How Iron Horse Brewery packs agency, collaboration, and self-expression into each can of beer
Iron Horse Brewery has always marched to the beat of a different tuba. Recently, the company introduced its plans to switch things up and introduce new cans. (They’re gonna have black tops, which is kind of cool.) Don’t worry, Irish Death is not changing, but everything else is. In making the announcement, the oft-idiosyncratic brewery introduced us to a new term: holacratic.
Iron Horse Brewery says that it adheres to a holacratic management system, which replaces traditional hierarchical structures with self-governing circles that decentralize authority and decision-making. Instead of managers, power is distributed among roles within these fluid teams, allowing individuals to act on their roles’ purposes without needing permission.
But what about the new cans?
“It’s a strange self-management system with perks and drawbacks just like every other management system,” said the announcement from the brewery. “The perks include a sense of ownership over one’s work, collaboration and freedom of expression. But the primary drawbacks are that accountability is sometimes difficult to enforce, communication between circles is often lacking and bigger business decisions can move slowly since the circles are always seeking alignment.”
That’s a mouthful, and it’s just about the most serious thing I’ve ever heard Iron Horse Brewery say. The brewery goes on to say that it is probably the only brewery to follow a holocratic management system.
“It’s pretty sweet to have an accolade like that, I guess,” said Iron Horse. “It’s like ‘WE’RE #1…’ but also we’re the only one. Kind of like getting a Guinness World Record for something nobody else does, like heaviest train pulled with a beard, or most eggs crushed with the head.”
Ah, there’s the Iron Horse Brewery I love. It’s all a verbose way of introducing those new cans that I was talking about a few paragraphs ago. “Here’s an example of a slow-moving decision: NEW CANS. In January of this year, so like, almost a year ago, we started what we called the ONE CAN TO RULE THEM ALL project…”
“It’s a long story, but here are the highlights on what it took to get a new can:”
- We were tired of sitting on mountains of expensive printed cans.
- We were tired of guessing how many printed cans to order, since each can was specific to a beer that we had to forecast the velocity of.
- Meetings to discuss the pain points.
- We had the idea to instead use ONE CAN TO RULE THEM ALL and make individual labels we could wrap on it.
- We didn’t want to just use the default silver “Brite can;” we wanted something unique, cool looking, and that could work for both the Death Family Series AND other IHB beers (lagers, IPA’s, pales, pilsners, etc.)
- Meetings to discuss ideas.
- We got some inspiration from similar can designs in the market.
- Riley sketched out some basic designs to get feedback.
- He (I) thought it looked cool to have a skinnier label to stand out from other labeled cans.
- Meetings to discuss the sketches.
- We consulted with three design teams who proposed base can designs.
- Meetings to discuss what we liked and didn’t like about each proposal.
- We eventually narrowed it down to one design team and went back and forth with “final” revisions several times.
- More meetings.
- We talked Jake, the head brewer, into spending a few extra pennies per can to get black lids on the black can.
- Thank GOD we’re done!
- Wait, shit. Now we need labels…
“Long story short, we’ll have some sweet-looking cans hitting shelves in January, filled with FUDGE DEATH.”
So, to summarize, Iron Horse Brewery is about to introduce new cans for everything but Irish Death. They’ll have black lids. Cool. The new cans provide consistency across the family of beers and require only a simple sticker/label to identify precisely what is inside. Until now, each different beer had its own distinct, printed can. And the brewery got tired of looking at mountains of those expensive, individual cans. Now it will just have one mountain of cans, usable for everything, except Irish Death, which is not changing.
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