Today we’d like to introduce you to Meghan Misset.
Meghan, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
First, I have to say that my dad homebrewed for over 10 years when I was little, yet I never had a preference for beer even in college (likely because I remembered my younger self-hating the pungent smell of malt extract and hops boiling on the stove). I have always been, though, a huge fan of cooking, healthy eating, and exploring different food cultures. Not surprisingly, I moved to Boston after college to pursue a career as a Registered Dietitian. While living in the city, I would venture out to some of the best food havens Boston has to offer and noticed that a lot of my favorite places also had a diverse selection of beers from Boston and beyond with names and styles I had never heard of. Once while we were out at one such place, a friend gave me a sip of Jack D’or saison from Pretty Things and I was hooked. I started drinking more beer, visiting breweries, researching beer styles, eventually brewed my own beers, and even took a course on the science of brewing. Beer was becoming as diverse, delicious and exciting as food was for me. I was excited when I got the opportunity to do tastings for North Coast Brewing Company at various craft beer stores all over the city in my spare time. My newfound passion lead my family in Connecticut to tell me about this new brewery, Two Roads, they visited in Stratford who they heard was looking for someone to help them out in Boston. I picked up a six pack of Worker’s Comp Farmhouse Ale on my next trip home and was blown away. I was not surprised to find out that Phil Markowksi, the famous brewer who wrote Farmhouse Ales, was one of the founders of the brewery. I emailed them thinking they needed someone to do tastings but quickly found out they were looking for their first full-time sales rep in the state. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity! It was definitely a “right place right time” situation. I started off as the Sales Manager for the North Shore, Boston, Cape, and islands and now, 4 years later, I am the Territory Sales Manager for all of Massachusetts and Rhode Island with a solid team of Sales Managers working with me. I recently became a Certified Cicerone® and I’m pretty sure I’m the only Registered Dietitian to hold that title! I’ve been trying to find others out there! I still utilize my nutrition degree, too! I help develop food and beer pairings for beer dinners, give presentations to our sales team about how to eat healthy while on the road, and reassure people that beer, in moderation, can impart a lot of great health benefits! So cheers to that!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I didn’t have a lot of experience in the industry prior to starting my career with Two Roads, so the learning curve was steep! I was ready for the challenge because I tend to thrive in high-energy, fast-paced situations and my intense dietetic internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital prepared me for anything. A small challenge in the very beginning of our launch was that I was representing a brewery from Connecticut, my home state. Many people assumed that we were all Yankees fans and regaled me stories of terrible traffic jams they had gotten into on the way to New York. It totally clouded their perception of Two Roads before they even knew anything more about us or tried the beer! Our founders’ reputations, the story of our brewery, the quality of our beers, and the variety of styles we brew certainly won people over, though! There were also many Connecticut natives like myself who moved to Massachusetts and were so excited to finally be able to drink our beer in this state. I give them a lot of credit for helping us succeed right from the start! Perhaps my reassurance that I have been a Red Sox fan since I was a little girl might have played a very small part in getting people to try our beers as well. A big challenge I came across, as most if not all women in the beer industry face, is the simple fact that I am a woman in the beer industry. I was not taken seriously and I was regularly and wrongly called a “promo girl.” It was certainly frustrating and intimidating but it made me want to prove myself even more. I was also encouraged by the incredibly talented, driven and fiercely awesome women I admire who were already present and making huge waves in the industry as well as our wonderful male colleagues who support us and help to dispel any negative assumptions. While there might have been only a small number of us when I started out, I have seen the female force in Massachusetts grow by leaps and bounds and the Boston Chapter of Pink Boots (a non-profit that supports women working in the beer industry) is now one of the biggest and fastest growing in the country! I see these positive changes as a certainty that our industry will continue to diversify and I am excited to see the ripple effects of that!
Please tell us about Two Roads Brewing Company.
Our founders are friends who for years dreamed of opening their own craft brewery. Three are veterans in the beer world with a great deal of industry experience. One is Phil Markowksi, our Master Brewer, who is a legend in the craft beer community for his award-winning beers and his book, Farmhouse Ales. Our founders’ love of beer, drive, and desire to foster a strong sense of family and community is something they all share, though. The long road to reaching their dream finally brought them to Stratford, CT in 2012. From the century-old factory building we renovated into a state-of-the-art brewery, to contract brewing for some really incredible breweries over the years, to the beers we brew, how we brew them, and the experiences we bring to the community of people who drink them – we are known for taking the road less traveled! It’s no surprise, then, that Two Roads Brewing Company gets our name from that infamous Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken.” One of the reasons why I love representing Two Roads is that we brew beers for everyone. Whether you like a bold and hoppy double IPA, a light and refreshing saison, a fruity Hefeweizen, a tart and hydrating gose, a crisp pils, a lambic-style pumpkin ale, a barrel-aged strong ale, or a coffee stout…we brew it all! Even if someone says they’re “not a beer drinker,” I can almost always find one of our beers that like and want to drink. Another great example of how we stand out as a brewery is we added two tanker trucks outside of our brewery and are now brewing our very successful and delicious “Tanker Truck series” of goses brewed with real fruit! We are also in the process of going further down that road less traveled by building a brand new 25,000 sq. ft. brewery called Area Two right next to our current facility that will be solely dedicated to all manners of experimental brewing techniques including wild fermentation and barrel-aged beers. Needless to say, I’m really excited for that next venture!
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memories are the collective experiences of summers on the Cape in the cottage my grandfather build in Eastham from the time I was born until mid-high school. We would spend hours at the National Seashore, eat clam chowder from every establishment (Land Ho was my favorite), ride bikes on the Rail Trail, go to the flea market on cooler or rainy days, go on whale watches, and walk along the picturesque downtown areas of every major town (Provincetown was my favorite place in the world).
Contact Info:
- Address: 1700 Stratford Ave
Stratford, CT 06615 - Website: tworoadsbrewing.com
- Phone: (203) 335-2010
- Email: megh@tworoadsbrewing.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tworoadsbrewing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TwoRoadsBrewing/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/2RoadsBrewing
- Other: https://twitter.com/2RoadsMegh
Image Credit:
Two Roads Brewing Company
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