New Belgium brews up green-business model

LONGMONT — Jenn Vervier of New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins believes companies can be good environmental stewards, turn a profit and have fun doing it.

In a keynote address Tuesday morning at BizWest’s Green Summit at the Plaza Convention Center in Longmont, Vervier, New Belgium’s director of sustainability and strategic products, said achieving goals for people, the planet and profit can be achieved even on a little budget.

Vervier said New Belgium, an employee-owned company with 800 working shareholders, has taken its lead from founders Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan to try and do the right things socially and environmentally and continually evolve to find better ways to do business.

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“It’s a balance between doing what’s right and still maintaining a profit,” she said. “For us, it started with three core values: produce world-class beer, promote a beer culture and be environmental stewards while having fun.”

New Belgium recently became a B Corp. — companies that must meet standards for social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.

“It’s about considering human welfare and creating conditions for the future,” she said.

Being employee-owned, the workers are involved with strategic planning and goals, and can affect decisions ultimately made by the management team.

“It’s a discussion among humans,” Vervier said. “Numbers are one tool, but you discuss how they fit into a business culture. … The process creates restraints, and from restraints, comes innovation,” Vervier said.

Vervier said New Belgium operates with an “open-book management” style, educating co-workers on financials and cost structures, giving them tools to help solve problems.

An idea presented by employees to do away with cardboard dividers between lines of bottles in production saved the company $800,000 a year, Vervier explained.

“By involving everyone in the process, you get different viewpoints from different perspectives,” she said. “It is a longer process, but a rewarding one. We ask for a dialogue. We think about the big issues facing the world today, how does the industry contribute and what we can do to move the needle.”

She said employees have come up with ideas that have affected greenhouse gases, water, energy and waste diversions.

An employee, she said, took the initiative to come up with a plan to introduce electric-hybrid vehicles into the company’s fleet. Some others came up with the idea of gifting bikes to employees on anniversaries, a throwback to when Lebesch rode a bike through Europe and came up with the idea to bring Belgium brews to America. Another idea was to donate to communities where New Belgium makes and sells beers.

“These ideas came from employees, not top brass,” she said.

And all these ideas translate into a brand that is appealing to millennials, the largest group of beer consumers, she said.

Calling climate change “the elephant in the room,” Vervier said individual companies can only make a splash, and need outside help to turn that splash into far-reaching ripples.

“The private sector can’t do it alone,” she said. “We need help from the public sector, and we are involved in advocacy at the state and federal levels.

“Climate change is an economic issue,” she said, explaining that it has caused barley not to ripen, lowered yields of hops, and fires have affected crops.

“If the East is underwater, that affects our customer base.”