“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” — Sun-Tzu, from The
Art of War
With the world at war against the coronavirus — which is shattering economies,
cultures, and lives — it’s possibly not the best time to start a new business.
But for our new venture — a brewery here in Boise, Idaho, named Works Progress
Administration (WPA) — it seemed not only like the
right time to start a venture; it felt like the only time to start this new
company.
Along with a group of civic-minded businesspeople, I've co-founded WPA in the
spirit of a long-ago public works program established to put people back to work
during this nation’s Great Depression.
Our team — Dave Krick and Jami Adams, co-owners of Bittercreek Alehouse
and Red Feather Lounge; Jake Black, owner of Lost
Grove Brewing; and David Roberts,
longtime Bittercreek employee and organizer of
Alefort — has deep experience
in the beer industry and a track record for community involvement. And while our
idea for a new brewery has been fermenting for a number of years — “cask
conditioning,” you might say — the COVID-19
crisis became the
catalyst for launching, simply because we all felt that our community urgently
needed our help in this way right now.
Here’s a primer on the historical
WPA, as it’s
critical to understanding the ethos of our brewery.
The WPA was a program of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It provided
jobs creating public infrastructure — building bridges, dams, and roads to
connect farms with urban markets. Its largest projects were Hoover Dam and
the Tennessee Valley Authority electrification project. Among the historic
structures it created that you might still recognize today are Timberline
Lodge on Oregon’s Mt. Hood; the Riverwalk in San Antonio,
Texas; and the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, South Carolina.
The WPA’s Federal Project Number One also provided jobs for writers, musicians
and artists. In a time where manufacturing employees earned about $17 a week
and doctors $65, this program paid artists a basic wage of $23.50 each week.
Among the starving artists this program bootstrapped: Mark Rothko, Hallie
Flanagan, Willem De Kooning, Dorothy West, Jackson Pollock,
Orson Welles, Carl Reiner and Woody Guthrie, among others.
The WPA also specifically supported the work of African-American artists — such
as Charles Alston, Ernest Crichlow, Allan Crite, Jacob Lawrence,
Charles White and Hale Woodruff. Much of this art is still on display in
the African-American Mosaic exhibition at the Library of Congress.
This inspiring historical template provided a clear operating framework for our
brewery. We’ve legally structured our company as a Public Benefit
Corporation,
and will live our values and create our benefit through demonstrative actions
that prove out our model and our motto, “Progress through beer.”
Image credit: Guy Hand
As we jumpstarted this idea quickly, we don’t yet have a brewing facility; so,
we’re beginning by producing collaborative, community-benefit beers with
established local breweries to raise funds for causes that are vital to our
community. Our first collaboration is an IPA with Lost Grove and Payette
Brewing that benefits the City of
Good, a nonprofit that puts restaurant cooks and
service workers back to work making meals for school children experiencing
hunger. Our next collaboration with Woodland
Empire — Blackberry-Beet Lager — will benefit the Live Music Relief
Fund, created during
the pandemic by local B Corp Treefort Music
Festival — to provide financial resources
for local artists and working professionals in the live music industry.
Our goal is to produce the first WPA-branded lager by the end of this year. Our
team’s brewing sensibility is to create modern interpretations of traditional
styles, heavily influenced by local ingredients, that honor the old-world
knowledge handed down over centuries by generations of breweries.
We’re dipping into the historic playbook to power our public benefit by
developing a volunteer arm of our brewery called the “Civvies,” a nod to the
Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), another program of the original WPA. We’ll
put this team to work on public services projects throughout the community —
from helping to rebuild trails in the Boise Foothills to supporting nonprofits
on their critical initiatives.
So, while “timing is everything” and starting any new business is challenging;
we believe there’s a place in the market and an opportunity for a better type of
business, even during this time of chaos and crisis — or perhaps even because
of these times. Maybe that’s because it’s always a good time to brew up
something good in the way of helping people and benefitting your community
through social impact. It’s just that it’s needed so urgently right now.
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Russ Stoddard is the founder and CEO of Oliver Russell — a Boise, Idaho-based social impact agency with clients around the world.
Published Jul 13, 2020 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST