Authenticity & the Craft of Brewing Beer
Every now and again you discover something well ahead of the general public that is worthy of further investigation. That is the key advantage of being a futurist – you get to spend a lot of your time just looking for signals of change. In this case it is the soon to be opened Barleycorn Brewers in Huntingdale, Victoria. A professional brewery for the public, Barleycorn Brewers provide the budding Brew-Master, home brewer and anyone else interested with the chance to create, can or bottle, and then drink their very own beer. The significance of this concept is the way it ties in with the emerging shifts in consumer sentiment that is seeing the rejection of ‘Brands’ and an increasing search for ‘authenticity’ which will require a major shift in the way products and services are pushed to the marketplace. It is something I have been suggesting to organisations for quite a while now
As a futurist I am seeing more consumers in a search for authenticity are looking for a complete understanding of the way in which a product is made, the inputs for the products, the processes used in the manufacture of those products (or delivery of services) and the values of the company providing them.
Arguably emerging from the awareness of the ‘slave labour’ and sweat shop practises of some companies in certain nations with a less established employment policies, authenticity is a move away from the mass produced one size fits all model, to one in which the ‘realness’ of a product is placed under the spotlight.
From clothing to pottery to artworks and music to food and beverages, companies that become aware of the consumer sentiment for authenticity tend to embrace accurate product labelling, policies around human rights and environmental issues and an awareness of the increasingly active involvement of consumers in terms of their product selection processes.
Barleycorn Brewers in Huntingdale is a fine example that allows the home brewer or interested person to control the entire process and it is hard to get much more authentic than allowing someone to handle the ingredients, select the recipe, brew and then drink their own beer, all with complete knowledge of the process, ingredients and taste and knowing that there are no preservatives or additives. Barleycorn are certainly not the first company to move into the space and they are unlikely to be the last. And looking at one of Australia’s fastest growing hobbies, it’s an approach likely to generate significant interest. Cheers!
China’s Gift to the world, the #CaronaVirus is not yet as severe as what the US gift to the world (Spanish Flu) was, and still signs are clear that disruption to normality is the key theme. In that the light, the Australian Football League (AFL) need to plan for crowd free rounds. Because that’s…
Read More >Potential Impacts of the Carona Virus will cascade across the globe. With deaths on track to climb quickly now that it has reached epidemic proportions of infection, the fat tail extends to the corporate sector. With whole areas of China on lock down, factories are shuttered and with it, Multinational and local firms who’ve…
Read More >Five days ago I tested positive for Covid. Here’s a bit of what the story has been like so far Tuesday was spent moving on of the offspring out of their rental property in country Vic and back down to Melbourne’s suburbs. A hot day of heavy lifting and a fair bit of driving. By…
Read More >Decision making is an interesting field of inquiry. I’m about three months in to a long term contract with an organisation working on enabling its people to be more effective and the thought that keeps popping into my head is ‘Start with the End’ When you start with the end in mind (know your desired…
Read More >There’s a little problem with food production in the world that not many people want to talk about. About half the world is being starved to death whilst we are seeing a spike in obesity due to over-consumption of food. The strange thing about that issue is that both ends of the food consumption divide…
Read More >My most recent long term client contract had me specialise in Employee Engagement, something I’d done consistently at the Senior and Middle Managers level. But this client need was across the board and at a time when major changes were occuring. With a previous survey of their staff in two states and across three…
Read More >Great to see some quality collaboration between the City of Casey and City of Greater Dandenong aimed at addressing or tackling Social Issues and importantly bridging the divide between ‘our area’ and ‘their area’ artificial boundaries. Well done to both Councils Here’s the oveview of what they’re doing. This one looks to be an…
Read More >Most people who’ve been involved in planning and strategy development will have heard of VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Emerging out of the US War College in 1987, it’s come to be more widely used by consultancies aiming to at least ‘sound smart’. But that’s not the main problem with its usage Instead…
Read More >In short – ‘No’. In days of yore manufacturing data meant jobs being done, employed people being paid, sales being made. But with robotics and off-shoring in many parts of Australian manufacturing, it’s no longer the value indicator it once was. In the US it is an even less reliable indicator because in the…
Read More >I’ve writen a fair bit over the years about the need to move futures thinking out of a theoretical approach and into a more applied model. Recently I’ve come off a 6 month project working with the Asian Productivity Organisation, an entity that brings together 20 member countries and their core government policy…
Read More >