Julia Herz laid off from the Brewers Association
USA | The cancellation of its 2020 events means the Brewers Association (BA) will lose 70 percent of its annual revenue. It has had to resort to staff lay-offs and Julia Herz is among the 24 already made redundant.
Before the covid-19 pandemic, the BA was a well-staffed organisation. More than 60 people worked on behalf of US craft brewers. In 2018, the not-for-profit BA had revenues of about USD 30 million, according to its latest filing. Because the current pandemic and economic crisis has hit the BA hard, it has had to make one in three of its staff redundant.
The BA’s President, Bob Pease, said on 26 June 2020 in a statement: “Despite our best efforts to weather the impacts of these events through cost-savings measures already implemented, the recent shift of the festival portion of the Great American Beer Festival from the annual in-person gathering in Denver to an online experience, combined with the cancellation of all our 2020 events and the subsequent loss of nearly 70 percent of our annual revenue, has forced us to make the difficult decision to make further reductions to our staff.”
As the BA’s craft beer programme director, Ms Herz, 52, has been one of the faces of US craft beer for more than a decade. She saw it grow from 1,800 breweries in 2010 to more than 8,300 today. Adopting the roles of educator, speaker, author, advocate and image creator, she has helped promote small and independent breweries, and has been a hallmark of the organisation’s marketing efforts.
According to her LinkedIn profile, she will now be focusing on HerzMuses Enterprises.
