RISE Brewing Co recently expanded its dedicated executive team with the addition of Asheville-based, Abby Redick as Director of Sales, bolstering RISE Nitro Brewing Co.’s commitment to a fully remote team structure.

Redick joins the RISE Nitro Brewing Co. team after working as the Senior Regional Account Manager for Health-Ade Kombucha where she learned the ins and outs of what it takes to make it in a competitive drink category, and the fast-paced cadence of a startup beverage brand. “After working for Health-Ade Kombucha for a little over three years, I was ready to make a jump back into the brand building phase again and luckily, the stars aligned with RISE.” When asked about working remotely, Redick says, “as RISE continues to grow as a company, being remote-centric allows us to broaden the pool of talent of people we want to join the RISE team. And for me personally, I am thankful that I didn’t have to uproot my life from the beautiful mountains of Asheville, NC.”

Over the years, RISE has organically developed into a remote working culture. Starting in one of the co-founder’s NYC apartments, RISE quickly moved production to another co-founder’s Connecticut garage – and then down the street to their first brewery, splitting the founders between Connecticut and NYC. Once they launched on the West Coast, RISE recognized the importance of building a West Coast team to strengthen its presence in the area, thus RISE Nitro Brewing Co.’s Co-Founder and CEO Grant Gyesky moved his family of five to Bend, Oregon to support the market. Now, with the hiring of Redick, RISE Nitro Brewing Co. has put its final stamp on being a remote team, with 75% of its employees working remotely. Ryan Williams, Director of Finance and Special Projects likes to think of RISE as semi-remote. “We see each other pretty often for trade shows, a quick flight to meet, etc., so it feels like the optimal balance of not being in person all of the time and having pointless meetings but not being so distant that personal relationships suffer.”

By focusing on results instead of hours clocked in the office, RISE Nitro Brewing Co. is able to give its employees the opportunity to have a “work hard, play harder” mentality, and more time for their personal endeavors, which is similar to what it’s trying to give customers. According to Gyesky, “Grabbing a can of cold brew from the fridge on your way out the door may save you 10 minutes over running a hot drip cup of coffee during one of the most time-crunched parts of the day.” Remote working has given RISE employees more flexibility with their time, allowing them to work when they’re at their best.

In true RISE fashion, the team has used its remote working culture to its advantage. According to RISE Nitro Brewing Co. COO, Melissa Kalimov, “Our remote culture has allowed us to go deep and be local in markets across the country – and, as a company that has half its team in the field visiting accounts, it forces us to be deeply digital in our communication and helps reduce the feeling of separation between our teammates whose work is computer-based vs. field-based.”

As he works from a plane 40,000 feet over South Dakota, Gyesky concludes, “We live in a unique time where technology has afforded us the ability to work from anywhere at any time. To not incorporate this into our lives and our corporate culture would be like riding a horse to work."