Good morning party people! James here, reporting again for my third installment of BlogDBB. My post today isn’t about our next can release, the next side pour lager or #bitterboi release (although we do want to tell you about such things). No, this is about the Divine Barrel Brewing love story for Charlotte, and our quest to help leave a positive impact! This beautiful melting pot of a city has so much to give, and we feel so fortunate EVERY DAMN DAY to be able brew and serve beer to its wonderful inhabitants. We try to manifest all these ooey gooey warm feels towards our city with positive action and leading by example within the community. This is how we try to live by this philosophy:

Creating a culture of care here at DBB was relatively simple. Have you had a chance to speak with any of our owners or my co-workers? If not, then I implore you to take some time to get to know us! I’ve never been around a collective group of people that genuinely care as much about you, the customer, each other as employees and DBB as a whole. Positive change isn’t always linear, and it certainly doesn’t always have to be a grand gesture. Sure, we love planning a massive battle of the bands/block party fundraiser benefitting a NoDa non-profit like Behailu Academy. Unfortunately, those events take a great deal of planning, so how are we able to live this helpful mantra on a daily basis? That can be as easy as letting the NoDa Business Association meet here monthly to make decisions about our NoDaHood, donating a shirt and glass as to a charity raffle item or simply just buying a beer for somebody going through a rough day.

Before ending this post, I want to fill you in on some of the recent, on-going and future initiatives we’re a part of, and we would love if you’d consider helping us in any capacity! At our most recent NoDaHood Market, Ben and Dexter, our brewers, grilled cheese quesadillas and grilled cheese, and 100% of the proceeds raised from food sales were donated to Jeff Gordon’s Children’s Foundation in honor of September being Children’s Cancer Awareness Month! We are currently partnering with the Ronald McDonald House of Charlotte and have joined in on the Million Can Tab Challenge. This simple, yet easy way of helping allows for Ronald McDonald House to convert the can tabs we collect into cash, which in turn helps house families that have kids undergoing extensive medical treatments. Gavin and I were fortunate enough to visit our new friends at Ronald McDonald House a couple weeks ago, and thanks to YOU and our staff, we dropped off nearly 7 pounds of can tabs collected in under 2 months. Finally, we’ve got several upcoming events at the brewery you should join in on, like the Pinky Swear Fundraiser on 9/26 or our next adopted streets clean up on 10/20!

The point of this blog post isn’t to show you how much we attempt to do here. My hope is that you see creating positive change for your community can be super easy… if you allow it to be. Pick up that Snickers wrapper on the ground you might typically walk by. Spend an afternoon helping families break the poverty cycle with our friends from The Abandon Project. You could rescue a pup about to be euthanized instead of purchasing. My point is, do whatever fills your heart and means something to you! Until next time friends, keep striving to be the best you, and I’ll see you around the brewery for a side pour soon!