Young Henrys is a Sydney born and bred brew-beer company. United by the values of music, art, culture and community (and good beer), Young Henrys attracts passionate and grassroots-minded young people as it’s core drinking demographic.
Our Bambuddha member, Oscar Mcmahon, is one of the founders of Young Henrys. A commitment to giving back runs deep within this brewer, as does making a sustainable and positive impact. Oscar has a passion for preserving and nurturing community culture and working toward reduced inequalities on a local level, and we are proud to stand alongside Young Henrys in achieving these impact goals.
We chatted to Oscar about Young Henrys’ commitment to kinder business values and practices and the challenges we all face when deciding to improve on our corporate kindness commitments.
How would you define the values of Young Henrys as a business?
Young Henrys is not just a beer company. But it’s not quite a lifestyle brand either. I’d say it’s an incredible, challenging, living, breathing collection of incredible humans walking shoulder to shoulder towards a common future. We, as those who are lucky enough to be deemed as custodians, owners or leaders amongst this beer sprayed social experiment, believe that to lead we must lead from within and that to expect others to improve, we must as well.
For us to improve we must throw ourselves into the bear pit with other business owners, executives, mentors and people who actually know what they are talking about for us to constantly challenge, progress and check ourselves.
We also believe in the concept of business karma and the strength of values within a business. Now, more than ever, our kind workplace culture and dedication to corporate kindness has actually proven to be a financial value. This has been demonstrated clearly in the work ethic and the care shown to our business throughout the pandemic by our most important stakeholders; our crew.
The Bambuddha annual Gamechangers Gathering is coming up November 14. You were a major sponsor at last year’s and this year’s event – what opportunity does supporting at an event like the Gamechangers Gathering present to Young Henrys?
Comradery…and to support. There is nothing more soothing than to hear the wins, struggles and losses of other people in business reminding us that, yes, this can be incredible, yes this can suck and yes, we are all in this together.
Would you say Young Henrys are ‘pioneers’ of corporate kindness and Corporate Social Responsibility?
We consider ourselves as students, not teachers. Wherever possible, we try to remember what it is like being an employee. That relatively recent memory still guides my hand on the regular. Empathy in leadership is an important quality to nurture in oneself and this is one of the values of our company (and has been since we put beer into stainless steel for the very first time). Core values become the guiding light towards good things if the values are shared by your people and customers.
