Podcast: Why One Nashville Brewery Is Paying 100% of Employees’ Healthcare Benefits

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Welcome to This Week in Benefits, a new biweekly podcast from Mployer Advisor, the company that is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance advisors online.      

In each episode, our team will bring you the latest news and industry updates in the world of employee benefits. We will break down top headlines, bring you interviews with top industry insiders, and highlight market trends and stories we’re following.    

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Show Notes      

Date: July 27, 2022      

Episode Season and Number: Season 1, Episode 9      

Episode Title: Why One Nashville Brewery Is Paying 100% of Employees’ Healthcare Benefits

In this week's episode, Abbey Dean sits down with Wesley Keegan–the Founder, Owner, and Brewmaster at Nashville, Tennessee-based Tailgate Brewery–to discuss his decision to dramatically expand his company’s comprehensive employee benefits plan. Keegan also details how his team communicated these changes to his employees and the complexities involved in expanding benefits coverage.  

To listen to Episode 9 of This Week in Benefits, click here.      

Additional Recommended Reading      

Tailgate Brewery’s Announcement  

Compare Your Company’s Benefits  

Bernard Health  

Episode Transcript

Abbey Dean: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits. I'm your host, Abbey Dean, Mployer Advisor's Head of Content, and thanks for tuning in today. So I think I say this at the beginning of most of our episodes now, and it is always true, but I am especially excited for today's episode because I was able to speak with a local employer here in Nashville, Tennessee, where Mployer Advisor is headquartered. So I found out about this employer recently when he and his company announced that they would be paying 100% of their employees' healthcare benefits. Now, that is an extraordinary thing, and of course I was instantly curious to know how this came about. Was this something that this owner's competitors were doing as well? Was it a way to attract and retain talent? What was the story behind it? So I was lucky enough to be able to get a hold of this local businessman.

His name is Wesley Keegan. He is the Founder, Owner and Brewmaster at Tailgate Brewery here in Nashville. They have a few other locations too, but they are mostly Nashville-focused. So I did a little bit of research and it turns out that only 1% of employers with 100 to 499 employees in the Southeast pay for 100% of benefits. So this puts Wes in a very small percentage and is an incredibly interesting case study. So he was very gracious and very open with his time and walking me through his decision-making process. So without any further ado, here is my conversation with Wes.

Abbey Dean: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits. We have a very special episode today and I am very happy to be joined by Wes Keegan. Wes, would you like to introduce yourself?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, thanks, Abbey. Excited to be here. Yeah. I'm Wes Keegan. I'm the Founder and sole owner of Tailgate Brewery here in Nashville, Tennessee.

Abbey Dean: And you have how many employees and how many locations?

Wes Keegan: We have five locations today, plus a location at the airport that's kind of through a partnership licensing type deal. So that would technically be number six. But since we don't own it, we have five. They're all brewery tap rooms, and we have about 170 employees today.

Abbey Dean: Excellent. And when was Tailgate founded?

Wes Keegan: So that's kind of a long story, but the short, the shortest version is we opened here in Nashville in 2014.

Abbey Dean: Okay, so you guys are still a relatively new business?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, I mean the part of the longer version is, I've been at it since 2007, so I've got 15 years under my belt, which makes me one of the old dogs in the game because it's a very young industry. But yeah, I mean Nashville had, I don't know, maybe a dozen breweries when we opened up and it's still a very small part of the local brewery scene compared to other major cities.

Abbey Dean: For sure. So for everyone wondering <laugh>, why I'm interviewing Wes, Tailgate made a very exciting announcement. I believe it was at the end of May. Mm-hmm. Or start of June. So Tailgate announced a big change to their benefits package, specifically the decision to not only pay for 100% of healthcare benefits for their team members, but to also expand that coverage to every team member. Is that correct?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, yeah. So we're a production brewery first with supporting tap rooms. So we have people that work in the brewery, we have offices, we have art, we have marketing, we have bartenders, bar backs, kitchen team members, pizza makers, all that kind of stuff. And everybody was eligible for 100% paid benefits.

Abbey Dean: And this is full-time employees, I'm assuming?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, we've trying to figure out the right way to identify that. And what we found was the lowest number that we could find nationally for hours worked to qualify for 100% healthcare was like 30 hours, I think there was one 29. So we settled to 29 hours a week as that metric to get people eligible. So yeah, that's our metric. It's much lower than what the benefits provider wants us to be doing, but we wanted to make it a reachable number. It was a really simple conversation to the point of when we told the team, hey, this is a complicated discussion, and there's a lot of things that are going to be difficult and we need to work together to figure it out. But what our goal here is to just very simply say, Hey, if you work here, we pay your benefits period. So we want everybody to hit those hours. And when you apply, that's one of our first questions is can you work 29 hours because we want to make sure that you're qualifying for healthcare, and we want to pay for it.

Abbey Dean: And I think I know the answer to this question already, but I'm assuming this isn't something a lot of other breweries or even restaurants or other companies like yourself are doing benefits-wise?

Wes Keegan: No, no, I don't know all of it. We did some pretty good market research. Maybe a company like New Belgium might be one of the couple on a national level. There are some exceptions. Hey, there's a craft brewery in whatever city that has three employees and two of them are the founders and another is their employee. So a 100% of their company gets 100% of healthcare. There's those types of outliers, but 50-plus employees all the way up. Not to our research, no. And for that matter, when we launched healthcare with 50% coverage we used to pay 50% medical, 100% dental and vision, and then 100% telemed. Even that was unique. And especially on the restaurant side, it's just, it just doesn't exist. And if it does, it's an unattainable number, have to work 39 and a half hours a week and you know, miss it once and you're dead kind of thing.

Abbey Dean: So tell me about how you arrived at this decision. If it is not because you felt the need to compete with what other competitors are doing yourself to attract or retain talent. How did this decision and idea begin?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, I mean it's interesting and I think through the lens of a benefit-centric discussion I guess I'll back up. The answer is it's not any one thing, it's everything. But some bigger points to directly answer your question. We kind of found over the years that even when we launched healthcare, it really didn't matter to most of our team members. Even when somebody never had healthcare before and it was like, Hey, hey, we're going to pay 100% of your dental and vision. They just like, it didn't factor into their overall evaluation of compensation. And we would have conversations where it'd be like, well hey, this place down the street said they'd pay me $0.25 more an hour. And you know, would see new on the restaurant side, you'd see a new restaurant open up and they would highlight really big wages, but they wouldn't have the hours or breweries would be looking for part-time. But in Tennessee, we're probably the highest-paid brewery in Tennessee, and we're definitely one of the highest paid breweries in the United States. I haven't found a competing wage that really goes above us. I mean, it's an arms race that you can't win but the benefits were never something that really kind of added to the total hourly rate for a team member. So it wasn't something where it was like, hey, this is good, but this would mean more to somebody. It meant more to us as an organization, I think is the short answer.

Abbey Dean: I see. So one of the ideas we're seeing a lot in the benefit space right now is with the rise in inflation and then of course the Great Resignation happening right now a lot of companies if they're unable to increase salaries, are looking to increase their audit change, their benefits packages. But you're saying that wasn't necessarily the case here, is that correct?

Wes Keegan: No I mean not really. One of the things that we talk about is our business plan is very simply we want to be the best brewery in Tennessee. And the way that we talk about that internally is if your goal is to be the best brewery, you need to have the best beer, you need to have the best food, if you have food. You've gotta have the best people. You've gotta provide the best service both to the guest and to each other. But for a workplace, we also talk about, hey, we appreciate our people here, and it's important that we have candid conversations that when we say we appreciate you, we show you that by the way you're compensated. I mean, that's how businesses show appreciation. We talk a lot about when we have twice a year all company meetings, and this is something that's starting to resonate more and more, but I tell people that this isn't a family.

All of us have that one family member that's like, Hey, I don't know if I really wanna claim that person. We all have that weird family. This ain't, that is a job for all of us and myself included. If we weren't paid, we'd be off doing something else. And if we didn't have to work for a living, we'd probably be on a beach or a mountain or wherever tickles are fancy, but the overall compensation is our obligation to the team member. And that's something that we want to make sure is improving and is continuing to be out and ahead of what people can find somewhere else. Because we've been growing and we've been growing well and they should feel that too.

Abbey Dean: You also decided to expand your financial benefits as well, I believe. Is that correct? Increasing your 401k match to 4%?

Wes Keegan: Yeah, so we had a 401K for years and these things are super expensive and that was one of those things that we found that just kind of doesn't exist in our space either. And I talked a lot with everybody about, hey, we want to create a match, but it doesn't quite make sense. And then there's a lot of different things. The average employee doesn't recognize the laws that surround these things. They have what they call discrimination laws, and it's specific to the point of one department can't have this benefit without another department. And that's pretty hard to do when you have so many different types of what we call team members.

So figuring out the match was a real challenge for us for a really long time. And we told everybody around the holidays last year that, Hey, we're launching a match, stay tuned for how we're going to do it. And it was really, really difficult, but we were able to officially get that off the ground and commit and make those contributions to everybody. So we told them that they were getting the contribution, but about the time that we made the 100% healthcare announcement, we did catch up and get everybody matched and say, Hey, this is live, we've told you it's live, but here's the money in your account.

Abbey Dean: I see. The other part of this I thought was interesting is that if, going back to the health plan for a moment, if employees aren't currently enrolled in Tailgate sponsored plan, then they are given a cash stipend equivalent until next year's open enrollment. Yes. Is that correct? Okay.

Wes Keegan: Yeah.

Abbey Dean: How did you come up with that amount?

Wes Keegan: So the stipend is equal to what we would pay if you were enrolled. And so let's use an example. So say you Abbey, work for us at Tailgate Brewery and at the time of open enrollment or your qualifying event, which again is super complicated and super confusing. And to the point of this doesn't exist in our industries. Even people who are experienced employees or who have been in this workforce, in this industry, whether it's a brewery or a restaurant or similar for the last 15 years, they may have never been down this road. So they don't understand things like open enrollment or qualifying events or Hey, I don't need benefits today, but I'll just sign up later. They just don't understand how that kind of stuff works. And that's kind of back to the, hey, this is complicated but also it's a personal piece to where during open enrollment, say you, Abbey, were on our team and you said, Hey, I can't sign up for benefits because I just simply can't afford it or I can't sign up for benefits because I'm healthy and I don't really need it and I'd really like to have that extra money in my pocket.

Whatever your personal reason was. I know for a fact we had at least one person that made a decision like that and they weren't going to get to be able to sign up until the renewal or open enrollment at the new year. And that's not that person's fault. So if Abbey were that one person and you look around and it's like, Hey, cool, the company's paying a hundred percent healthcare, but I would totally sign up for that now I just can't, because legally there's no open enrollment or qualifying event. So now I get a miss out on benefits for the next six months. And so what we said was we want to do this in advance of open enrollment because we know it's going to be difficult, we know it's going to be bumpy and we know that there's going to be things that we haven't thought of before as we're rolling this out. But we also recognize it's not your fault that maybe you didn't sign up originally because you didn't know that it was 100% paid for. So we're going to give you the cash equivalent and if you can sign up on open enrollment, then you pardon the Obamacare, what is it? The National Care Act? Mm-hmm.

Abbey Dean: Affordable Care Act

Wes Keegan: Thank you so much. Which is awesome. But some people might be signed up for that and that stipend can help them pay for it. And then when our open enrollment opens up, we've told everybody, we expect you to enroll. If you choose not to, then the stipend goes away. But it was more just like our acknowledgement of we need this time as an organization to figure this out and whatever your reason was, it's not your fault that you didn't choose to enroll because it didn't exist before. So we created a stipend.

Abbey Dean: I see. I like that. It is a very confusing process. As someone who was in the industry, I am still often confused. So same. That makes a lot of sense. When you announced this change, this more comprehensive benefits plan, what was the employees? What was the reaction?

Wes Keegan: So I'm the only owner. I'm the Founder. I'm a pretty highly motivated individual. I'm always working. So I think that a lot of the team members can be pretty shy, especially the ones that I haven't really gotten to know, the ones that I've worked with and we've got a lot of tenure. The ones that know me were very comfortable coming up and saying, Hey, this is really awesome. The feedback was generally quiet initially, and we kind of started asking the team like, Hey, does this resonate? Are people looking for this? And we found that people were really excited about it and we kind of found why and that sort of thing. But then what was really interesting too was our guests were excited about it and we've never been short staffed even through the pandemic the last couple of years, and we've always had a lot of applicants.

We we're really proud of our wages and what a great place to work it is. But in that announcement, we got a lot of applications and as the dust has settled and we've talked about it more, I found that people shy us to talk about it wasn't anything to do with me or anybody else, it was just they didn't understand it. So we had to really talk about what do benefits mean? How to enroll, how does this apply to you? Because everyone's an individual and this applies individually. So the more that we've made this just simple point of conversation, the more that people have talked about, Hey, this is really great, and thank you very much for doing that.

Abbey Dean: Do you have an example of what one or two of those conversations would be? And I only ask because benefits communication is actually a huge issue and oftentimes problematic throughout the industry. And so if you had an example you would want to share of a conversation like that, I think that could be really helpful.

Wes Keegan: Yeah, sure. We made a flow chart pretty early on, a really simple flow chart of, hey, who's eligible? And we shared it. We used a group kind of text platform for everybody. Obviously we do emails and face-to-face and everything, but for really short, high-level discussion, we have a group text app and we put this flow chart out there and it's pretty self-explanatory. But then we were talking to some of our supervisors and one of them said something like, Hey, the people that aren't going to be eligible for this are starting to feel targeted that they're not going to be around, well, hang on, targeted is a really scary word. Targeted for what? And it's like, well, if they can't do 29 hours that they're not going to be able to work here. And it's like, no, that's pretty clearly communicated in the flow chart too.

I mean, if you can't do 29 hours, that's okay, but you're not going to be able to be eligible for it. And we'd like you to be, we'd like everybody to be, I mean, that's our commitment. We want 100% of people to be qualified and on healthcare that we're going to pay for plain and simple but here's how this applies. And we've actually just physically pulled out the flow chart and just walked through it with people and for whatever reason, I mean, think it's just part of people learn differently. So sending out a text isn't as effective for 170 people where maybe half those people are visual and you just have to sit down and go through it with them. So that's been a big benefit. And then we also have had some conversations where there's a lot of personal concerns where it's kinda like, Hey, is this going to affect is there a mental health program or something like that?

And it's like, yeah, absolutely. We've learned years ago that that's really important to our team. And we've asked through our open enrollments to make sure there are mental health coverage options available to our team. And the second that the Roe v Wade announcement came out, I put a message out too that we'll continue to have these conversations as it pertains to reproductive rights too, and make sure that to the extent we can include that in our benefits based on whatever the laws are going to be, we're going to prioritize it just like we did years ago with mental health and those types of things, just performance coaching. The more you talk, the more it's just people and it's not negative. And so that's kind of just been the way that we've tried to approach everything and we found that we're not perfect at it, but the more we practice, the better it's getting.

Abbey Dean: Well, and it sounds like you've hit upon the main thing we often find in benefits, which is knowing your population and then catering your benefits plans no matter how comprehensive to what that population's needs. So it sounds like you're hitting upon that quite well. I understand it's a work in progress, but

Wes Keegan: Yeah, I like to think so. But it's always a challenge that we have when we talk to our managers. Inevitably we miss one. And those are really a bummer where I'm a good communicator personally, but I'm not going to have a one-on-one with 170 people every week. It's physically impossible. Because I'm a good communicator, doesn't mean that we're all good communicators and it doesn't mean that our method of communication resonates. So it is really something that we have to prioritize. And it's something that we really try to emphasize as much as we talk about, Hey, we're here to make great beer, but you know, can't do that if you're not helping each other.

Abbey Dean: So in the press release, which is how I found out about this wonderful new addition to your plan, you're quoted as saying "paying a hundred percent of benefits for all team members has been a dream for a long time. And it's something we decided to make a reality. There's an incredible cost, endless amount of red tape and administrative challenges ahead, but it's worth it. Benefits this don't exist in most industries and we're thrilled to help add it to ours." I love that. I think underscoring, highlighting, exclamation point, endless amount of red tape <laugh> and administrative challenges ahead is correct. But my other question is why was now the time to do it? What was it about now that made it the right time for your workforce?

Wes Keegan: So one of the things that we talk about with our team is when Covid hit and we started figuring out how we're going to navigate Covid, we were very candid. We had meetings and those types of things, and we said, Hey, our goal coming through this, we're going to stay open. We're going to move to takeout. Our market allowed us to pivot like that, but our goal in these kinda decisions we're going to be making is going to allow us to grow. And that that's our goal coming out of it. So we don't know what's ahead, but we're going to do one thing and we're going to grow. And as we talked about stuff like this, I mean, growth doesn't just mean open more tap rooms. It doesn't just mean hire more people. It doesn't just mean a couple of people can make more money. Growth as an organization means you've gotta just do things that you weren't doing before.

And if you want to have any staying power and you want to be able to continue to attract talent and you wanna be able to bring smart people in and help them do their job, you've gotta grow and you've gotta make sure you treat them that way. So I think a lot of those factors were driving forces for us making this decision today. Again, we knew we wanted to go into it next year, but we needed the time to figure it out. And we also just kind of found that as much as we're hit up about, Hey, you know, guys should buy a billboard here and this will be really good to drive business to your brand, it's really expensive. And I don't know that our team cares if we have a billboard out there. And I'd so much rather that money instead of being on the side of a freeway, be going towards the people that are actually helping us grow.

Abbey Dean: When you were thinking about the logistics and realities of this idea and you had questions about how to make it happen, who did you turn to?

Wes Keegan: I mean, geez, everybody. I mean, again, it's a very slow thing. We've been working on it for a very long time. We have a really good relationship with our benefits provider. We work with Bernard Health Benefits here in Nashville, and they're probably getting the language incorrect, but they're like a broker to be able to provide benefits for your company and you know, talk to people like them. You talk to the people in-house, who have been helping us administer different benefits throughout the years and what's been working and not you talk to our HR people, I mean, just all of the above. We've got three really smart women that kind of run everything at the top for us. And we just sat down and just laid it all on the table and said, Hey, here's what we want to do and here's how we're going to do it. Poke holes in it.

And it's our Chief of Staff and Director of Finance and Operations Administrator and the people that really make the world go round for us and the four of us just sat in a room and then tore it up. And then after that we started inviting our Marketing Manager and we asked her what she thought and then our Brand Manager and just started adding more people to the conversation and then took it back outside again and said, Hey, what do we think about this and how do you make this work? And we kept hearing outside, Hey, this is really great, but people don't do this, so I gotta think about it. And it's cool, but I don't know if I have a good answer for you. So it's kind of been unorthodox just because it doesn't exist.

Abbey Dean: Yes, it doesn't exist. We did our own research and we found that for the southeast and restaurant in the restaurant industry about 1% or less. So very much in the minority, but in a very positive way. I would venture. Appreciate that. Yes. Is there anything else that you think is important to mention about this decision or employee benefits in general that you want to talk about?

Wes Keegan: Yeah I mean, tons, right? I mean, again, it is complicated. As you mentioned, the whole red tape portion, one of the pieces we're really trying to help our team understand is that the red tape is stuff that's just 100% out of our control. And we went to somebody on our team and just said, Hey, how's your workload? You know, still drowning. Great. Here's more <laugh> and we're going to make this harder, and then we're going to add more individual circumstances to this and we need to find ways to communicate it. And then we need people to recognize that this is a benefit because we've also experienced in the past where somebody signs up for healthcare for the first time and they think it's great, but then they go to the doctor's office and they still have a copay or they go to a doctor that's out of network.

Ours is a lot broader than now than it was five, six years ago, but they end up having a bad experience and then it's like, Hey, my job did this to me. So it's super, super complicated and we're trying to help our team understand these are all things that are largely out of our control and they're creating costs, but they're efforts that we're decided are worth it. And I think over the course of a couple of years of doing this, it's going to be pretty simple and people are going to look around and be like, geez, I wish that we had this figured out. You do. But it's going to take us every bit of that to get to that point, and it's going to be pretty painful for a while. The world of benefits is, it's so personal and it's so restrictive just by the way that it's created and it's so remarkably expensive that the deeper you get into it, it's, it's not a very rewarding thing until you need it. And we learned in the last couple of years just how desperately people needed it. And when somebody said, Hey, I'm going to be outta work for the next two weeks, but I can't afford to go to the doctor, that's something that we wanna make sure isn't happening anymore. So that's why those pains, like you said, are not going to be pains eventually, but very worth doing.

Abbey Dean: Indeed. Well, maybe we'll do a checkup in the next six months or a year and see how it's going and if there's any other lessons we could learn from all of this, I'd be very interested to see the kinds of questions your HR department gets too.

Wes Keegan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the more questions the better, right? Yeah. What's worse when you don't get questions and then you kind of assume that everything's good, but then somebody thinks that they've got a bad experience and it's the company's fault. That's the hardest part is soliciting discussion. But we were saying earlier, it's kind of one of those things that we have to be the driving force to that discussion because just when we put the announcement out and it was really quiet, it wasn't that they didn't have questions, just they didn't know where to start. And I think that's one of the things that we need to continue to try and lead by example as just another one of those things that's going to make this a difficult thing for us to do.

Abbey Dean: Mm-hmm. Difficult but worth it.

Wes Keegan: 100%. 100%, yes. 100%. Yeah. Not complaining whatsoever, but no, it's difficult. Yes. I mean, there's, the thing that's interesting is we've even learned that insurance companies don't even necessarily get excited when companies do this. So it's like, okay, that's something we never thought about before. I'm glad that we've baked in the time to figure out why and how we can make this a good experience all around.

Abbey Dean: Indeed. Well, thank you so much, Wes, for being so open about your decision-making progress and what this means to your company and just being so forthcoming. It's really wonderful to talk to you, and I wish you and Tailgate all of the best of luck.

Wes Keegan: Hey, thanks.

Abbey Dean: It doesn't sound like you need it, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Wes Keegan: <laughs>. We always need people swinging by and grabbing a beer, pulling a six pack off the shelf. I mean, that's what we tell everybody that tries to celebrate with us. Like, Hey, this is great. Wish you guys all the luck. We don't need luck. We need you to go grab a pizza, grab a beer put a t-shirt on. That kind of thing. That is the reason why we're able to do this, and we're very hopeful that continues, and we're very fortunate that it has for so long that we're able to be here today. So do grab a beer, do grab a piece of pizza, and help us tackle this because that's the only way it's going to happen.

Abbey Dean: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Wes Keegan: For sure. Thanks, Abbey.

Abbey Dean: Thank you.

Abbey Dean: That wraps up today's episode. Thank you again to Wes for giving us your time and sharing so much about your business with us and our listeners. If anyone has any other ideas or any or know of any interesting benefits that employers offer, please let us know. Leave us a voicemail message, send me an email, find me on LinkedIn, anything. We would love to highlight other employers who are doing wonderfully curated and thoughtful benefits for their employees. So let us know. Also, if you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Please leave us a review. It helps so much. And of course, again, if you have follow up questions to this episode or past episodes, please let us know. Thanks for listening today, and I will see you next time.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits, brought to you by Mployer Advisor. Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance brokers. Our intuitive platform connects employers and employees to get great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for your company's specific needs. To learn more about Mployer Advisor and our suite of products, please visit our website at mployeradvisor.com and tune in next time. Thanks.

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