One of the first things Andrew Godley, the founder of Parish Brewing Co. in Broussard, Louisiana, will tell you is that no one who works at his brewery has any previous brewing experience. It’s not that he hasn’t found applicants with practical brewing experience in the past, but he’s found that hiring people with other backgrounds has helped his brewery grow, think differently, and make the kind of impact on the marketplace that has helped it stand out.
“In general, I like folks with fresh ideas, [folks] who innovate, [folks] who aggressively push boundaries,” he says. “We don’t have the mindset here of ‘Oh, that’s the way something should be done’; we never say ‘this can’t be done’ or ‘this is what the text books says.’ We make our own mistakes. That’s how innovation happens. No boundaries. No mental barriers about how things are supposed to be. And folks who come from other breweries already have the perspective on how it’s been done at another place and that just doesn’t work.”
He walks that walk. He was working as an engineer in Pittsburgh more than a decade ago when he realized that he just didn’t like working for “The Man.” And on a trip back home to rural Louisiana, he realized that there was a complete lack of a beer scene (save for Abita Brewing Company, which had become synonymous with craft in the state). In Pittsburgh, he had been introduced to a robust beer culture, including many small breweries that were cranking out ales and lagers that captured the excitement and innovation at the time.