MadTree’s Mission Beyond Brewing

One of the things that has been really helpful for us and really helpful for our company, write those goals down, and then it can feel really daunting, right, because you're just getting started. But the reality is these things happen over time. So it's one step in front of the other. Just start somewhere. It will evolve.

It is not going to be the same thing that you thought it would be in the beginning, and that is okay. But if you start just putting one step in front of the other, you have to break through that, like, sort of freeze where it feels too daunting and just start moving. And it will evolve, but it's you gotta go.

Certified B corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of social and environmental impact, public transparency, and legal accountability. It's a way to drive positive change with an eye on both purpose and profit, what Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub calls the double bottom line. I'm Joan Kaupp, host of On the Fly!, the podcast that showcases founders and the investors and coaches that support them. I've been looking forward to this interesting conversation with an enterprise that has opted for a most interesting corporate structure. They are not a sole proprietorship, not a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, not an LLC.

Founded in 2013, Mad Tree Brewery is an award winning brewery rooted in Cincinnati and planted with purpose to do good. They are a certified b corporation. Today, I am talking with Rhiannon Hoeweler, the vice president of experience and impact at Mad Tree Brewery. Mad Tree is a good friend of Flywheel. You have hosted Flywheel events at Mad Tree Brewery in Oakley and the Alcove restaurant in Over The Rhine.

For all of that and more, thank you, and welcome, Rhiannon, to On the Fly!

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

The pleasure. So you hold a most unusual title, vice president of experience and impact. How did you get to this? Tell us a little bit about your journey. And and now you are the VP of Impact.

Yeah. So, I've been with Mad Tree five years. I started off as their director of strategic impact, which essentially was to figure out our corporate philanthropic giving. So we are a 1% for the planet member, which means that 1% of our sales go straight back into environmental nonprofits in our community. So think Adventure Crew, think the Cincinnati Zoo. Think Cincinnati Parks Foundation, Groundwork ORV. We really tie into the environment. And then, also, how are we gonna get involved in community? Right?

What does that look like? And then essentially get us to b corp status. So started in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. It was a bit of a wild ride. And then about two or three years ago, became the VP of experience and impact, which wrapped in marketing, HR, or what we call people strategy, private event sales.

And most recently, I pulled in the sales team onto my side of the business. So I have sort of all of those that I'm leading and also the impact work that we do within the community. So that's sort of, I guess, the roundabout way of saying what I'm doing now. Prior to that, I built my career predominantly at the zoo. So I spent over a decade at the zoo running the operations, essentially.

And I'm an environmental science major, both, undergrad and my master's degree. So I have a pretty big heart for the environment.

Oh, that's an interesting background. So thank you for that, a little bit about your backgrounds. But what about the founders? What is their story? I mean, I hear, yeah, a couple of guys in the garage, they're mixing up beer.

There could be more to it than that.

Nope. That's sort of how it started. So it was founded actually by three men. Now there's there's two gentlemen left, Kenny McNutt and Brady Duncan. It started in 2013, and the landscape looked a lot different.

So here in Cincinnati, there were probably, like, four craft breweries. Now there's probably over 60 or 70. And across the whole country, right, there were 2,300 craft breweries. There's now over 10,000 craft breweries across the country. So the market's extremely saturated.

Those two gentlemen have always had the idea of giving back to the community. We were giving back the to community before we actually even opened our doors. But I think what they were craving, right, is we were a mile wide and an inch deep. What they really wanted is what's the strategy around this? Because if we keep just, like, sort of giving a little bit here and a little bit there, we're never really going to make a dent in the community.

That was the whole reason for my position, that was created. Right? There was never a director of strategic impact before I arrived. And then that was the decision to, like, bring me in to form that strategy essentially with the environment in mind. So, essentially, our goal is to grow the company by three x and have $5,000,000 of impact along the way by 2030. And we are well positioned to do so.

So when these guys started with their beer and they had a heart for philanthropy, did they wanna be a b corp from the very beginning? I I mean, I understand that Mad Tree Brewery is the only b corp brewery in the state of Ohio. Was that always their intention, or did they start someplace else and then gravitate to become a B-Corp? And then what does it take to earn a certification in that classification?

Yeah. So I don't think that b corp was actually in their sights from the very beginning. I think that was sort of the the rationale behind giving to cancer dogs, you know, anybody who would knock on their door, essentially. And I think the the rationale changed probably in, like, 2018, 2019 as sort of and also, right, the brewery was growing at such a clip. So from 2013 to 2017, it was, like, on this skyrocketing trajectory.

They moved from a really tiny location to a very large location in Oakley. And so they were kind of hanging on tight. Right? Like, just growing like crazy. I don't think that they had the bandwidth, to be frank, to build into exactly what they wanted to see.

And then all of a sudden, right, Kraft, you know, they were like this and, sort of upwards trajectory, and then things kind of flattened out. And I think that's when they realized, like, oh my gosh. The market saturated. We're one of a million now as opposed to, like, this unique group. And I think what they really wanted to do is differentiate themselves.

When you think about our name, Mad Tree, right, it is rooted in community. And so I think we wanted to tie back into our name, tie back into the initial thoughts of being rooted in community. And so that is sort of where, like, 1% for the planet came in. We're gonna hire a director of strategic impact. We're gonna become b corp, and then brought me in to kind of lead and fulfill that promise to themselves and honestly to their staff and to the community.

So, and then to your second question of becoming a b corp, it is it is not a light lift. It took me from 2020 till 2022 to get all of the paperwork together, move through the whole process. And we submitted in June, and we did not become a b corp certified company until October. So you really kind of submit all the paperwork, and then you hear nothing for six months. And then they start sort of interacting with you again and giving you feedback on where they need more information.

Or this data looks great, but I need more here. Or whatever the case may be, they had a lot of questions. So there's a lot of iteration once you kind of go through, initial submission.

So why bother? I mean, how would you explain this to other emerging enterprises that going through the effort to become a b corp, a certified b corp, where's the return on that?

Yeah. So I think it's funny. Right? We were certified in 2023. I think it's finally like a flywheel, caught on, honestly.

I think the flywheel's caught. Right? So I think the beautiful thing that I've learned at this company is that anything that you do, it it doesn't happen overnight. It's a steady commitment to the work. It's a steady and concerted effort to continue the work.

Right? So we're planting trees, a lot of trees in the city and with our community, in neighborhoods that need it. But we're not going to see immediate results of that. We're going to see results in twenty years. And that's a hard thing to kind of sit with, I guess.

It was actually really hard for me coming from an operations background. Operations, you know if you win every single day of your life. Right? And so I I'll never forget. I also was a a revenue generator, and I went into, like, being an expense line.

And, my first budget I pulled together, I got very emotional about because I'd not really been in an expense line before. So it's a very interesting you have to be patient in this work. You cannot, there are some immediate results. Right? But, really, the big results are longer term.

And so I think in all reality, I think we we've watched this grow, and we're now starting to see the fruits of our labor. Right? Because even if, even getting b corp certification, right, you're allowed to put b corp certification on your cans and on your packaging. But the reality is you've got a lot of product out in the market already. So and then you've got to print new cans.

Right? But you don't want to waste the old cans that you have. So there's product to burn through before you can actually even, like, get it out on shelves in Kroger. So there's a there's a lot of long term play here in the work that we're doing. And I actually finally think it's starting to pay off in a lot of ways.

And to your point of, like, why b corp? Why would you do that? It's just like any other certification. Whatever is core to your company and organization, this is like a third party validating that you are actually doing what you say you're gonna do. So it's making you walk the walk.

It's also a great tool to assess yourself. So even if you didn't go through the whole rigmarole of, like, becoming a b corp, the assessment is actually free. So it's a great tool to see where your company stacks up. Now there's expense once you submit and go through the process, but the actual assessment is free and online, and anybody can do it. And it's a beautiful way to evaluate your company and see where you kinda stack up.

Yeah. That's always very helpful to have a little bit of a tool where you can measure yourself against. So you you talked about planting trees. You've talked about 1%.

There are numerous programs under your umbrella. Share with our audience. Tell us more about them. I mean, they're all pretty interesting.

Yeah. So maybe I'll start from the inside. We're very committed to composting within our spaces and sustainability within our spaces. So we composted every location, and we ask that our consumers join us on that journey. So, essentially, Oakley Taproom's the best one because the consumer has the most control out of all three of our locations in that space. Anything that we buy is compostable that they're gonna touch. So we don't even really give them a choice, right, to think about, should this go in the landfill? Should this go in recycling? Should this go in compost? It's either reusable, like dishware and and flatware, or it's compostable.

So we really kind of eliminate the decision decision making from the consumer, which is helpful for us. It doesn't contaminate the compost, but we're super committed to it. We've made the that intentional across all three locations. Can we get better? For sure.

But are we committed to it? Absolutely. I actually have an intern right now. She's working on pulling our production facilities really tight on all this stuff. But we have a couple of things that we need to continue to pull out of the waste stream.

So I have an intern right now working on it, to pull all of that stuff. We're we're actually working on shrink-wrap right now because to move kegs and and beer from one location to another, you have to have a lot of shrink-wrap. So would love to pull that out of the waste stream. I think the other thing is we're asking our consumers to take this journey with us. So every private event space that we have, so we have six in total, two at each location, we tack on to the bill a carbon offset.

And the consumer gets the choice. Right? They can pull that off of their bill. But a lot of times, the consumer says, yes. I wanna invest in the community with you.

We plow all of those dollars back into planting trees in our home community. And then once a year, we do a huge event called Let's Grow Local. We now have over 20 partners. And we get out and we plant trees in neighborhoods with less than 40% tree can be covered. So think Lower Price Hill, Bond Hill, Avondale.

We're going to the West End this year. This is the second time we'll have been in the West End. So we'll get a 100 trees in the ground this fall. But we are intentionally going after neighborhoods that are urban heat islands and that need trees desperately. We also do a program called relief where a thousand trees come into our beer garden in the Oakley location.

And we light up the nights, and then those trees are free to the residents of Cincinnati. So anybody in the 52 neighborhoods of Cincinnati can register for a free tree. We do that in partnership with the Cincinnati Parks and Cincinnati Parks Foundation. They can register, get the tree, and take it home and plant it in their yard. But the beauty of that is we also do a night of celebrating those trees.

So we call, night in the trees, and we have a big New Orleans style band. And, it's just a beautiful night on our patio, to be honest, and celebrating trees going into neighborhoods. Those trees are also open to only, for the first two weeks, they're only open to those neighborhoods with less than 40% tree canopy cover. So really trying to get trees into those neighborhoods because they're the neighborhoods that need it the most. And then finally, I guess I can touch on our volunteer work.

So we ask that each of our, employees volunteer sixteen hours a year. We set up all of those opportunities for them, and we pay them to go out and do it. So those are many of the ways in which we ask our community to take part with us, but also the ways that we intentionally drive towards better environment in Cincinnati through our spaces and our people.

And and you're also solar powered, aren't you?

We are not necessarily solar powered, but what we do is we buy green energy. So we buy green gas. We buy green electricity. Could be wind. It essentially means we're paying more.

So we just look for green options when we purchase power. This is quite this is quite the, list.

It's quite a lot that you're juggling. So I'm kinda curious. How about some of the numbers? How many people are on your staff managing all these programs?

I'm the leader. There's just me. I've not actually replaced myself. So it is me, like, organizing all of this work. However, the power is in the people.

Right? So our staff executes on all of these things. And our management team and our leadership team, like, that is part of what you're buying into when you come to work at Mad Tree. It is very explicit in our job description. Right?

You will hold your team to these hours if you are a general manager of one of our spaces. If you are a director and you have a team of people underneath you, you are responsible not only for your own hours, but that your people get their hours. It is just part of our ethos and culture at MAD Tree. And so it is me leading it and organizing it, but it is my team that is executing upon it.

So when you say you get your own hours, but you gotta make certain your team get get their hours, are you talking about the volunteer hours? Correct. Yeah. So how how do you measure success with all this? How do you measure the success of these programs?

Like, maybe the volunteer hours or your scholarship programs is good for employee recruitment or retention, or does it sell more beer? I mean, I don't know. How how do we measure success here?

I think sort of a three pronged approach, I guess, that I can speak through. So number one, on a recruitment level, this is something that literally every single person that applies to Mad Tree and is invested in coming to work for us talk about. Like, it's from our frontline, you know, front of the house team at, Parks and Rec, our newest location, to anybody who's sitting in sort of the senior level as well. You can hear it every single time you interview somebody. We love what you do in the community, and we wanna be part of that. So from a recruitment standpoint, I think we can, like, outkick our coverage honestly because we're we're small still, relatively speaking.

Right? And so we aren't gonna have the same benefits that, you know, a big corporation's gonna have. So this is the way that we have kind of positioned ourselves from a recruitment standpoint. From a measurement standpoint, a little bit of what I was talking to you about is we've grown now. When I first started, we were one location.

We're now three locations. We are kind of getting close to some of these, like, major, organizations within the city. So we probably see more people come through our locations. We probably see about 750,000 to 1,000,000 people per year in our locations. So I think there's something about this growth that we've seen, and people are starting to hear the message over and over again.

So there's this educational component that can come into play. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think there's a beautiful way to start kind of tying in that educational component. And then finally, I think, you know, we are measuring ourselves against this $5,000,000. We have to get to $5,000,000. We've promised it to our community.

We've promised it to our staff. And quite frankly, we've promised it to the owners of the company that we will get there, and we are well on our way to do that. So I think those are some of the ways. And then when I get into, like, the nitty gritty of how we're measuring, that's actually part of b corp. So one of the things that we're starting to work on with Children's Hospital and the City of Cincinnati is air quality monitors being placed in the neighborhoods that we're going in and planting trees.

So we can do pre and post and long term studies on the neighborhoods with in which we plant trees. So that is, like, really the work that is just starting right now so that we can make sure that we're getting our biggest bang for our buck. Are trees the right answer? Is something else the right answer? So that's really how we're kind of starting to focus in on some research that I'm really excited about.

Yeah. That's fascinating. You mentioned three locations. So let's tell our audience Where we can find you bricks and mortar, and where can we find you on the Internet?

So we are, in Oakley. So our original taproom is in Oakley. That's where our production facility is. It's where all of our beer and swag gets produced. We are also at Alcove by MadTree, which is down in OTR.

It's a beautiful space with a

It really is. It's a gorgeous space. You. And and the green wall. I mean, it's just yeah.

It's beautiful.

Thanks. And our newest location opened February 6. It's in Summit Park, and it's called Parks and Rec. And it is so much fun. It's beautiful.

That's a great location.

Yes. It's in an old airplane hangar.

Yeah.

So part of what we've done is reuse buildings each and every time we've built out. That's a little bit of our ethos as well. But Parks and Rec is really focused on family. So we have a lot of rec involved. There's a camper inside with posters of the national parks.

There's a playscape that was designed with and by children, some of whom are focused, in the developmental disability area. There's a program called Branch out there. So we have a calming room, an adult changing table up there. We're trying to be really inclusive. The the bar is lowered in two areas for wheelchair accessibility.

So we were super intentional, and that space is so cool because it was a big blank canvas. And then we're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. Our website, madtree.com, and we are growing LinkedIn as well. So

It's a very thoughtful, intentional corporation. Intentional b corporation. So talk to us a little bit about some short term goals, some long term goals. A lot of our audience are those who are interested in starting a new enterprise.

They are the emerging entrepreneurs. What do you have to say to them?

So our founders wrote down sort of a large goal set. They called it vivid vision. And it has been extraordinarily helpful, I think, for myself and the other VP and also our staff because we know what's in their head. And they've been very clear about their stakeholder objectives, and we are trying really hard to live up to all of those. So I think one of the things that is has been really helpful for us and really helpful for our company– Write those goals down, and then it can feel really daunting, right, because you're just getting started.

But the reality is these things happen over time. So it's one step in front of the other. Just start somewhere. It will evolve. It is not going to be the same thing that you thought it would be in the beginning, and that is okay.

But if you start just putting one step in front of the other, right, it's the old adage of, like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at time, which is terrible for me coming from the zoo. But the reality is, like, you you have to break through that, like, sort of freeze where it feels too daunting and just start moving. And it will evolve, but it's you gotta go. So I think that's that's what I would say.

Brilliant. Well, I am fascinated by all that you do. I'm I'm about the experience, about the impact. Mad Tree has quickly become an anchor in this city.

It's very beloved. People embrace it whether they drink beer or not. So thank you for all you do. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me and letting us tell our story.

On the Fly! is produced by Joey Scarillo with music composed by Ben Hammer. Recorded at 1819 Innovation Hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, courtesy of the University of Cincinnati.