From Beer to Buses with Dani Babineau
Public Hearing host, Joshua Croke, talks to co-founder and CEO of Redemption Rock Brewing Co. in Worcester, MA about their commitment to community, establishing a benefit corporation (B Corp) joining the likes of Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's, all the way to discussing fare free public transportation and why residents should refuse bad and inaccessible street infrastructure like Dani's puggle.
Listen to Public Hearing wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester’s NPR affiliate station. And, while we celebrate women all year round, our guests for the month of March are all women who live, influence, and/or impact the City of Worcester, MA. Learn more about our show at PublicHearing.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (01:43):
Hello Worcester and the world. Josh here, your host of the Public Hearing podcast and radio show airing Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's NPR affiliate station, which is also available wherever you get your podcasts. Our show is about inclusive and equity centered community building and exploring ways that we might create compelling futures with systems that work for everyone. We do that specifically through talking about my home city of Worcester, Massachusetts. You're listening to the Public Hearing podcast
Joshua Croke (02:18):
Today, I'm very excited to talk to Worcester resident, Redemption Rock Brewery founder, and good friend, Dani Babineau welcome Dani into the show.
Dani Babineau (2:28):
Hi Josh. Thank you so much for having me.
Joshua Croke (2:31)
Thank you for being here. So Dani, I'm excited. I'm always excited to talk to you about all the things related to the brewery related to Worcester, to community development, transit housing, all the things that we can go on about for forever. But I want to start today a little bit more about you and sharing some of your experiences with our listeners and then we can get into talking about all things Worcester and community building. So we like to invite guests to share a little bit about their social location. And when I say social location, I'm referring to things that the society that we're in because we live in 2021, America deems important things like gender, social class, race, and ethnicity various experiences and parts of our identity that that intersect with how we have navigated the world and experience the world.
Joshua Croke (03:28):
As listeners who follow the show know I'm queer and non-binary, I identify as a white American born person from central Massachusetts grew up in a conservative Baptist family, which introduced early conflicts with my own queer identity growing up. I'm a very happy uncle to a lovely young woman in this community, in this Central Mass region, who I look forward to seeing grow up in our spaces and thinking about working, how to build equitable and inclusive space so that she can grow up to be whatever she wants to be and whoever she wants to be. So that's a little bit about me and I'm excited to introduce you and hear a little bit more about you and where we are and where we're going.
Dani Babineau (04:17):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. So I am white, female, straight, engaged to our head brewer actually. I am elder millennial, which is one of my newer favorite terms. Raised middle-class fairly conservative to apolitical parents that don't like to talk about politics, nonreligious too; agnostic, older sister, and college educated with a graduate degree as well.
Joshua Croke (04:54):
Great. And so you are one of the founders of Redemption Rock Brewing, but you also hold a degree in architecture, which I find fascinating and you went to Babson for your graduate program. Right.
Dani Babineau (5:09)
Yes, MBA
Joshua Croke (5:10)
Great. And one of the things that I love about Redemption Rock is that you are a benefit corporation, and I believe you said that it's national B Corp month, so I'd love to, yeah. So I'd love to hear a bit more about that. And it's also Women's History Month. And so celebrating women generally as well as, you know, the intersection of how you as a woman are, you know, stepped into this leadership role and founded this onto this company, which I'm sure comes with various hurdles and challenges, and so excited to hear about kind of that process through the lens of a benefit corporation, what that is for listeners who might not be familiar in how that works at Redemption Rock.
Dani Babineau (05:55):
Yeah. There's a lot to celebrate this month who say the piling on of all the national months is actually cool because it's like we got something to celebrate all the time.
Joshua Croke (6:04)
Intersectionality
Dani Babineau (6:05)
That's exactly. There's always something intersecting with a month to make it a little bit special. Excellent. Yeah, so we are like all the things that you said. We're female owned, I'm the CEO along with my three male co-founders, we're actually the only men who've ever worked for this company. We've never actually hired a male or male identifying person as an employee, it's always been women. And we are a B Corp. We got our certification last September kind of right in the middle of the pandemic. It was something that we filed for the beginning of February of 2020, and then we're able to follow through on certification.
Dani Babineau (06:47):
And we're a fairly new company too. I mean we opened January 26 of 2019. So we have been open for about a year and six weeks and the pandemic hit, so now we're at about two years in six weeks, so it's definitely been an interesting and exciting kind of ride so far. But we're very proud of, you know, both the B-Corp status as well as everything that we've been able to accomplish in this community. And I think that a big part of that, we've been talking about identity is, and kind of touched on some of the things that make us special and, and especially being woman owned and kind of some of my background and a lot of that stuff. I think I've thought about it throughout this entire process, but I think that's also very much is what makes us unique and has had us given us the ability to succeed this far because especially in the brewery world, which while I think from a consumer standpoint, I get very touchy about people saying that it is male dominated from a consumer standpoint.
Dani Babineau (07:48):
Because I think that's untrue, but I think on the ownership side, it is very true. And so there's a lot of a very singular viewpoint and a singular aesthetic that people kind of do, whether it's out of comfort or just lack of creativity or trying to fit in. But we try to challenge that as much as possible. And I'm pretty cognizant of the fact that, you know, that perspective parse, which comes a lot from my particular background has been what has helped us be more unique and do something a little bit different.
Joshua Croke (08:23):
Yeah, well, and you know, I've always really celebrated the work of you and the team at Redemption Rock because of a priority on being an inclusive space. You know, the nonprofit, Love Your Labels that I co-founded and direct with, some folks in the community work with you and partner with you on our Drag Queen Storytimes in that space. And similar to some of the conversations that we have about like, acceptance and inclusion in spaces, you know, as queer folks, it is an intentional choice to go to and regularly frequent spaces based on the level of comfortability we feel there. And so that's something that I think, you know, we celebrate in the LGBTQ space for folks that I know that really love to go to Redemption Rock, but also how that inclusion and really the community that you've built, helped support you all through the pandemic. So maybe talk a little bit about that. I know that folks that I've had conversations with are like, we prioritize going to certain spaces for pickup or when things opened up to go to and patron because of that kind of commitment and that relationship, as well as the quality of like product and service.
Dani Babineau (09:41):
Yeah. And I think that's definitely something that we've seen and, you know, people talk a lot about how the pandemic has kind of caused everybody to reprioritize and, or just focus your priorities. And I think that, you know, I see that in myself as a consumer as well, that you know, where I'm spending my money even, you know, especially if you have less money right now you're making sure that the places that you want to see survive the pandemic or the places that you're supporting or, you know, you know, all right, Amazon's going to be fine. So I'm going to go spend my money somewhere else at a place that I know really needs it. And so that's definitely been something that we've seen for me, the most difficult part being a social person was being away from people and away from our customers.
Dani Babineau (10:23):
And people would sometimes leave notes and things on the receipts. And that was always wonderful to see. But now once we reopened seeing those familiar faces back and for a lot of people, a lot of our regulars we’re the only place they're going. So, you know, maybe where they would have come in once a week or once every two weeks now that they're coming in two or three days a week, or they're popping in every day after work for a beer at home just to decompress. And so we've gotten to know our neighbors a lot better. We've gotten to know you know, those people better. And while we still do get, you know, people coming from out of town, whether it's, you know, Holden the town next door, or it's, you know, New York or Connecticut or wherever people are doing a lot more driving. I think that neighborhood connection has definitely been strengthened, which is saying something, especially in a city where Worcester, I feel like it was already pretty strong, is that “support your neighbor” mentality.
Joshua Croke (11:16):
Definitely. And I love to talk about like, third spaces, like places that aren't home, it's not work, but there are places that you intentionally choose to go because you fit into that culture of that space. And I think, you know, Redemption Rock really creates an incredible third space for a lot of folks in the community.
Dani Babineau (11:35):
And that was something that we talked a lot about. I mean, I think pretty sure that's even just in part of our goals statement and things in our original business plan and that we always remind ourselves of being, and kind of talking, you know, touching on you know, talking about inclusion and making the space really a safe space for all kinds of people. There's, you know, a few things that come to mind of just things that have happened recently or having conversations with people brings me back to this. One of our core values is to exceed customer expectations and that people should always love being in our space and interacting with our brand. And I found myself before we opened, always saying like, I just want people to be here and say, I just, I love it here.
Dani Babineau (12:17):
And I want people to have a good time and not have to worry about, you know, things like bathrooms. So basically we try to remove anything that might make someone uncomfortable, and sometimes you can foresee those things and sometimes you can't, but like a small thing, I was having a conversation with someone yesterday just about how like velvet has become very trendy. And I just bought like a new velvet seat for the taproom that'll be coming in soon, but like how I like to be creative with our furniture and use different things, but I try to stay away from leather because if someone is vegan or vegetarian or just not comfortable with, you know, touching animal skin, and that's the only place for them to sit when they come in, that's going to make them uncomfortable. And it will take away from their enjoyment of the space. So, you know, you can't foresee everything, but where we can, we try to and just, you know, make it a little bit better. So you have a nicer time.
Joshua Croke (13:06):
And so your, your example that the couch is also a really important example of like how brands respond when customers express discomfort or inconvenience or give feedback on something that you might want to consider in the future that you didn't necessarily plan for, but like how you respond to people is so important as well.
Dani Babineau (13:29):
Right. And just, you know, whether or not there's something you can do about it, you know, not being dismissive and, you know, staying, you know, there's points always where there's a line that's crossed where, you know especially through the pandemic or the people's comfort or discomfort is a totally different issue. When it comes to things like public safety, but at the same time, for the most part, you know, looking for ways to constantly be better and taking that feedback in an earnest way, I think is really the best path forward. Because even if you disagree or you, you know, I get a lot of times people will give us suggestions for stuff that it's like, okay, but there's like 17 reasons why we can't do that. But like sometimes just talking it out or just, you know, having that conversation and then maybe they understand, and maybe you come up with a different idea or whatever, but I think just being open to other people's experiences and opinions is it's something that's seems very easy to do, but for a lot of people I think is very difficult.
Joshua Croke (14:25):
Right. And so on the topic of kind of customer experience and like business responsibility, talk to me a little bit about the benefit corporation and like what that looks like and why you chose to kind of move forward in that, you know, classification, which is not an easy one to obtain. And so maybe a brief intro for our listeners who might not be familiar, but also interested in some of the specifics, what that looks like at Redemption Rock.
Dani Babineau (14:54):
Yes. So we initially learned about B-Corps kind of serendipitously where we were already knowing that we want it to be an impactful business and be a little bit more mission driven than just, you know, selling beer. And so it was something that we were already kind of planning for building out. I mean, I think we'd already kind of decided to pay people full wages and get rid of tipping and things like that. Even before we learned about B Corps, it was just something that was important to us. So running our company this way was always the goal. And then we learned about B Corps and learned about other breweries for B Corps. And it just seemed a perfect fit for what we were trying to do. It's you know, it is kind of a lot for a certification to be able to, it gives you that credibility and it's kind of a marketing tool to communicate very succinctly.
Dani Babineau (15:41):
If someone knows what a B-Corp is, they kind of get the jist even like when I'm explaining it to people, I use examples, a lot of like what Patagonia, Ben and Jerry's like, so if you know what those companies are about, you kind of get what a B Corp is. But yeah, there is a lot of detail into it that I don't often get the chance to kind of go into, because it is kind of like, not that like easy, quick, it's more about like, how did we get this certification? Which everybody kind of has that same reaction where they're like, this is really a difficult thing to do. And I don't know if I'm just overly comfortable with paperwork, but I actually did not find it too difficult to do. And that's more of a takeaway that I want people to have is not that like, Oh my God, we're so amazing because we got the certification. It's more that like, no, this is a doable thing. We are a small company of seven employees. We're brand new. We were dealing with just over our first year in the middle of a pandemic. If we can do this, you can probably also do this. If it's something that's important to you. And that's really the biggest thing. But breaking down kind of what we went through in each the, so the certification is broken down into kind of five impact areas
Dani Babineau (16:58):
And it is flexible for the size of business you are and the type of business that you are. So we are a one to nine person company in the manufacturing industry. So that's kind of customized for us, but the sections that you look at our governance, which really looks a lot at transparency, which is honestly one of my favorite things to work on. I mean as the CEO of the company too, there's a lot for me to dig into there and to kind of shape workers, community, environment, and customers. And then we have to do a disclosure because we sell alcohol. But kind of going into each of those areas, I don't feel like there's anything that is too incredibly difficult for people to do, but it does make an impact. And it does benefit our community as well as kind of separate us from companies that kind of don't bother.
Dani Babineau (17:52):
And so I think that there is kind of a lot of meat in that. So just some examples kind of on like the governance section that's, you know, a basic question is, do you have a mission statement? Do you have core values? Do any of your core values incorporate, you know, social and environmental decision-making, who's reviewing those things? How often are they reviewing them? Are you training your employees on these decision-making tools? Do you have a board, do you consider who your stakeholders are? How often does that board represent or how often does that board meet? Do you have an organizational chart? Do you have a code of ethics? Do you share your financials with your employees? So there's a lot of things in there that are just built into when you're designing your company that doesn't take a lot of work to do. It's just wanting to do it, thinking about it and then executing it. And so we, like, for example, on us, we got 18.2 score out of a total of 96 points when you need 80. So that's a good chunk of our scores around just being thoughtful about designing our company.
Joshua Croke (19:05):
Yeah. As you talk about that and thinking about cities, I'm like, wow, I wish that there was a B Corp status for municipal government. And I don't know maybe for that, but wouldn't that be incredible to have the city work toward achieving certain, you know, business and like ethical standards particularly around transparency. We, our first guest for this year was Etel Haxhiaj as she was running for district five city council and Etel brought up the notion of like a budget as a moral document, like how you spend your money is a way that you show your commitment and priorities to the people that you serve, whether it's customers in a brewery, or if it's residents of your city. The way that money and resources are spent are a reflection on the priorities of that community or at least the people in positions of power in that community.
Joshua Croke (20:04):
So I think like that would be amazing and I'm sure that there are some types of like city standards or city certifications that can say, you know, we're an ethical city or, you know, the city of Worcester likes to kind of tout its human rights commission, HRC rating as being like a 100. And which is also interesting because there are kind of conflicting views as to what queer folks in the city feel should be included in that type of classification versus what actually is reflected within, you know, how people feel they're treated within the community and within the city. But I'm always about a nice seal of approval on things surrounding, you know, inclusion, equity, sustainability, things like that.
Dani Babineau (20:56):
And I think it's great from both a standpoint of accountability and you know, saying, if we want this for our company, we have to do a collection of things and that's where it gets into, I like the B Corp is flexible. It's not that, you know, you have to do these exact things, but you have to be making some kind of impact. And as soon as we got, you know, certified, it's like, okay, well you have three years to recertify. And then so we're immediately looking towards the future and going like, okay, well how many records can we get next time? And so it's both that measure of accountability as well as like a roadmap to do even better. It's not, you know, that sense of complacency is, is not really there. It's like, how do we get better?
Dani Babineau (21:39):
How do we do more? How can we be more creative with this? And I think that if you go into it, looking at it as a tool rather than you know, just that marketing piece or just whatever, and you look at it as a way to challenge yourself, I think it's so awesome. And they do make, they actually set it up that way and that they do make a lot of the accountability tools and the checklist and things available for free. And you can just, you know, kind of build up to it and then fill everything out kind of grade yourself and then submit for certification whenever you feel like you have enough points to do that, but actually you don't have to pay money until after you've been certified.
Joshua Croke (22:20):
Okay. So do you think that there, you know, one of the things that I think about relative to community development and city growth and, you know, economic, I always like to refer to economic development as economic gardening because we should be shifting the focus of how we resource development projects to really be homegrown and think about how do we support the resident population, the people who are here to create businesses to, you know, launch initiatives and projects. And you know, so I'm very passionate about that side of the economic development conversation, but also like how do we as a city and as a community, incentivize more people to take an ethical and responsible business stance like Redemption Rock takes because you're doing this because you're personally motivated to do this and how do we attract more like-minded business owners to take and root themselves in community and take a level of responsibility, both in, you know, sustainability and like climate action to really just, you know, ethical and then transparent business practices.
Dani Babineau (23:36):
I don't know. I don't know if I'm too much of an optimist, but I think it's not even so much as incentivizing people. So I guess it could kind of go either way, you can talk about incentivizing people who already have businesses to do it this way, or getting people who were more kind of that like-minded would like to do this and incentivizing them to start a business. And to me, it's about equity and making it easier for people to start businesses at all and to do a variety of things and then kind of showing that, you know, what's possible. So, like I talked about, I don't want people to come away with this with just like, Oh my God, Redemption Rock is so amazing. They did this really hard thing and became a B Corp. That's really not the takeaway I want people to have from us being a B Corp.
Dani Babineau (24:26):
I want people to go, Oh, that's cool. They did that. I probably could too. But I think that there is this, because starting a business is really, really hard. And I feel like we'd beat a lot of odds to get to the point where we were able to do it and the hardest part of doing that was A, proving credibility and then getting financing. And the only reason that we were able to really do either of those things was to do with my educational background and my personal life, carrying myself and being able to speak about the project and also, you know, perseverance and really being thoughtful about what we were doing and being passionate about it and not letting it die after saying all of that stuff too. But we were told so many times that we had the best business plan that anybody had ever seen for a brewery.
Dani Babineau (25:20):
I had, you know, multiple banks ask what tax firm wrote it for me which I always found very insulting, But like the fact that I went and did an MBA and then started a brewery is not a common thing. And having the design background to do all these things myself, I was able to do that because of the different privileges that I have. And I think that I'm kind of at that level where I have those privileges and I'm cognizant of these things, and I want to do a mission focused company. And I think that a lot of times, if you have even more privilege than me, and it is something that, you know, it was like easier for you to get started. I think it's harder to kind of see the benefit in doing something like this, if that make sense.
Joshua Croke (26:08):
Yeah. And, I think, you know, I really appreciate that perspective and it makes me kind of think about reframing my question and saying like, we know that there are so many passionate, committed, responsible, equity centered like mindset and driven people in our communities who have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised through various systems that add unnecessary barriers to things like starting a business. You know, I've said for so many years, and I know that there are some business like grant programs there are kind of small business loans, but it's never enough. How do you really bridge that gap of people having incredible ideas, but you're not just taking risk and starting a business you need to have, or build some level of personal wealth and stability in order to be able to jump into a lot of these you know, these ideas and realize a lot of your passion. So I guess the proper question is like, how do we center equity in entrepreneurship and, you know, innovation and create more pathways for folks to have access to generating wealth and being able to commit that back to the community.
Dani Babineau (27:35):
Yeah. And I mean, just like as a perspective and kind of how we got and how difficult that is. I mean, we raised and spent just over a million dollars building this brewery out. And about half of that came from an SBA loan that we fought for like three years to get, and finally ended up working with a bank that we don't love, but it ended up working though because they were the only one that would work with us after years. Took out a lot of personal loans including against like one of my partner's houses and his wife's salary. She has personal loans out for the business. We raised some money from friends and family, usually in the amount of 10 to 15 K so nothing huge. And then we got some grant money.
Dani Babineau (28:23):
So, we got as many grants as we could find from the city. And that was about 45,000 out of that. And also that grant money had to be we got that money after we spent it. So we had to spend the money from like our loans and other things. And then we got the money back. Oh, and then we did like a small refund. So we kind of went every avenue and every possibility to find money, but it's, you know, it, when you're talking about two, five, $10,000 grants for starting a business, granted we're a very capital intensive business, but it adds up it's very expensive to start a business. And if you don't have access to personal wealth or familial wealth or anything like that it really, really cuts down the pool of people who are able to start businesses very quickly.
Dani Babineau (29:13):
And then you, like you were saying, you jumped into, do you have, you know, are you working two jobs? Do you have a family at home that you have to take care of? You know, do you have kids in the school. And so all of those things are complicated. And so you end up with the same kind of people who have money or a little bit later in their life and their kids have, you know, grown up and you kind of end up with this similar pool of people starting businesses and kind of it's copy and repeat. Even if the business is different, kind of what I was saying about the beer industry is it's whether
Dani Babineau (29:42):
You're talking about, you know, an interior design or you're talking about business structure and business priorities, if you have the same type of people, always opening businesses, because those are the people who are able to you just get the kind of carbon copies of each other.
Joshua Croke (29:57):
Definitely. I was having a conversation with actually the end of last season or between last season and this one I did a collaborative episode with Molly and Sarah over at the Pop It Podcast. And we were nerding out for a little bit on like the concept of like a universal income and what that means. And obviously there are a lot of like thoughts around the politics of it and the actual resourcing of the whole quote unquote where's the money come from conversation, which is a separate conversation. And important one, obviously for thinking about how would we go about implementing something like that. But I think the notion that people would not do things if they were given a monthly stipend to live and exist, I think is a very pessimistic outlook on people's desires, motivations, and what people do when they're passionate and also supported in and given the agency to explore things that they might not be able to do otherwise.
Joshua Croke (31:01):
Right. I think that that would propel us forward as a community so significantly because if, you know, I can use my own experience as an example, like there are things that I would be doing and spending my time on differently if I didn't have to generate money to pay for my basic living and expenses, and even just having the fear that something might not work out and how that might compromise your ability to survive is such a staggering fear for so many people that it causes people to not take action on doing things that they're really passionate about.
Dani Babineau (31:40):
Yeah, absolutely. And that's another thing is I'm very not risk averse. And so it's very easy for me to take that risk and do that. But like I have heard from many friends who were like, Oh my God, you're so brave to do this. Oh my God. Like, I could never do that. And I'm like, why? And it's because of those, those exact things that you're saying. And even like the idea that like, if I had, you know, my basic needs and income covered, it's like, cool. So then I could just pay myself less and then put that money back into the company and continue to grow the company, hire more people, do more things. Like if you have that baseline covered where you don't have to worry about surviving, then that opens up like worlds of creativity of what could I do with all, you know, all of that other stuff.
Joshua Croke (32:24):
Absolutely. So I want to bring this conversation into connecting to community as well, and like really how we create ecosystems that support community you know, community health and thinking about things like the connection to other businesses and building kind of partnerships and relationships with community, as well as like residents. And I know something you and I have talked about in the past is like walkability and transit and really creating livable, accessible neighborhoods. You know, I love talking about the concept of the 15 minutes city, where from any point in a city, you have access to things like a grocery store, healthcare, various, you know lifestyle type spaces, third spaces, you know, within walking distance from anyone's apartment or home. And so how do you fit Redemption Rock and the partnerships and community work that you do kind of into the framework of building community you know, through community power, community health,ike those various kind of considerations.
Dani Babineau (33:35):
Yeah. I mean, I definitely have a lot of opinions and thoughts kind of on that public transport and walkability, which I feel like as well it's related. And I think that I would love to exist in that city and that 15 minutes city and have people being able to, you know, walk here easier or take the bus or ride their bike. And right now where we are with Worcester it's just not there. I mean, I mentioned during the pandemic, we do have a lot more of our close by neighbors who just aren't going anywhere else and either have discovered us or are coming here a lot more. But, and we do try to be that space where you can hang out all day. And part of the reason we have as big a space as we do, which it's our whole space is 6,000 square feet, about half of that staff room space.
Dani Babineau (34:24):
And it's big because I hate not being able to get a seat. I hate going into place and it's just like, I have to stand against the wall. There's no space. So it just worked out really well in the pandemic is having all this space, but I think we want to welcome people to spend a day. You know, and I, we talked a lot about, you know, you can come in and, you know, spend four or five hours doing work and use our wifi and having coffee and bring your dog and hang out and then meet up with friends and have drinks. And to being able to be used as a transitional space and a space where you don't feel uncomfortable taking up the table for the day or whatever has definitely been something that's really important to us, as well as being, being able to support larger community events like the Drag Queen Storytimes, or fundraisers or other nonprofit events. We were doing things before the pandemic hit, we started doing stand up comedy nights to support local standup comedians.
Dani Babineau (35:22):
And we started doing cinema nights on the last Sunday of every month. We were partnering with Cookie Lady's Daughter doing her cookie decorating classes. So like doing things. For us partnerships are way better than coming up with our own ideas. Although after the pandemic, I have a year's worth of ideas that I'm eager to get started on, but I like a partnership more than just, you know, something that we created on our own. And I think saying yes to other people's ideas and doing something collaborative is way more interesting and way more productive, I think. But yeah, I think to get kind of back to the walkability piece of it too, I think that that is one thing that is definitely missing in the city is being able to, I mean, I walk to work sometimes because me and my fiance share a car and we lived downtown and it's about a 35 minute walk. It's about a seven minute drive and about a 45 to 50 minute bus ride with public transit and it is in the city.
Joshua Croke (36:21):
Isn't that insane? Isn't that absolutely crazy. And I had this conversation too with folks is, you know, and I'm here in supportive of like the Fare Free WRTA effort of, you know, public transportation should be free and accessible to members of the community who need to use those methods of transit, but they also need to be efficient. You know, I had someone, yeah, go ahead.
Dani Babineau (36:43):
I got into a whole conversation about this with, I forget his name and if you listen to this I’m sorry, but he's like the guy who's trying to do the fair free thing. And essentially, and I completely converted because that's exactly where I was. I was like, great, like fare free, you know, it sounds nice, but we really need to increase, it needs to work. We need more routes. We need more buses, et cetera. And essentially, so they get so little funding from fares and the majority of their funding comes from the state or from wherever it's coming from that is not fares. Like miles of the amount more, it's like 1% or 2% comes from fares and the rest comes from this other funding. And all of that funding allocation is based on ridership. So we can't get more funding to increase the routes until we increase ridership. So doing free fares is one way to increase ridership. We are going to need to get more people riding it in order to be able to get more money, to be able to expand the service. So it was kind of a catch 22, but now I'm like all in on free fares, because if we can get home by taking a bus, great.
Joshua Croke (37:48):
I am so there for fare free and it's also, that's the other thing of, like, I know that funding and resourcing is an issue and I've had conversations in the past with the former now former head of the WRTA about some of the challenges with, you know, you don't get a lot of money from fares, you know, it's about ridership. But also talking about, how do we think innovatively about restructuring, what public transportation looks like, because there's a whole variety of things that come forward with public transportation and like bus systems. Part of it is people's bias about like who quote unquote rides the buses, right. And that is a community issue
Dani Babineau (38:31):
That is so bad. And Worcester is worse than any other city that I've ever experienced. It's crazy.
Joshua Croke (38:36):
Yeah. And it is really bad here and it's not dissimilar from a lot of other communities. And the other thing is like, are we really looking at this like a responsibility to our citizens, right? Because if it takes someone seven minutes to drive, but 50 minutes to take the same path on public transit, that is like an inaccessible system by definition. Right. I had a guest on our show last season, Frankie Franco, who works with the city and does a lot of advocacy around youth accessibility in the city. And he talks about when he was a young person going through Worcester public schools, he wasn't able to maintain a job that he had because of how long it would take on the public bus to get from school, to this job. So like, I think people need to hear some of these very tangible stories about how it impacts people's ability to have and hold jobs and, you know, help support family and do this. And because of how inefficient the system is.
Dani Babineau (39:46):
Yeah. And it's like, I would love to hear people in the city complain as much about the lack of bus routes as they do about the supposed lack of parking.
Joshua Croke (39:55):
Yes. Oh my God. I am so here for that conversation. Because I got rid of my car now, four years ago, I have not owned a car for four years. And I have to say that now with the caveat of my partner and I pretty much share his car. But I still walk and bike a lot of places in the city and people are like, Oh my gosh, you walk from the bottom of Shrewsbury Street to downtown Worcester every day for work. I'm like, yeah, it's a 12 minute walk.
Dani Babineau (40:27):
Yeah. People like who know where I live downtown and I'll walk to like BirchTree or Crompton in the canal district, which is, it's literally I've timed it because I've had that conversation with people. And it's like 11, 13 minutes and they’ll be like, Oh my God, I saw you walking. That's such a long walk. Or they're like, what are you doing over here walking? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like normalize walking.
Joshua Croke (40:51):
Seriously. Well, and also like, that's another, you know, chicken and the egg scenario that I often would get into conversations with people, you know, in the city or at public meetings, things like that is like, well, you know, more people drive in Worcester than walk. I'm like, and that's by design. We shouldn't not be prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists and people because we don't see many of them because we've created unsafe conditions for people to feel comfortable using that method of transit. You know, like when I walk through the winter in Worcester, I'm always thinking about it is a good thing that you know, I have like full mobility and I’m able to jump over snow banks if I need to, you know, like wheelchair users, women and parents with strollers, like do not have that ability to navigate our space.
Dani Babineau (41:47):
I have carried my 45 pound puggle over giant puddles before because he refused to walk through them because they were like up to his knees just on a street corner.
Joshua Croke (41:59):
So, we need to be more like your puggle.
Dani Babineau (42:02):
Yeah.
Joshua Croke (42:03)
Refuse bad streets.
Dani Babineau (42:05)
Yeah. And it's just absolutely wild. And like, we should just, people complain about parking; just take it all away.Take it away, make it harder for people to park and then maybe they will use alternative transportation, but we don't have any.
Joshua Croke (42:22):
Right. Well, and that's the other thing it's like, let's look at the modern forms of modality and like, you know, there's various belief systems out there around car share like services like Uber and Lyft and et cetera, but the algorithms and like the intelligence that we've built around creating at service transit methods, like is something that could be extrapolated into the public realm and talk about, all right like, I love the concept of having buses on major through ways. And then for the one to two miles out from those various points, having some type of car share service, or even like scooter share bike, share type programs that allow people to navigate to those main thoroughfares.
Dani Babineau (43:14):
Even looking at like I, my sister is an ESL teacher and she's lived kind of in a lot of different places. We'll like, look at places where like, it's more of a necessity. So I think it was when she was in Ecuador and they have all sorts of public transportation and there's like layers of it where you, like, you can jump in a car, which that's what that reminded me is essentially, it's just like a car share service kind of like a taxi car share kind of hybrid thing where you're going to jump in and you stay where you're going, and then they take you there if it’s along their route. I didn't even whenI spent some time in Thailand in Chiang Mai and they had essentially pickup trucks with benches in the back, which, you know, safety standard, but that was essentially what they do, is they would be driving by you'd flag one down and be like, okay, I'm going to downtown. And they would take you and they'd be like, this is the fare for that distance. You'd be in the back of the pickup truck with a bunch of other people. So I think looking at, you know, not just the same model and looking beyond like Boston, I feel like it was always just looks to Boston and like, can we be Boston or can we not be Boston? I'm like, how about we be a little bit more creative and look at other models and other systems.
Joshua Croke (44:23):
Absolutely. And one thing that I've been pushing for years is like, let's acknowledge that we can be a truly innovative city. You know, we have 12 plus colleges and universities. We have an incredible diverse culturally rich community here in the city that is thriving with ideas and have been limited in how they're able to not only just share those ideas, but how those ideas are able to be considered, adopted and funded to implement. You know, I've talked about for years. Why aren't we focusing on getting Worcester involved in the autonomous vehicle industry, talking about how are we thinking about rebuilding our streets as we go through all these development projects, not just adding bike lanes. Yes. I want bike lanes. Absolutely. I'm a biker, you know, in the city. And I want that, but also how are we priming our streets and things so that innovative companies and innovative ideas that are nurtured here are able to be supported and developed.
Dani Babineau (45:33):
Yeah. It feels like we're like afraid of leadership and afraid of innovation. Like it's almost like sometimes we want to wait until 10 other places have done it and it's working there for 10 years and then we'll try it. But at that point, like, okay, then it becomes dated, whatever it is that we're trying out. And like, why can't we just think of new ideas and have some fun with being a city and like, and do cool things and, you know, be innovative about it. I don't know why. I mean, I guess there's, you know, anybody who is experienced as politics is probably like, well, no, we can't do that for all of these other very important, but boring reasons. But I think that having, you know, a little bit of optimism and some fresh blood and looking at things in a fun way, like you're saying, it's like, Worcester did all this great stuff around, you know, getting to space. And we have some really cool companies and things that we pioneered. Why can't we pioneer something else? Like autonomous cars or whatever else it might be.
Joshua Croke (46:32):
Absolutely. Totally. And so we have about five minutes left, so talking about the future. What's on the horizon for Redemption Rock. And what are you looking forward to in the next few months? And years ahead?
Dani Babineau (46:47):
I have a lot of stuff that I'm excited about this year. We're starting to get, you know, that little bit of a feeling of things are starting to go a little bit better and, you know, it's not, you know, waiting for the bottom to drop out. We seem to be moving in a positive direction. So definitely excited to start having events again, like I said, I have a bunch of ideas from the last year of things that I want to do this year. So kind of towards the end of, you know, end of summer, going into the fall and winter, trying to look at you know, what can we do around the events? We're going to be partnering with Powwow and doing a street festival. We're doing a lot of art this year. We just finished the first mural in our bathrooms.
Dani Babineau (47:27):
We were doing one a month, Lena McCarthy and Sophie Tuttle just collaborated doing the first one. We're going to be putting some art outside on the wrapping, around our new patio. We're going to kind of continue to spruce that up as well as try and activate more of our outdoor space this year. And then we're also adding an espresso machine too this spring and trying to kind of finish this space somewhat to where we wanted it to be when we were first getting open, but ran out of money. So we've got a few projects coming in the works there. And then the next few years, I mean, it feels like we're kind of getting back on track. And so, you know, we'd like to continue to innovate around what a brewery is and what a taproom is and kind of how people relate to that and how we can kind of merge that idea with other third spaces as well, and look to inspiration from other cultures and look to inspiration from other businesses as well. And just kind of see how else we can add to the city.
Joshua Croke (48:28):
Awesome. Well, I am very excited to be able to regularly be back in the space for events and things like that. I've definitely ventured into the taproom over the past few months because I feel like it's an incredibly open and safe space considering everything that's going on. And I'm interested as to what gathering is going to look like now over the next year or two, and you know, being someone who is so comfortable and misses walking up to a stranger, who's like wearing a cool outfit and being like, can we have a conversation? Can I buy you coffee? I'm interested to see how that will be received.
Dani Babineau (49:14):
Just spontaneity. I mean, I think there's kind of, it's basically, you know, the dichotomy of are people going to continue to feel very cautious or is there just going to be this release and everybody's just going to want to like hug each other up.
Joshua Croke (49:26):
Right. Right. Well, we will see. And Dani, thank you so much for coming on the show and chatting with me. It's always a great time. And so if people want to find Redemption Rock in the real world in the virtual world, how do they do that?
Dani Babineau (49:42):
So in the real world where you're located at 333 Shrewsbury street, although very importantly, our entrance is on the right side of the building on Putnam lane. Our website is Redemption Rock.beer. That's it. And then Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, RR_ brewing co. And also if you go on our website, we should have a list of kind of spots you can find us outside of the taproom too. We are in a few distribution locations around Central Mass and also in the Boston area.
Joshua Croke (50:14):
Yes, my partner's dad lives in the Burncoat neighborhood and regularly visits his local package store now to pick up Redemption Rock beer.
Dani Babineau (50:23):
Yes. Actually the guy who owns that package store called like the next, he was like, “I had a regular, who came in right after you dropped it off and bought two, four packs.” I was like, “yeah that’s Tony.”
Joshua Croke (50:34):
Well shout out to Tony. And it's so great to see Redemption Rock on the shelves and places in the community. And I highly encourage any fans of beer as well as great coffee to check out Redemption Rock. And I'm sure we'll have Dani on the show again. I really value these conversations. So thanks again. Thank you so much, Joshua, great talking to you.
Dani Babineau (51:19):
Thank you so much, Joshua, great talking to you.
Joshua Croke (51:19):
Thank you for listening to Public Hearing our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station. If you're not in the Central Mass radio range, you can tune in live via their website at WICN.org. And remember you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to Dani Babineau for coming on the show. I always love our discussions. I'm your host, Joshua Croke. And this has been the Public Hearing podcast. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! by Design. You can learn more about us and how we support organizations through equity centered design at actionbydesign.co that's dot C O and not dot com.. Our audio producer is Giuliano D'Orazio. Thank you to Eric Graton and Molly Gammon and Shaun Chung, who also support the production of Public Hearing. Also, we would love to hear from you about what you might want to hear about on the show or what resonated with you from a past episode, you can get in touch with our team on our website at publichearing.com. And as always, thanks for listening.
