Genesee: Made for the Trade, Volume 5

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.

Terry Bailey’s first job at the Genesee Brewery wasn’t a glamorous one. But it was vital. And it demonstrated the team-first mentality he’s carried during his 27-year career at Genny.

Bailey, who now works in the brewing department, cleaned, filled, and prepped kegs for delivery. That included removing and placing bungs (basically a stopper-like seal) in kegs. Not particularly glamorous, but it was also a foot in the door.

That’s the attitude Bailey has brought into the brewery every single day.

Bailey, the mixed blend lead in the malternatives side of the brewery, is the latest Genny employee to be featured in the brewery’s Made for the Trade campaign. Bailey organizes, blends, and stages flavors for the brewery’s line of Seagram’s Escapes flavored malt beverages, as well as overseeing the schedule to make sure the right products are being produced with the right ingredients.

“I’m still a brewer at heart,” he said.

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 Terry:

Q: How did you prepare for your current job? On-the-job training, a college degree, a union apprenticeship?

A: On-the-job training. Basically, it’s all been about learning as you go, trial and error, because I’ve worked in this new department. I moved over to the malternative side about 12 years.

Q: What was your first job at the Genesee Brewery?

A: My first job was working in the racking room, kegging beer. Basically, you’d drill the bung out, inspect the barrel for cleanliness, fill the barrel, put the barrels on the pallet, put the pallets away, and then load them on trucks later when they came in.

Q: This is well before lots of tasks became automated and robots were introduced, right? This was how packaged draft beer.

A: There was no warehousing. People would come in and they didn’t have kegs, they wouldn’t get beer. And that’s when you would de-bung the keg and send it through the keg washer. Then at the end you’d be at the light-out and inspecting barrels, making sure there was no debris in them. If they were good, you’d let them go down the conveyor into the racking room. We would switch. Every day, you’d do a different job, so it wasn’t monotonous. There were three spots on the keg washer, two spots in the rack room, and two spots on the palletizer. Everything was manually done. There were no robots. Each keg got handled about 15 times before it was actually on the truck.

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Bailey worked in the rack room for five years before becoming a kettle operator at the brewery. “Changing starches to sugars” as he puts it. He also washed tanks.

Q: When you work at a brewery like this, it has to be good to know there are opportunities to move up. So what advice would you give to those seeking employment at Genny?

A: There’s a 100 percent chance of moving up. Matt James (the current Genesee brewmaster) and I worked side-by-side. He wanted to move up. I came from managing grocery stores and wanted nothing to do with it. (Bailey chuckles.) Every good team needs people who know their roles. My best advice to someone coming in to work at the brewery, don’t expect everything to be the same every day. If you don’t like change, this is definitely not the place for you.

Q: What are some of your favorite parts about working at Genesee?

A: Just the day-to-day changes. Today you might be doing something and tomorrow it’s completely different from what you were doing the day before.

Q: What’s your favorite Genesee beer?

A: Beer itself, red eye. The flavor is the best for me.

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

A: The history and the people. From where we were when I started and we weren’t sure if we were going to make payroll. To the point where we’re doing super great. There have been so many ups and downs. I started in 1995 and the doors were closing back then. There has always been a fear of this place closing. But somehow we’ve always managed to survive. You get hard-working employees, good management, it’s a good fit.

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/