Issue retaining brewers at a brew pub. Please help!

Do you have a good relationship with the ex-brewers that left? Can you contact them to talk things over, ask them what would have made them stay / what made them leave?
It's possible that just the increase in responsibilities to a larger brewer attracted them.
Also keep the communication (as others have said) open with your new guy; make sure that he is comfortable coming to you with his concerns. You say you don't have control over his compensation. I read that as you don't have the authority to increase pay yourself. I presume that if needed, you can go to the other partners to request an increase for him?
without knowing the down and dirty details of your operation, there's not much more that we can talk about here.

 

One trades their labor and value for money.

 

Just thinking of the business here and that you have some consistency in the product that you offer, is there any agreement who owns the recipes when a brewery leaves?

 

In general the business owns the recipe, but a qualified brewer coming in should not need recipes unless they're unusual or contain unusual processes or ingredients (flavorings, etc.).

Another thing is, who's going to have a problem if a brewer leaves and starts brewing a similar beer somewhere else unless it was something really unusual? Although, and I have to laugh, a brewery I worked for once accused another brewery of stealing their recipe for Kolsch!

 

Meh. You really have to be a special form of petty to actively decide to piss away money to pursue this. Re: Toppling Goliath.

 

And.....this is where I stop reading.

 

You’re asking in the wrong place and your naivety in the matter is disturbing... hate to be “that guy” but as a brewer/consultant, you’ll need to face the music eventually.

 

Probably true, but having the recipes would at least provide continuity in the beer menu to retain good beers after a brewer turnover, assuming they are notable beers that you want to keep. Otherwise you're risking beer quality of your beer offerings if you have to start over with an unproven new brewer.

 

Money, discounts or free case each pay, make him have bigger role in brewery.

 

The first guy wasn't named Stephen Foster was he?

 

this was my thought too. Isn't there some forum for brewing professionals where you could get an idea of what kind of compensation/work load is typical industry wide? Also, what other people said, maybe talk to the brewer in question?

 

They want you to solve the problem, but you have no say on pay? You're not in a good spot yourself. Nothing worse than being tasked to solve a problem but being given no actual authority to do it. I'd consider looking yourself.

 

This sounds like a reason where a sincere exit interview would have been of very helpful. If they left for money it’s obvious, but it sounds like your turning creative control over to the brewer. So.... there’s two entities at play here with the art of brewing; Creative control and or money. There’s nothing else here I can see, it’s one or the other.

 

probrewer.com

While I can speak from experience of what most of what is being brought up here. I definitely also agree with @honkey regarding being a lot better prepared to handle the difference between holding hands, and taking charge of asset management.

 

Just for context for the rest of us (me), what is compensation normally like for a head brewer at a small brewery? Obviously the work is probably more than full time and largely glorified warehouse and janitorial duties (lugging around heavy crap, cleaning up, etc..) and I assume salary. But how big does a place usually get before the person who is crafting the recipes isn't the person doing that kind of stuff? And if you're the crafter of recipes and the doer of the crap then what's the range of compensation that's normal?

 

Personally, I wouldn’t consider a salary less than $50k for a brewery of any size (yes, even a half barrel system) in any city. So there’s a baseline, but many breweries hire brewers for far less. In my experience between what I’ve seen of friends and classmates in the industry as well as breweries I’ve consulted for; any brewery that hires a head brewer for less should be prepared to lose the brewer if the brewer is worth having on staff. If you think you can’t make the salary work, your business plan sucks.

 

Was just going to suggest that posting these questions at probrewer.com would be better than posting here.

That said, having a 2bbl system (which is 4 kegs) limits what you can do outside your facility. 2 bbl isn't enough beer to even bother with packaging. I don't think any reputable mobile canning company would even look at you. Maybe you could hand bottle 22s, but that format is falling by the wayside.

Fests. Don't even bother. You'll tie up production space for beer you're going to basically give away. From a brewery standpoint, the reason to go to a fest is drive folks to your beer. Given the current ticker mentality, how many folks are going to get their 4oz pour of your beer, post it on UT (and then they can say they've had it), and then come to your tap room? A brewery near me has a 3bbl system (and put out about 600bbl/year), and they do one fest a year (which is a big fund-raiser for a local charity. If you want to that approach, I think that'd be fine.) but otherwise fests are loser for them. Plus, think about your brewer; you want him to work all week in the brewery, then burn his weekend pouring at a fest? That's a way to burn out folks in hurry.

Is your business able to hire a part-time cellarman/assistant brewer to help shoulder the load? Quality of life issues are a real thing. Nobody wants to be consumed by their job. I'll second the notion of maybe looking at an older hire. Someone who is maybe tired of being a production brewer, and might be interested in pulling in the reins a bit. If that gal or guy has a partner with good bennies at another job, that makes it an easier target. The younger folks are still clawing their up through these things.

Good Luck!

 

One cannot copyright a recjpe. Google it

 

Sorry recipe lol

 

No, but a restaurant/brewery/etc can (in some instances) can use trade secrets claims and employment agreements to protect themselves.