Santa Fe Brewing Co. has taken the sentiment “we’re all in this together” to heart.

The brewery is giving 100% of the proceeds from its taproom sales to its hourly employees. Forty of the brewery’s 72 employees will benefit from the program.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty on how all of this is going to work,” said Jarrett Babincsak, vice president of Santa Fe Brewing Co. “How long is it going to be for people to actually see the unemployment benefits? What are the unemployment benefits going to be? What are the processing times going to look like? So our thought process was, we don’t know and our people are scared because they don’t know. We’re going to take care of them until we’re all certain what the best way to handle this is for everyone.”

The response from the benefiting staff was that of surprise and gratitude. Some also shed some tears.

“It feels really good as an employee to work for a company with an owner, our owner Brian Lock, who takes care of our people this way,” Babincsak said. “Our hope is that it sets an example that other people can follow and our staff, who have given so much to us, really understand that we have their back and feel supported at a time where I think everyone is feeling pretty vulnerable.”

All of Santa Fe Brewing’s taprooms are open from 3 to 7 p.m. daily. Location information can be found at stage.santafebrewing.com. Patrons are asked to call ahead with an order so it will be ready when they arrive. Available for purchase are the brewery’s packaged products to include craft beer, seltzer and cider, as well as merchandise such as hoodies and gift cards. New growlers can also be purchased and filled with a customer’s beer of choice.

“We’re following the same order details that everyone else are as far as social distancing, how many people we can have inside to pick up the package to go,” Babincsak said. “We’re asking people to call their orders in ahead of time that way we can have it ready and staged so we can get them in and out as quickly as possible when they do show up to pick up their beer.”

In addition to the brewery’s popular craft beer, it recently released two seltzers and two ciders that are available in six-pack cans.

“It’s called Santa Fresca, and it was really inspired by the agua fresca drinks that are really popular in the Southwest,” Babincsak said of the seltzer. “It is an all natural fruit concoction, so we’re using apple in both of them and then we’re using lime juice in one and lemon juice in another. They’re both made with a hard apple base, and then we add real lemon and real lime juice during fermentation, so it’s all natural product made with real ingredients.”

There is a cider to please more traditional palates and a cider to appease more adventurous taste buds.

“One, we’re calling it straight-up apple, for the your traditional cider lover,” Babincsak said. “(It is) kind of not too sweet, not too dry, kind of the middle of the road, and then we have one we’re calling tropical punch, which is guava, lime juice and apple, so it’s got more of a tropical flavor to it. It’s pretty good.”

Courtesy of Albuquerque Journal. Written by Rozanna Martinez. Link to original article: https://www.abqjournal.com/1439142/all-in-this-together.html