Issues for Trillium Brewing?

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The accusations first appeared in a thread on Beer Advocate early Wednesday morning, wherein posters were discussing various gripes with the famed NE-IPA producing company. As commenters posted various theories on the brand’s supposedly changed “fermentation profile” and how it’s negatively affected Trillium beers in recent months, an account by the name of @abagofit appeared and laid out a long list of grievances from his/her time as a former employee, calling out Trillium owners JC and Esther Tetreault by name. To cite a couple of those passages:

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I can say that everything posted about employee wages and benefits being cut is true. JC and Esther have absolutely no respect for the people working for them, all they care about is $$$. Guess you can’t really blame them, it is a business after all. They are well aware of the fact that people want the “prestige” of working for a top brewery and are willing to be underpaid to build the resume. You can probably count on one hand the number of people who have lasted more than 3 years. Trillium started paying $5/hr instead of $8/hr to new retail staff right around the time the greenway first opened, so this isn’t just because of the restaurant. However, any longstanding employees of the Congress st location were indeed given a pay cut for their years of service.

Let me say that again, after working for trillium for 3+ years, employees were (after interviewing for the jobs they already had) offered $3/hr less to work the exact same job across the street. That may not sound like a lot, but that is a 37.5% cut that would be ~$6000 a year for full time staff. At the end of the day, this is not illegal, it’s just shitty.

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Compare that to the likes of Vermont’s Lawson’s Finest Liquids, which states its policy is to employ a “no-tip” model by “offering our full-time employees generous living wages with benefits,” while simultaneously donating all tips to charity.

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Trillium has however been involved with at least one blatantly illegal practice. Did you guys ever try the frozen Mexican sunrise beer? Ever wonder how they got that distinct tequila flavor? Lots of customers did too and let me tell you it was awkward as hell having to skirt that question or outright lie to the customers. At first we were telling customers that it was a wild ale aged in tequila barrels, but then customers started asking which barrels we were using. I asked the general manager, Matt Gartska what barrels we aged the beer in and his response, “Idk dude just make something up!” If you haven’t figured it out yet, there were no tequila barrels. They straight up dumped tequila into the kegs. I’m no lawyer, but I know that is illegal. Trillium knows it too because eventually they just told us to stop acknowledging the tequila flavor or to tell the customers it was “brewers magic”.

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 JC Tetreault also appeared in the members-only “Trillium Brewing Fans” Facebook group and made the following comment, saying only that the Beer Advocate thread was “unbelievable,” and promising future response. The lack of a more direct denial here of any aspect of @abagofit’s post does loom rather large.

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The Boston Globe has now picked up on the story, summarizing the content of the Beer Advocate thread while also including some more statements from employees and former employees, including one short statement from JC Tetreault.

Said one quoted employee, speaking to the flood of workers leaving Trillium after their wages were decreased following “promotions”:

“People are leaving. We had one member of the retail team at Fort Point for over three years, who, when presented with her offer, declined,” said one employee, who asked that his name not be published to protect his employment. “We’re dissatisfied because the number that we’ve been getting in our checks has dropped, and not insignificantly.”

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“We made a mistake,” said JC Tetreault, who founded and owns Trillium with his wife, Esther, in 2013. “To have people not feel valued, that makes me feel terrible . . . I’m pretty heartbroken as to how we got to this point.”

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