Pros
Truly the best quality and flavor of beer in Memphis. Wonderful to have two taprooms, also great pay for the kind of work that it is. Very forgiving schedule, taproom hours are realistic and wonderful. Lots of opportunities to engage with the beer and expand your beer knowledge, as well as connect with the community and beer as a whole. Access to beer and knowledge of beer
Cons
As with all growth, I think Wiseacre continued to struggle with the taproom/ FOH feeling the same company as the BOH/ office. While I was only a bartender, I care a lot about spaces and the agency of the worker. The thing I noticed most often was the ways in which the core culture of a renegade local taproom diminished in importance for the sake of volume and expansion. Middle management was always strained with how much there was to be done. There was always a need to remove and discipline bad bartenders, and very little investment from upper management in the lives and wellbeing of taproom employees. There is an awkwardness of working in two different locations, much of this because the pay is greater at one, but the culture is better at the other. Broad is all that you want from a brewery. It's homey, it's small, and it's meant to be enjoyed outdoors. The downtown location demands that bartenders care less about the beer culture or education (originally a core value) and instead focus on volume and order accuracy. The new location is beautiful, in a modern art kind of way, but it is a tourist attraction. And the space does not seem to be repaired and kept pristine for the caliber of the building that it is. Hard to know what the expectations of you are as a bartender, while always feeling that the work of making a culture be healthy and strong comes second. There was always an attitude of "people are lining up to work here" but also no bad apples were ever terminated or disciplined. When there needed to be changes made, it often felt performative and punitive against the collective rather than boundaries set and individuals at fault PIP'd.