Say Hello to Josie

Believe it or not, it takes more than just penguin power to get our beers out of the brewery and onto the shelves of your local supermarket or favourite watering hole. Thankfully, that's where people like Josie come in. Complete with terrier instincts and a passion for craft beer of all persuasions, Josie's role at BrewDog is plain and simple – to sell beer; but more specifically to ensure fans of BrewDog in the whole of the north of England plus the midlands and Wales never have to run out of our beery goodness.

So what led someone like Josie to get involved selling beer for a libertine Scottish brewery like BrewDog? We caught up with her to ask just that:

'So far working with the guys at BrewDog has opened my eyes to craft beer – which I'm thoroughly enjoying researching – and I've grown particularly attached to our own range...it's true I weep whenever I have to hand over samples to our customers.”

In typical BrewDog style, Josie isn't like your run of the mill sales reps. No, in fact, Josie's mission isn't just to enlighten England and Wales to the wonder of craft beer but also to bring down mainframe of modern technology in the process, as she explains:

“Several people at Brewdog would probably say the weirdest thing about me is my ability to make all technology crash as soon as I am in the vicinity. James reckons I should start communicating in letters and fax but I think I should cut out all risk and send pigeons with notes attached instead.”

Collecting our recent DADI award.

When Josie isn't blowing up laptops or causing servers to go into meltdown, she's on the road trying her damnedest to convince the non-believers of the UK's drinks scene to hop aboard the craft beer express which, she ays, is becoming increasingly easy to do:

“The response to BrewDog has been amazing and since I started there's definitely been a growing number of pub and bar owners who want to support new wave, craft beer and sell something alternative instead of your usual, middle of the road traditional ales.

“When it comes to the higher strength ABVs it can take some convincing but since I love the product I'm selling it's not so much the hard sell, more just telling someone about a great beer you've tried. Most importantly, people are starting to realise that you don't need a weak beer so you can drink ten pints of it, you can opt for something stronger with more flavour and savour it instead.”

As well as being able to spend her day job talking wax lyrical about some great beers she's tried, Josie says that her job is also made easier by the level of beer knowledge possessed by followers of breweries like BrewDog, Mikkeller and so forth ; something that's almost redundant in the mainstream beer industry:

“Brewdog beers get people fired up and passionate because they are completely different from mainstream UK beers. I am always astounded at how knowledgeable Brewdog fans are about Brewdog beers and also beer in general. People get excited about the ever changing ranges we do with Abstrakt, our collaborations with Stone and Mikkeller and our stronger Penguin influenced beers for instance.”

Contradictory to the rumours circulating about our sales team, life at BrewDog is not all drinking beer, chasing Germans and throwing televisions out of hotel windows. In reality, there's a little bit of the usual 9-5 in all of us:

“An average day at BrewDog sees me working from home in the morning answering calls/emails/orders/planning routes. The afternoon is usually the fun part where I get to go to appointments and meet the funky people who by in beers for bars or wholesalers. Then I go home and plan for the next day ahead. Usually you can hear whoops or profanities coming from my office; mostly the latter. This is usually a good time to crack open a bottle of one of my favourite beers – Hardcore IPA or 5am Saint, I love them both in equal measure.”

With our brewer Jared at a Meet the Brewer Event

Finally, working at BrewDog wouldn't be working at BrewDog if Josie didn't have her own set of unthinkable plans up her sleeve for getting our beers into some of the UK's most bizarre locations:

“So far, my achievements at BrewDog in terms of the bizarre have seen me get – what are essentially rock'n'roll beers – stocked in some of the smaller, sleepier town pubs who have never sold craft beer, let alone anything mildly 'alternative'. I've got a couple of ideas under wraps at the moment but it would be amazing to have Brewdog as the main sponsor of huge music festivals instead of something like Carling since this would mean everyone would HAVE to drink craft beer, no ifs about it!”