Our Journey

Dear Stakeholder,

Our enterprise experienced remarkable growth from Fiscal Year 2006 to Fiscal Year 2008. Net sales and income before income taxes more than doubled. Our philanthropic funding, which is at least 5% of our pre-tax earnings each year, followed suit. We increased our full-time employee base from 782 people to 1,152 people. We added two new production sites, one in Vermont and one in Tennessee. By every measure, we are growing quickly.

Growth, as with any change in the status quo, generally triggers some amount of self-examination. How did we get here? Where are we going and how are we going to get there?

As a values-based business, we ask these same questions —and our commitment to social and environmental responsibility adds another layer to the process. How do we address the management of our ecological footprint while growing at these rates? How do we manifest our commitments across a growing family of brands? How do we maintain the best aspects of our corporate culture and welcome new ideas as we spread out across new geographies and welcome more and more people into our enterprise? It is more apparent than ever that we must continue to prioritize key sustainability opportunities and challenges alongside the demands of a fast-growing business.

Rapid growth presents us with tremendous opportunity in the area of social and environmental responsibility. As our enterprise grows, the resources we can leverage in service of our social and environmental mission grow as well. This means we have more funding available to support our grantmaking, employee volunteerism, and in-kind donations programs. With more resources, we can explore and pilot additional new initiatives that will help us achieve our social and environmental goals.

As we grow, we are able to reach more people with our brands, products, and ideas. We are able to share our experiences with, and learn from, more people today than we could yesterday. Growth gives us the opportunity to bring more voices into the conversation we try to create every day about where we’re going and how we’re getting there. And that makes for a better result.

It is the voices of our stakeholders —your voices — that have helped us succeed so far. And it will be your voices, asking hard questions and encouraging us to make good choices that will help us continue to succeed together.

This document is a brief summary of the results of our social and environmental responsibility programs in FY ’08. Please visit us at www.BrewingABetterWorld.com for a much more comprehensive presentation.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our company and our efforts to brew a better world. We invite you to join us on this journey.


Mike Dupee
Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility