issue no. 803

LAST WEEK . . .

Dorothy ended newsletter issue no. 802 with a series of questions:

What would happen if you reclaimed ten minutes from something you don’t want to give your attention to, or aren’t served by? What would happen if you could manage that for an hour every day? For a whole day every week?

She was writing with regard to AI - and how there are various ways in which AI is being imposed upon us without our explicit consent. This process is consistent with the way empires have colonized land and spirituality in the past, even if this current process with AI feels more akin to subjugating our minds, our attention, and our energy.

On Friday I continued the thread in our latest dispatch of GOOD COMPANY - speaking of the more insidious side of systems of oppression. Yes, there are many ways in which domination can be violent and overt - but this weaving of my own very personal professional story laid out the ways in which we can - unknowingly - give away our own power.

For those of you not inclined to listen to the 52-minute deep dive, I tell the story of some big business model transitions that we are making at the other small food business that I’ve been a part of founding and running the last 10 years, Suarez Family Brewery.

There is a part of this story that I want to echo in this newsletter, because it’s a story that I hear among people who are part of so many small food and beverage businesses right now. My hope is that by sharing our story, it will spark more conversation and connection - in ways that allow us all to build a web of support to imagine more creative paths forward for everyone.

In short: the scale and scope of the brewery we set out to operate in 2016 is no longer feasible for us. The truth is that for the first 5 years, we operated a healthfully profitable business - able to pay decent wages (relative to scope of the work and the cost of living at the time), reinvest into the business in incredible ways, and have a healthy cushion of cash flow - all selling a quality product at a price that was affordable for our customer base.

The last 5 years have been a different story. In the wake of the post-COVID migration to our area, coupled with the trappings of late-stage capitalism levels of inflation (for reference, the pre-pandemic baseline was 1.23%, whereas the years since have ranged from 2.76 - 9.1%, with a compounding impact), we have seen a rise of costs for every input, to the tune of 20 - 50% across the board (thank you, tariffs, for adding a double dose on top of inflation).

When you consider all this against the normal margins for the average food business (usually a very healthy profit falls between 10 - 20% of revenue), you realize that without raising prices considerably, the nature of mathematics means that if you want to keep your small business small, you will only experience ever-diminishing returns. And while that is always true with inflation, the dramatic unfolding / compounding of the last 5 years leaves many small businesses in a particularly intense vice grip right now.

At the same time, we’re seeing a dramatic decrease in consumer spending power - after all, the same factors driving up business costs (stemming from rising fuel prices), are cutting into every household’s budget - and a lot of them can’t simply absorb the impact without making adjustments to their expendable purchases.

To give a concrete example, we sell a can of our beer for $3 wholesale price. These days, that same can winds up on most restaurant / bar menus for $12. If we were to raise it to a more reasonable current cost-basis price of $4, would it show up for $16? When we’ve already seen a slowdown in general spending, would hiking up the price we charge effectively make up the difference, or just hurt sales in the long term?

We are seeing this with so many small businesses - the kind of unique, independent operations that we all want to see in the world.

It’s not lost on us that even an average night out at a good local restaurant - not one you might consider ‘fancy’ or ‘fine dining’ - can run a family of four over $200. And this is not because the restaurant is raking in the big bucks, nor is it a result of mismanagement. In many of my conversations, I’ve learned that business owners are barely covering the cost of what it takes to make and serve those meals that are breaking the average person’s budget - especially if that business is trying to do right by its customers (providing good service), its vendors (supporting small local farms and food producers), and its staff (paying a living wage).

This is a sentiment that we see expressed from farmers over and over again, as well. With most founder-owner businesses, I see a great number of operators forgoing a living wage themselves (most especially in relation to the time and effort that they expend) in order to employ the others needed to maintain a consistent operation (or at least one that looks like what we’d culturally consider to be ‘a real business’).

This was the case with us, at least. For the 2024 and 2025, the profit was at a loss equivalent to the salary I was paid for my labor (which was already only 2/3 of what we were paying anyone else on staff).

And while we have a lot of equity in the business, that theoretically we could ‘cash in’ - the real estate, equipment, etc - our desire to continue operating means that the status quo is just not sustainable in the long term - neither energetically nor financially.

So what is the answer?

Watching so many small businesses forced to make the decision to close up shop, our temporary answer is to take some time in 2027 to recalibrate and reimagine. Ironically, when we crunched the numbers, we realized that by scaling back our production (to about 1/4 of the volume what we currently produce) we could (theoretically, if people are not so annoyed by these ‘creative changes’ and still show up to buy what we offer) be adequately compensated for our work, with less time and stress overall.

But this does still have a negative impact, particularly on the small team of people we employ. These are real humans (hello, Zach and Josh) who have contributed their time, energy, and life force to work with us - lending their unique skills to keep the engine of this operation humming. That is no small thing.

Yet the reason it took us years to come to this decision is largely because of the guilt I felt in choosing to value you my own labor as much as I did theirs, coupled with the shame I felt at not being able to find an effective solution within the capitalist confines.

Since the beginning, we’ve been stubborn about not needing to grow for the sake of growth. There is magic in the way that we operate: the skills that Dan has cultivated through nearly two decades of brewing, which lead to both a consistency and honing of the craft that you don’t often see in the industry. We’ve always much preferred the idea that there were 100 breweries like ours across the landscape instead of running an operation that is 100 times bigger than the one that we currently maintain.

But that also comes at a cost - the flip side of honing the craft means that there’s an inherent monotony that can also creep in. And for the people that work with us, committing to the same jobs, year in and year out, can feel like stagnation.

Ultimately, our 2027 operation will look more like a ‘project’ than what you know as ‘a business.’ We feel confident that the changes will infuse an energy into us that will translate into the experience that everyone enjoys at our brewery - even if it is more intermittent or less convenient than what they’re used to.

I want to draw us back to Dorothy’s questions from last week:

What would happen if you reclaimed ten minutes from something you don’t want to give your attention to, or aren’t served by? What would happen if you could manage that for an hour every day? For a whole day every week?

We’re exploring these questions this year. What will I do with all of the ‘extra time’ that I was devoting to our everyday operations at the brewery? For one, I have so many ideas for Good Food Jobs that I’ve put on the back burner the last 10 years - and I’m excited to share them with you (you’ve seen the start of it with the addition of the Friday GOOD COMPANY dispatches).

In addition, I plan to do more of what brings me alive - aligning our work schedule so that I have off when my kids are on break, getting my hands back in the soil, going on regular walks with friends, and co-hosting cultural and community events in the physical spaces that have been devoted to our open taproom hours five days per week.

Most importantly, the spaciousness is already giving us the opportunity to reimagine, instead of conforming to our own internalized ideas of what it’s all ‘supposed to look like’. And that is liberating.

I’m eager for this evolution. It’s far from ‘perfect’, but it feels aligned.

If these sentiments resonated with you, we invite you to join us. We’re working on building some tools and resources to create a web of support so that we can all thrive. Let us know if you’d like to learn more.

To building the world we want to live in, together.
Tay + Dor

tidbits...

resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we’re reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . .

Do One Small Thing . . . Did the sentiments in this newsletter resonate with you, particularly with regard to the challenges of operating small food businesses in the current economic climate? Be a part of creating the community we all need. We quite literally can’t do it without you. Fill out this form to learn more.

Catch up on last Friday’s episode of GOOD COMPANY where Taylor outlined the decision making behind some big transitions in her (other) food business, Suarez Family Brewery.

The Daily podcast covered similar sentiments in a recent episode entitled The Restaurant Industry Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?

One of my favorite local restaurants - one that I don’t want to imagine life without - Cafe Mutton, keeping it real as always with Ode to the Crew and other Updates.

I will give another nod to Megan Leatherman whose current season of her podcast A Wild New Work lays out the spiritual colonization of Europe in the period of 300 - 1300 AD when Christianity became the dominant religion. Looking to history shows the striking similarities with the current AI rollout.

We know the most important thing we can do in these tenuous times is show up and share our art with the world. Dor will be giving a talk and reading from her book on the Cornell Campus in Ithaca, NY on October 28 at 5pm (in the English Lounge at Goldwin Smith // room 258). Renia White will also be reading from her book of poetry, Casual Conversation. Please come if you are in the area!

View and share this free guide to How to Write a More Equitable Job Post, and stay tuned for new resources to deepen this work.

got a tidbit? drop it here for us and we’ll share it in next week’s newsletter.