I mean that literally, I will work for beer. Or rather: I have worked for beer (and will happily do so again).
I’ve been following the microbrew Lakeside Beerworks online for a while. I’m quite fond of craft beer (and a homebrewer with zero spoilt brews) so when Facebook told me I should like their page, I complied.
They seemed to have things nicely in place: a modern (dare I say hipster) logo, a growing community of fans, good beer reviews at festivals and the like. They, however, didn’t have something that my friend and I could help out with: a good website.
So one I just sent them a short message:
A couple of messages later, we established that my business partner and I – who had something in the line of web design skills – didn’t have something that they had: a boatload of good craft beer. Long story short: we’ve got a couple hundred bottles of delicious beer and Lakeside Beerworks has a shiny new website.
On bookkeeping
Some of the considerations that played a part in our decision of swapping our labour for alcohol:
We had to document this.
We had expenses of time, domains and web-elements that we needed to purchase, so it couldn’t just go off the books altogether.
We had to be okay with it being net-zero on our books
Meaning, the income of beer (converted into monetary terms) should be equal or more than the expense of creating the website (in money or time spent). Or the gains in getting the beer at cost (or more thereof) should be counterweight to the lost productivity of working overtime, purchasing items for the site and getting sauced. Lost productivity is perhaps a haughty placeholder for “evenings which most people spend by watching telly”.
We had to be okay with what we’re getting
This goes without saying, but if we had a gaping hole in our books (equal to the price we usually charge to design a similar website), we couldn’t fill that hole with something we have no need for. Businesses and charities shouldn’t make the mistake of accepting in-kind contributions, volunteer skills, or other business resources that they don’t need and which won’t contribute to their efforts. As mentioned, we’re beer drinkers, so we were more than okay with the contribution to our efforts.
It makes a great story
An okay blog post and a great bar story. Especially if your friend just ordered a Lakeside Hefeweizen.
Lakeside Beerworks
Go ahead and check out their website, like them on Facebook and find their beer at their distributors (or at the apartment in Cape Town for another month or four). Here’s a screen grab of their site:
Footnote: no disrespect was meant or any support implied for the horrible, now-outlawed: “Dop system”.
