Positioning Your Brewery to Serve Your City

Matt Stevens, our Senior Director of Strategic Impact, had the opportunity last fall to take the CSR work of Creature Comforts to the entire craft brewing industry. His talk, titled Making Serving Simple: Positioning Your Brewery to Serve Your City was delivered at the 2021 Craft Brewers Conference in Denver, Colorado.

CBC, presented by the Brewers Association, is America’s largest craft brewing industry gathering. CBC is the Brewers Association’s annual opportunity to unite the craft brewing community and deliver concentrated brewing education and thought leadership to improve brewery quality and performance. This past year, more than 7,000 brewing industry professionals convened in Denver for the 38th annual Craft Brewers Conference.

On the afternoon of Saturday, September 11th, Matt presented on corporate philanthropy and community impact, pulling from his experiences at Creature Comforts and, before that, from his time in both the public and nonprofit sectors. Stevens joined the Creature Comforts team in September 2017 as our first Director of Community & Culture, his role to help ensure our business is a force for good by investing in both our employees and our communities.

In his hour-long speech, Stevens explores the ways in which philanthropy has the tendency at times to be inefficient, and sometimes even harmful, emphasizing that “rigorous is the new virtuous.” Throughout his talk, he pulled from Creature Comforts’ community impact initiatives, including the Get Comfortable initiative, Brew for One, and our emerging Employee Volunteer Program.

Ultimately, Stevens urged his industry peers to assess how their brewery is uniquely positioned to serve their community, noting that, in time, the craft brewing industry could become as famous for its generosity as its commitment to quality.