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Unlike, say, Coors or Budweiser, which are associated with professional sports and largely male activities via their advertising campaigns, craft beer breweries like Rising Tide don’t target their beers to one gender.
“Every brewery makes choices about how they want to portray beer to their audience,” said Sanborn. “For our beer we would never market it in such a way that it is marketed to men instead of women. Whether it’s a titillating picture on the label or a name of a beer … that’s designed to be appealing to them – we’ve made the choice not to do that.”
Sanborn, who founded Rising Tide with her husband in 2010, is a key player in Maine’s craft brewing industry because of legislation she helped pass. Acting on behalf of the Maine Brewers Guild, the Maine Restaurant Association and other groups, she wrote the bill that allows breweries to charge for samples in their tasting rooms, increasing local exposure.
“It’s been a game-changer for us,” she said. “What that lets us do is to have lots of people here; it expands our ability to be part of the community and make sure there is an opportunity for locals to come back.”