Dogfish Head: Great Beer, Even Better People
Jan. 18, 2019
A series of photos that gives us a glimpse into life at Dogfish Head.
Written by Brian Wright
Photos by Annaleah De Masi
Dogfish Head co-workers have a saying: Together we are heavy.
“It means we all have to work together for the greater purpose of Dogfish Head,” says Dogfish Head Experience Guide Kim Koot. “Even Sam and Mariah [Calagione] will tell you that they don’t want any of us to feel as though we are working for them. Instead, we’re all working with each other.”
Koot started at Dogfish Head in the summer of 2016. She had just graduated from college and didn’t want to immediately dive into corporate life. So instead, she took a summer job leading tours around the company’s Milton, DE brewery.
“I expected it to only be a seasonal thing,” Koot says. “Instead, I ended up falling in love with the company and they fell in love with me enough to offer me a full-time role. And here I am two years later!”
“It is the culture here that I fell in love with the most,” Koot says. “At Dogfish Head, no one is an employee. We’re all co-workers and we all work together.”
“I think that attitude is what draws a lot of people to want to work for us and work with us,” says Jean Greathouse, who works as a host at the Dogfish Inn. “Sam and Mariah are simply great people. Their message is so positive and they’re so innovative that it is impossible to not want to do good for them.”
Greathouse is another Dogfish Head co-worker who initially joined the company as a seasonal employee but stayed on permanently after falling for the company’s infectious culture and can-do attitude.
“Every big decision at this company starts off with ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ To which Sam, Mariah or one of the other managers will reply, ‘Well, neither do we. Let’s figure it out together,’’’ Greathouse says.
Dogfish Head’s Quality Control Manager, Ryan Mazur, originally moved to Delaware with the hope of putting his marine science degree to good use. After struggling to find meaningful work, he took a job as a forklift driver at Dogfish Head simply to pay the bills.
As luck would have it, a year later in 2006, Dogfish Head tapped Mazur to lead and develop a cutting edge sensory lab for the brewery.
“I didn’t know a thing about beer when I started, but Sam and everyone else had faith in me and assured me that I’d learn it along the way,” Mazur says.
Together we are heavy doesn’t just signify Dogfish Head’s co-worker empowerment. As company, Dogfish Head has used its size and goodwill to create impactful change in the community it calls home.
“One of my favorite days of the year is Beer Benevolence Day, which happens in the spring,” Koot says. “On that day, we all go out and spend the entire day giving back to the community.”
In the past, Dogfish Head employees have volunteered their time at the Sussex County Habitat for Humanity, the SPCA, the Milton Community Food Pantry and Delaware Nature Society.
Water conservation is a topic of concern for Calagione and the rest of the team. For every barrel of beer Dogfish Head brews, the brewery must pull 4.5 barrels out of the water from the brewery’s naturally fed well. If their water source becomes polluted, the beer production stops.
“We try to do everything we can to protect this precious resource,” Calagione says.
In 2017, Dogfish Head raised more than $145,000 for The Nature Conservatory during the company’s annual Dogfish Dash. This is on top of regularly cleaning up trash around the coastal water ways and replanting native plants to help restore some of nature’s balance.
“When you work here, you get a whole new appreciation for what’s going on behind the scenes,” says James Montero, general manager of Dogfish Head Distilling. “I never realized how much benevolence they give until I started here. Even though they try to keep their efforts as local as possible with watershed conservation efforts and supporting the arts, everything they do is in fact very far reaching.”
Great beer. Even better people. That’s Dogfish Head in a nutshell, and it may just be the secret to the company’s success. Can you prove a return on investment for putting the utmost value into your employees? Probably not. How about for giving back to the community around you? That’s hard to tie to the bottom line as well. But, it is impossible to ignore that the off-centered approach Sam and Mariah take to running their company is working.
After 24 years, Dogfish Head continues to grow, and it still remains fiercely independent. Employees stick around and flourish within the company, all while ”figuring stuff out” right alongside the co-founders. Sam and Mariah have successfully turned a small edge of coastal Delaware into a vibrant and tightknit community where work, family and benevolence combine into one beautifully strange brew.
Previous
Next
It is an unusually warm evening in early October, and Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head, is preparing to kick off his final meeting of the day. Joining him are a handful of his Dogfish Head coworkers, including James Montero, general manager of the brand’s distillery, Janelle Mazur and Megan Bayles from the marketing team, as well as Janelle’s husband and quality control manager, Ryan Mazur. Sitting opposite Sam is his wife and co-founder, Mariah Calagione.
Also in attendance are close to a dozen guests staying at the Dogfish Inn, the brewery’s 16-room hotel.
Oh, and there are dogs at this meeting, too.
This is not your ordinary meeting. Tonight is Dogfish Head’s fireside chat, a roundtable discussion of all things beverage, held weekly at the Inn in Lewes, DE.
“We’ve been holding these fireside chats since the day the hotel first opened four years ago,” Calagione says. “They are, without question, my favorite meeting of the week.”
With beers in hand and the fire flickering away, Calagione opens the floor to questions, and just like that, another off-centered meeting is underway.
For the next two hours, Sam, Mariah and the rest of the Dogfish Head team answer questions from hotel guests and others in attendance. Almost immediately, one guest asks Sam if a rumor was true that Dogfish Head is discontinuing her favorite beer, Raison D'Extra?
“Yes,” says Sam. “It is usually my idea to create the beers, and later, Mariah kills them.”
That line gets a loud laugh from the crowd, as well as a knowing smirk and side eye from Mariah, who appears ready with a comeback, but holds off.
Now that the crowd is loosened up, the questions come pouring in.
“We learn a ton at these meetings that, to this day, really molds Dogfish Head’s strategy,” Calagione says.
For the serious beer fan, this whole evening can seem a surreal experience. Here are Sam and Mariah Calagione, founders of one of America’s pioneering craft breweries, essentially just hanging out and having a beer with anyone who happens to walk by. To even a casual consumer, it is an evening that is sure to leave an impression.
Dogfish Head is the 12th largest craft brewery in the U.S., according to the Brewers Association, and yet each week the company’s CEO and executive vice president sit around the fire with customers, fans and employees from every level of the company, engaging with them and earnestly hearing them out. This isn’t something that normally happens at a company of Dogfish Head’s size, but perhaps that is why Dogfish Head continues to grow faster than many others in the craft beer industry.
In 2017, Dogfish Head saw its sales grow 20 percent, driven strongly by the release of SeaQuench Ale. In 2018, the brewery is expected to increase its sales another 8 percent and sell close to 300,000 barrels.
That growth is even more impressive when you consider that Dogfish Head doesn’t yet distribute in all 50 states (It’s currently in 42).
So, what is different about Dogfish Head?
Simply put, it’s a strange brew of leadership, benevolence and people that make the difference.
Scroll through the photos above to see what we mean.