The state's economy is slowly re-opening, and that spells profits for many businesses, including breweries. But some local brewers say more can be done to help their taprooms succeed.
According to Rob Burns, president and co-founder of Night Shift Brewing in Everett, the removal of capacity limits for restaurants does benefit breweries like his, though his taprooms are not even close to their capacity thanks to social distancing guidelines.
Burns says one of the major challenges is a a state requirement that patrons must buy food if they order a drink. For Night Shift and other breweries, they were able to either cook on site or bring in food trucks to meet the requirement. But roughly 25% of the state's breweries couldn't do that and have remained closed throughout the pandemic, Burns said.
Even when food trucks or kitchens help meet the requirement, it's still cutting into the bottom line.
"What ended up happening for our business that we saw is people ended up ordering less beer," Burns said. "You know, they walk in with $20. They would maybe before order two beers. Now they're ordering one beer and a hot dog. We're not making money selling hot dogs — we're making money selling beer. So it kind of had a negative impact on our overall business ... We're hoping that can maybe be lifted in the near future."
Despite this, Burns said that he and his staff are starting to see a light at the end of their tunnel. The group recently received an order for 50 kegs of their IPA from a local restaurant, a sign to them that the industry is starting to breathe again.
We also heard from Dr. Ilona Goldfarb, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Goldfarb has been fielding a lot of questions recently from expecting and new mothers about the safety of the coronavirus vaccines. She talked about what we know and don't know.
Click on the audio player above to listen to the full episode.
Segments:
Dr. Ilona Goldfarb - 2:44
Rob Burns - 16:34
