable about who I am and more confident and sort of just you know acting that way and demonstrating that and kind of following my instincts and just being you know, being who I am, and I think so you're, I think, but I'm not sure that I mean I think you learn a lot over the, obviously over the course of time, but you learn through failure. You learn through a little bit through success, by more through failure, and you work your experiences so you adapt and maybe you become, you have better judgment, you refine your instincts, you kind of have pattern recognition. So you've seen things happen before you kind of, and you can almost predict if you're lucky sometimes you can predict what's coming up around the corner. But I think who you are as a human, you know you're, I don't know. I mean, I don't think I've changed much. I just don't think I maybe knew what my strengths were until later, until until later in my career.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, and we do have to be reflective of those things. I don't and sometimes that's with the benefit of hindsight too is like back to pattern recognition, being able to see hey, I think actually the reason I was successful is because of these qualities maybe not what I thought in the moment. I mentioned in the introduction, you've been involved and you sort of touched on some of these during kind of your career background. You've been involved in some very high growth businesses. I think you were, you know, kind of launched the Mountain Dew rocket ship and then you talked about Pete's and you talked about Weight Watchers and then obviously, sam Adams and Boston Beer have done very, very well, truly just like exploded. We first crossed paths when I was leading the Wall Street business at Numerator and getting our data in the hands of the sell-side folks and watching truly just like go insane. What's in your DNA that's allowed you to identify these things? One and then two, how you lead through rapid change and rapid growth.
Dave Burwick:I would start by saying this was a quote. I remember the Steve Reinemann, who's a former chairman of PepsiCo, something he said one time. He basically said growth is like oxygen and it is, and that's it's oxygen that fuels both your personal growth as a as an individual, your professional growth as a leader, and so that always stuck with me, that there's something you know the more oxygen in the room, the better, and so that always stuck with me that there's something you know the more oxygen in the room, the better. And so I think, and again I think, growing up at Pepsi, that's what it was always about. It was always about growth and we're always pushing to grow more. So I think that's kind of in my over 20 years of Pepsi became part of my DNA was this desire and the striving for growth.
Dave Burwick:I think the way you get there really is understanding the consumer. It starts with a consumer. So you can when you run a business, you can. You it's much easier to cut costs. You know cause. You control that. So you can. You can find different ways to cut costs or reduce expenses, but you cannot force a consumer in the case of obviously consumer based business to buy your product. You can't do that, it's much harder. So I think the more you can understand the consumer, what they're looking for, how they relate to brands and really, actually, it's really about connecting the dots. How do you connect the dots between the consumer, the culture that they live in and your brand? And when you find a way to connect those dots like, for mountain dew is a good example, is a good um story, because we did that with mountain dew at a time when really it was a brand that was that was marketed to gen xers.
Dave Burwick:That generation has been forgotten and and really around the culture of action sports you know base jumping, street lugeing, you know bmx bike and all that stuff was just coming to the fore through ESPN and it started as the Extreme Games and became the X Games and we were able to find a way to connect the brand, which then the brand itself, the product itself of Mountain Dew, is low carbonation, so the least amount of carbonation of any soft drink, so you can drink it fast, it's very refreshing, it's got a little more sugar, a little more caffeine, and we always said that Mountain Dew, for example, the product, was like exhilaration in a bottle, right? So then how do you take that exhilaration, the product basis for exhilaration, and demonstrate that through the emotive aspects of the brand, the advertising and the brand positioning, and that we used Action sports, extreme sports, whatever you want to call them, to kind of really bring that to life. And that was certainly a cultural touchstone at the time for a whole generation. So that's an example where you connected the brand, the product, the consumer, the culture, and when that all comes together where people don't even have to think about it, they don't even have to think about it.
Dave Burwick:You don't. You know they don't see the, they don't see the, uh, the strings. You know you're kind of, you're just, you're just, you're putting something out there that they can easily understand and gravitate toward. That's when you get to. That's when you get to hyper growth, that's when you get to create something. That's when you get lightning in the bottle. It's obviously very, very hard to do that. It also requires you know luck and timing and other things, but that's, you know, that's, that's what that's, that's what growth is all about and I think that's you know what I've spent my whole career trying to figure out. How do you, how do you keep, how do you create lightning in a bottle. How do you draw those connections between the consumer, the culture and the brand?
Bob Goodwin:Would you I don't know, would you can have considered Weight Watchers Pete's?
Dave Burwick:Mountain Dew, any of the brands that you've been on turnarounds when you got there, or stagnant.
Dave Burwick:Yeah, I think Dew was growing, like you know, mid-single digits we got into like mid-teens to, you know, up into the 20s, so it was fundamentally healthy. I think um wave watchers is very cyclical and they're you. You either you hit it or you don't. I think with jennifer hudson, um, using her as a spokesperson and her incredible story was um and I wasn't the one that actually chose her. They chose her right before I got there. But I was very involved in the actual brand campaign, the communications. I think to sign her was genius. I think that did turn that business around in a big way because she was so aspirational and so authentic at the same time to consumers and inspirational. That was a good one.
Dave Burwick:I think Pete's was um peach was always doing pretty well, but I think we kind of we kind of we dialed it up and we at pete's part of the strategy too there for a company was we have this brand. This is actually boomer brand, pete's coffee. It's a tremendous coffee brand, super high quality, um, you know, I think so the best coffee that's sourced and roasted by hand and and it's this northern california kind of kind of jewel. I think we was a little bit of a sleepy brand where the aspirations weren't that large. It was like which was going to make a coffee and we'll sell it, and whatever happens happens, and and I think we saw an opportunity to like to drive harder, harder against that, that brand, but also to recognize that there are certain consumers, primarily younger consumers, that wanted their, they wanted their own brands, and so we went out and actually we had an M&A strategy.
Dave Burwick:We bought Stumptown Coffee, which was based in Portland, oregon. We bought Intelligentsia Coffee out of Chicago, and they were younger, like the hipper brands, if you will. So at Peets we tried to build out a portfolio where we could deliver coffee to different consumer segments and not try to take a brand and make it be for everybody. And so that was the growth story of Pete's and that's how we kind of accelerated the growth. There's more, I guess, a corporate story of how do you build a broader portfolio of brands to take advantage of a marketplace coffee that's just taking off and continues to do quite well.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, no, that all makes a lot of sense. And then do you find that the leadership that you needed to provide in the teams that you needed to build looked different, behaved differently than maybe some other teams that you had, you know, maybe exposure to. But because you were in this hyper growth mode several times, you just needed different kinds of players.
Dave Burwick:Yeah, Well, I think people have different risk profiles for sure. So I think, for example, at Pepsi, people had a very high risk profile. They were taught to take risks. This was Roger Rico's legacy was risk taking, and I think that's not the norm and I think part of it was you have people who are much more managing the downside, and I think you want your CFO to manage the downside. You want your head of supply chain to manage the downside. You don't want your head of marketing to manage the downside. I'd rather have. I mean, I want our CMO to scare the life out of me with his or her ideas. That's the role of the CMO, I think, is to do that and to push the envelope and then let somebody else kind of push back and say, okay, maybe not all of this, but yes, this and this. I think I never.
Dave Burwick:But when I move from company to company so from Pepsi to Weight Watchers to Pete's to Boston Beer, there's only two people that whole time that I work with in my past at Pepsi that I actually hire Because I didn't want to be that person that brings their entourage with them. First of all, I think it sets the wrong tone. I think it can be intimidating to other people. It sort of presumes that there's only one way to do things. For me, I really enjoy the challenge of working with a different leadership team with different backgrounds, different skill sets, different approaches, because I could learn from them, too Selfishly. I could learn from them and I also felt like it. Just every business is different. It needs a different outlook.
Dave Burwick:Now, when people you know, when you have the wrong fit, then you got to. You know, then you make, you have to make changes and it's never pleasant, but of course that happens over time because if you, if it wasn wasn't happening, then you probably were just accepting, you know, a situation that you shouldn't accept. So a little bit of that. But I wasn't the person that came in and like shook up teams. I was pretty thoughtful and considerate. I wasn't the person that brought you know my, you know my posse with me. That's not me.
Dave Burwick:Actually, one of the two people happened to be um, became our becameMO at Pete's and was just worked right down the street at Palm Organics and was looking to move on. It actually came to me and he's actually a terrific, terrifically talented person. He came to me. I didn't seek him out, so really the one person now, actually our head of corporate communications at Boston Beer, a guy named David Chico I work with at Pepsi and I actually sought him out. He's the only one and I think I'm really glad I did. He's terrific. But I also feel like you know what? Like respect the culture, respect the people in the leadership team and find a way to do it differently, because usually that's going to be better.
Bob Goodwin:Well, that kind of ties back to your learning mentality and a little bit of humility, and I don't have it all figured out and maybe I can learn something from these people here as well. So that's brilliant. Talking about branding, I love how you just sort of painted the picture of you know what's the essence of the brand, what's the consumer want and what's the cultural context brand what's the consumer want and what's the cultural context. If I followed your format there, how do you see the brand as it's being portrayed externally?
Dave Burwick:also being communicated and lived out internally. Yeah, I think great brands transmit their values to the people that work on the team and even to the company. So I think it's helpful when people can identify with the values. It doesn't mean you have to be the consumer target yourself, because I think great marketers should be able to market to anybody, across all demographics. But I think if you want to be able to identify with those values, I think if you look at Boston Beer I mean right now Boston Beer about 85% of the business of Boston Beer, of that $2.1 billion in revenue, 85% of the revenue is not beer. So it's Twisted Tea, it's Truly Hard Seltzer, it's Angry Orchard Cider. We have Dogfish Head Canned Cocktails. Only 15% is beer. It's either Sam adams or or dogfish dogfish beer, but sam adams still like sam adams.
Dave Burwick:Boston lager, even though it's a very small part of our business, is still kind of represents sort of the, the uh, the dna of the of the company.
Dave Burwick:It's all about, um, the pursuit of the pursuit of better beer. The it's all about the pursuit of better beer, the pursuit of excellence. Always the pursuit of better is really what it's about and it's a high quality product that's very thoughtfully made, no corners, cut the best ingredients. That's really that is celebrated and we celebrate the drinkers of Boston Lager as well and I think that pride that goes into making Boston Lager which, by the way, making lagers is the hardest style to make you can't cover it up with a lot of hops and cover over mistakes in brewing it comes through to the drinker and that's sort of become sort of the North Star for the company, even though it's not really a material part of the business anymore. So I think and people come here because they love that brand and they love the values to pursue it better. It's probably the simplest way to distill it that that brand represents and that's what they seek to be as well.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah.
Dave Burwick:I think that's great.
Bob Goodwin:So I want to and I have a sense, maybe, where this might go, but when you because you're not recruiting from the outside, but there's turnover and you have to recruit new talent, or maybe you're reconfiguring teams or something's going on. We talked about curiosity, we talked about empathy, we talked about, you know, desire to make a difference. Are those the qualities that you're interviewing for, when you're assessing talent?
Dave Burwick:They are, they absolutely are, and I'd say I mean first of all in terms of hiring outside versus inside we do. We have a very what's said. What set this company apart? Boston beer, specifically over it's actually our 40th year now was really two things. One, uh, brewing and r&d capability, innovation brewing, the technical, science-y part of that, the business. And then the sales team. We've always invested over, invested in in the sales team. Um, we have the.
Dave Burwick:I think we're the largest sales force of any brewer in America, and not even accounting for size, not like on a per barrel or per case basis, but just in total raw numbers, and we have a tremendous training program and tremendous culture. So our bias is always to promote people internally, like move salespeople. Certainly, within sales, we almost we never go outside to hire salespeople, ever, ever, except just junior level, like out of college, that's it. But then we move those people around the organization too. So our bias is to really is to find opportunities for people inside. Having said that, the business is always changing. There are needs and capabilities that are required that you don't have internally. So you have to go outside, and I think actually bringing outside people in at the right amount, the right levels is also helps the company in total. So we it's like the question is how do you get the right balance of both?
Dave Burwick:Now, when we do go outside, I like when I think about four things when I interview people, four traits and sort of the ones you mentioned. But which kind of tie to these, which are really about trust, is Is this somebody that is trustworthy, that I can, that I truly can trust and other people will trust and they want to work with? Are they competent so that they have a base level of skills and that can grow over time and we can make them better? Do they have courage? I mean, are they willing to make tough decisions? Are they willing to be to speak up when they see something they don't think is right and present their point of view? Are they willing to do things that might be for the best, in the best interest of the company, but maybe not in their own personal best interest?
Dave Burwick:And I think courage is really important and I think you know, obviously, the more senior you become maybe the easier it is to be courageous, but I think it's an important characteristic. And the last thing I'd say is humanity, which gets to the empathy and all that. I think these people that really care about other humans or do they care only about themselves and their own career path? And I think so. Trust, competence, courage, humanity to me are four things I try to think about when I meet people. I mean, when you shake somebody's hand, basically you're, I think the act of shaking someone's hand and meeting them you're kind of assessing quickly trust and competence right away, like right away, and so those are kind of the foundational things. But then the courage, humanity stuff, those are special things that I think set us apart at the company that I look for when I meet people from the outside.
Bob Goodwin:I really appreciate what you're sharing, dave. When we're coaching our clients, we talk about people, hire people. Right, the resume might get you the interview, but at the end of the day, people hire people and then like, okay, Bob, that's cute, but what's the double click on that? And I think that you're making me rethink some of this a bit. Some of it's just terms, but we talk about proficiency, which is can you do the job? We talked about competency. We talk about passion I speak in alliteration, by the way.
Bob Goodwin:So it's proficiency and passion, like do you care about what we're doing, how we do it, who we do it for? You talked about the pursuit of better like does this resonate with you? Um, and then, personality is just somebody I trust. Is this somebody that I would want to work with? But this has come up twice today. I was interviewing the CMO of another large public, cpg, earlier today and he called it guts. You're calling it courage, but it's the ability to stand up and be counted and say, hey, I don't necessarily agree with what we're doing, here's why, or whatever, but just to have the courage to say I think we need to think about this a little bit more. Maybe there's a better way.
Dave Burwick:I think it's also the courage is also about taking accountability when things go wrong and really owning it. Owning it and I think I mean you look in our society today, across, whether it be sports, business, politics, religion, whatever, almost any kind of area I think there's a lack of courage and I think you gain so much more by just accepting your failings and acknowledging that and saying the things that may not be easy to say or popular, because that's that links to me, that's about you, it's also about humanity.
Bob Goodwin:Yes, well, back on the humanity piece. So we've talked about humility, we've talked about empathy and you know, I do a separate podcast with Johnny Taylor on all things kind of HR called the Work Wire. With Johnny Taylor on all things kind of HR called the work wire, and his organization, sherm, is actively promoting something right now around civility Right and being civil like we. We live in a very, you know, polarized culture, like I'm not going to say anything that people don't already know on that, but between politics and war and culture and just everything that's going on politics and war and culture and just everything that's going on, we've kind of devolved the, the humanity part of this, and that's a human being and, like you know, I don't agree with you, but that doesn't mean I have to be disagreeable about it. And how do you see that just sort of this, this element of civility, as a component of the humanity piece?
Dave Burwick:yeah, I agree, I agree bob, I, I completely agree with that and I think, um, I mean honestly like this, the downside of social media is just, it's all about dehumanization, right?
Dave Burwick:So it's the opposite of that, because you can't hate on people or or or throw grievances out there unless you first sort of dehumanize them. And I think it's a, and I think it's a, it think it's a terrible thing, and I think anything to create more civil discourse and just civil behavior is great, and that's why, honestly, like I've kind of personally, I've sort of defaulted to a lot of sports watching, because I do think that brings more people together. So if I'm in a bar or restaurant or with friends or whatever, I mean a bar or restaurant or with friends or whatever I mean, sports are fun and nobody dies generally. I think to me it's a way for people to come together. It's a very tough time and it's unfortunate, because I think if people, if everybody, demonstrated trust, competence, courage, humanity, I think we'd be. It's easy to say it, but I think if we could do it, we'd be in a much better place.
Bob Goodwin:And, david, that's like why I'm so excited to have somebody like you come in and share this, because you're the CEO of a public company, a $2 billion company dollar company, and so you know you could say anything you know you wanted, and yet what people are hearing is, wow, this guy has climbed the corporate ladder about as high as you can go is espousing values like this. You know, wow, like maybe I'm not crazy, maybe my intuition of like I want to be nicer. Is it okay? Can I succeed in my career and also be a nice person? Those aren't mutually exclusive choices. In fact, it's probably the preferred choice.
Dave Burwick:I think so. I mean, you don't have to be a sociopath to be successful in business, although those people that may be the headline for this episode.
Dave Burwick:But those people, they do exist. I think you have to everybody honestly, you have to learn how to deal with people like that and I think, and sometimes I think, okay, I've been lucky, it's worked pretty well for me. But I've had moments too where I've felt, honestly, I felt like I was maybe not appreciated or I was betrayed in some way shape or form because I allowed myself to, I put myself in that position and made myself vulnerable. But I think at the end you got to. You just got to feel good about yourself, you got to feel go back to your, your spouse, your partner, your family and just be able to look at them and say, like I did, I've kind of lived my values and and where the chips fall, where the chips fall, they fall. But generally I think people are. If people are good to other people, good things should happen back to them.
Bob Goodwin:So you've got four kids. So I can ask this question in one of two ways. If you were giving advice to 25-year-old Dave Berwick with the benefit of hindsight or as you talk to your kids today, what's the best career advice you would give?
Dave Burwick:For me it's pretty simple. It's like you go, like you, you're going to have a long career, hopefully everybody and no matter what path you take. By the way, you could be like I did, like through brand marketing. You could be an engineer, you could be in finance, you could be a social worker which my wife is as an msw, it doesn't matter. But you're going to. You can't plan it out from beginning to end. It's just you just kind of you have one experience and then you learn from that and then you kind of guide yourself to the next thing. But all along the way you're kind of building a foundation of knowledge and experiences and understanding that you're going to. That's going to make you stronger as you go. So my advice is really learn as much as you can in every role that you have, knowing that that's going to make you better in the next role and at some point you can't go back and redo the things that you chose not to do or you didn't maybe put yourself into fully because you've lost that opportunity. Now I'll give you one example for me Like, as I mentioned before, at Pepsi I did a field marketing role, so I started at headquarters.
Dave Burwick:I did like two years of Diet Pepsi and some other things, and then did my kind of obligatory. Okay, you're going to the field, you're going to Tampa and you're going to be the field marketing person and so at this point I'm like I don't know, I'm 31 or two, a couple years out of business school and one of my responsibilities was going to find the point of sale that that was delivered to our big yard out out there by the, all the trucks, the route sales trucks and where the route sales guys hang out and to claim it before the rain does and make sure it gets into the route, into the, into the route sales room and then eventually gets on the truck. So the route salesman, could they have it available? So when you build the display, you have your, your pepsi point of sale, you put it up to put the price on it and you're prepared. And I remember looking through the yard trying to find this, this, like it was, like a I don't know it was like a pallet of point of sale, not being able to find it, thinking, okay, all my friends from business school, they're like morgan stanley and nc and you know, and they're flying first class, all this stuff, and they have this glamorous kind of high profile life, and here I am looking for the point of sale. But and it was not a lot of fun.
Dave Burwick:Having said that, it was two years of my life, even the last two years, but I learned so much about how our business operated. Like what do like, for example, what when a route sales rep? The guy drives a Pepsi truck who goes in and builds displays. What do they need to be successful in their job? How do you motivate them?
Dave Burwick:So when I went back up to New York, back to headquarters, you know, two years later, and I was running, I think, the time, slice and mug root beer like I had a better understanding of what, how to, how to get them excited about my brands, what they were looking for.
Dave Burwick:So it made me better, it made me a better marketer and ultimately, I think I they were looking for.
Dave Burwick:So it made me better, it made me a better marketer and ultimately, I think I don't think I would have become the chief marketing officer if I hadn't done it, because part of that too was the sales organization.
Dave Burwick:Again, a pepsi like a boston beer, very strong and very influential, and I worked very closely with the sales team when I was in florida and I built credibility and I built trust with them, and so when I was lucky enough to start to get elevated in marketing, as the times went on, I had the sales team always like, yeah, we like Dave. I think that's a good move to put Dave in that role, because they knew I went into the trenches with them. And so I think back to the, I guess, the main point, which is whatever and you don't control necessarily what your experience is going to be but whatever you do make the most of it, because even at that moment, if it feels kind of not essential or meaningless or not interesting or not fun, you will benefit down the road and you can never recapture those moments. You have that chance to get the learning and then you're going to move on and make sure you optimize that experience.
Bob Goodwin:No, well, I think that's brilliant and one it's benefit finding, which I think is actually a tremendous tool for resilience, which you mentioned at the very beginning, which is when we can even when I'm trying to find the point of sale stuff in a yard and it's going to rain and everything else that's getting ready to happen when we can find the good in it and like, as you say, kind of developing a real understanding. But you're also building relationships. You are building trust with people that you're going to need on another day. You are building an understanding of the consumer, in this case that people are actually delivering the product and the promotions at retail. You're back in New York going that ain't going to work Like if you're in a planning session.
Bob Goodwin:Like I said, it's not going to work. You don't understand how these routes work or what the store manager is going to let them do, or whatever reality is. I really appreciate what you're saying. The other thing for young people is sometimes it's just a test for negatives. You don't know what you don't know. So go try stuff. Just go try stuff. Get some experiences under your belt, because you can't map it all out and you don't know. It's such great advice for people because I think sometimes folks don't understand. In the moment I really am learning something. This really is shaping me for the future. Yep, I agree Brilliant. Well, dave, this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much. I wish you the best in whatever is next for you. I hope you had the opportunity to just breathe, be with your family, maybe go hit a couple little white balls around Pretty Park some, maybe even Scotland, who knows? But this has been phenomenal. I appreciate what you shared and I'm taking a lot away from this conversation. As I know, our audience is Great, great Bob.
Dave Burwick:Thanks, thanks very much. I really appreciate the opportunity just to talk and I think it's a nice sort of exclamation point to my last day of work here. So thanks for allowing me to share some thoughts.
Bob Goodwin:So everyone who's listening and watching, thank you so much. I appreciate you investing a few minutes of your time. Obviously, you got high ROI for your time today, so thank you for that and with that we wish you well. And, dave, thanks again.