Genesee: Made for the Trade, Volume 7

Campaign highlights variety and quality of jobs available at the state's oldest brewery

Note: This newsletter is a sponsored partnership between the Genesee Brewery and the Cleveland Prost.

Ed Jones replaced his father, Edward Jones, as an electrician at the Genesee Brewery. The younger Jones waited for his father to retire and then submitted his application, because he knew there would be an opening.

So in a way, the elder Jones carved a path for his son to find a fulfilling career.

“I am a second-generation Genesee electrician,” Ed Jones said. “I took over for my father (Edward Jones) when he left, which is pretty cool. He was here for 12 years after leaving Kodak.

And Ed Jones’ story is not an outlier. The state’s oldest brewery is filled with legacy employees, children who followed their parents into careers. Current brewmaster Matt James is a prime example of this. He was recruited to work at Genny by his dad.

“The brewery has been here as long as I’ve been alive,” Jones said. “It was here long before then and hopefully it’s not going anywhere.”

Ed Jones, a maintenance electrician and member of IBEW Local 86, is the latest Genny employee to be featured in the brewery’s Made for the Trade campaign.

The campaign shows the wide range of rewarding careers at the brewery. Genny employs more than 600 people and the brewing department, which numbers about 50 people, isn’t even the largest department at the expansive 28-acre St. Paul Street campus.

The digital campaign showcases careers in packaging, operations, maintenance, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, security, and so much more. It aims to show the range of careers available without a college degree, those that can be obtained through union and trade training.

More details about jobs can be found here: https://www.fifcousa.com/careers/.

Here’s a bit more about Ed:

Q: How did you prepare for your job, Ed? Was it through on-the-job training, a union apprenticeship, a college degree program, or something else?

A: I started out in the Navy as a sonar technician. And then college afterwards. I went to school for automotive technologies, but it’s pretty much a lot of a 12-volt control.

Q: What’s your favorite part about working at Genesee?

A: It’s just the array of equipment we have here. It ranges from equipment that’s old stuff that’s being controlled by timing cards and relays all the way up to the most current technology?

Q: What’s that like, having equipment in the brewery that covers so many different eras? How does that impact your job?

A: It’s fun, because it’s not the same thing day in and day out. You never know what you’re going to be working on. It keeps you up to date with different technologies. Lots of the equipment in the plant now was put in when I was a kid or even before then.

Q: What are some of the things you work on as an electrician?

A: We’re involved in some of the new upgrades going in, installing new equipment. The majority of my job is just ensuring the production lines are running, whether it’s in packaging or brewing. A lot of troubleshooting and diagnostic work, too. There’s preventative maintenance.

Q: What pieces of equipment have you worked on?

A: On a weekly basis on the packaging line, I work on everything like the depalletizer (machines that unload bottles or cans from a pallet), fillers, packaging, conveyor lines, palletizers, the whole area really. Anything that we’re using to produce beer, at one point or another, as an electrician, we’re putting our hands on it.

Q: What advice would you give someone hoping to work at the brewery?

A: Just be prepared for a fast-paced environment. You have to be willing to adapt to changes, because you never know what’s going to happen when you come in.

Q: What’s your favorite Genesee beer?

A: Genesee red eye.

Q: What do you look forward to every day?

A: It’s the variety (of tasks) and it’s a really good group of people to work with. I don’t think there are very many people here I don’t get along with. And it seems like everyone here is on the same page. At the end of the day, it’s all about getting out a good product to the people.

More about this partnership

Genny wants to hire you! By highlighting the wide variety of positions available at the brewery, the hope is that folks will see a college degree isn’t a necessity for a great career. Many of these union and trade positions come equipped with opportunity for learning and advancement.

Over the next three months, we’ll highlight some of the people behind the iconic beers in this space.

“We want to continue to attract people to union and skilled trades. There is a shortage of skilled workers, and the industry needs to attract more women and minorities. There are viable career opportunities for virtually anyone who wants to work in beer,” said Mary Beth Popp, vice president of communications, FIFCO USA. 

To learn more about working at the Genesee Brewery, go to: https://www.fifcousa.com/careers/