POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Notes

Pubs started declining massively in revenue as people stopped going out from concern of catching COVID-19 and through lock-down restrictions. The first small batch of hand sanitiser was made by the head of quality for personal use of staff at the Young Henrys Newtwon Tasting Bar, Sydney. A customer saw it and asked about it. Shortages began to occur as the demand for hand sanitiser escalated. The hospitality industry was shut down across NSW and the impact forced Young Henrys to stop production of beer in kegs. Keg sales had accounted for the majority of their operating revenue until that time; this declined drastically. They had 80 employees and stood down the majority except for a skeleton crew to maintain the facility. After receiving several requests for hand sanitiser from the community (eg pubs and bottleshops, local police, Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, Camperdown), Young Henrys set about producing sanitiser in large quantities at a loss. To start production, they had to buy glycerol and were able to either buy ethanol, which is about 99 per cent alcohol, or were able to make it. They wouldn’t be able to sell kegs for three months minimum so they started distilling kegs, turning what would have been a waste product into a blank alcohol they could then make into sanitiser. They made three batches of around 600-800 litres of hand sanitiser over a six-week period. Local charity Two Good, which supports women who are survivors of domestic abuse, ran out of hand sanitiser and contacted Young Henrys; the brewery already had a good ongoing relationship with them. Young Henrys gifted all of their shelters with 500 mL bottles. They also filled a few thousand bottles that Two Good could sell online to help raise money. A few journalists heard that Young Henrys were making hand sanitiser and the brewery was interviewed by The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Triple J, Radio National and FBI Radio. Throughout the March-June period of the pandemic, Young Henrys’ bottleshop sales started climbing, likely due to positive press about the company. The Newtown tasting bar reopened on 1 June 2020 when NSW eased restrictions. Production of kegs resumed in early July. (Campbell Bickerstaff and Jo Lyons Interview with Oscar McMahon, 30.07.2020) Quotes from Oscar: ‘In a recession people are going to be looking for value. And that can mean you can drop your prices and give someone that value or you can actually give them company values so that when they are buying your product, they're voting with their wallet. People are doing everything to support businesses that are doing something rather than the person who's doing nothing. People are actually savvy enough to make those decisions in this current market.’ ‘If you can do some things that make your people feel proud of the place where they work, that's a really important thing. There are consultants getting paid millions of dollars around the world, coming in to fix team culture and do you know what? You can just do some cool shit and people will buy in.’ ‘Across the whole hospitality industry, there was so much heartache, there was so much sadness. But also no one was taking it personally, and there were these amazing messages of support and love.’ ‘I think a lot of the reason that we have been able to get through so well is that we actually felt so much love and so much support from so many customers. So many customers during this pandemic have said, 'Look, we're not going to be buying any products from Lion or CUB or Asahi, we're just going to buy our products from Australian companies that employ Australian people. That has been a really nice sort of shift…’