“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly,
smilingly, nonapologetically, to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do
that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”
-Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What we do here at Creature Comforts is brew (what we think to be) extraordinary beer. But ultimately, we hope you care just as much about why it is we do what we do. Since opening our doors, we’ve aspired to foster human connection through the service of others, leveraging our hands and our brands to make a material impact on the communities around us.
We’ve since discovered that the gravitational pull of any altruistic endeavor is, eventually, to take on too much—to try to address too many needs, to add too many programs, thereby scattering the resources too thinly. The challenge is to remain focused. As Covey insists, to say ‘no’ often, but strategically.
So what is that bigger ‘yes’ burning inside Creature Comforts? Explore this site to learn more—and we invite you to get involved when you’re ready.
We have two primary community impact programs—Get Comfortable and Get Artistic—and an emerging initiative called Brew For One. Get Comfortable is designed to address our city’s most pressing needs; Get Artistic works to empower local artists; and Brew For One, our newest impact program, is our annual opportunity to do for one person what we wish we could do for everyone.
Over the past 6 years, the Get Comfortable campaign has worked alongside local leadership to direct our philanthropic resources where they will matter the most. Beginning in 2022, rather than an annual discussion of shifting community priorities, this program will commit to one impact area for several years of fundraising and strategic intervention. Specifically, we are working together to increase 3rd grade literacy within CCSD schools.
When aspiring, as we do, to remain as dispassionate as the data, this is where the data has led us. And we believe a tighter, sustained focus will help us to see measurable change in this area of profound local need.
During the 2022 – 2023 academic year, the H.B. Stroud Elementary School Attendance Zone will serve as our pilot community. Eventually, we hope to roll this program out community wide.
We acknowledge the obstacles that artists must overcome to promote their creativity, and we wish to help remove as many as we can. As a component of our community impact strategy, we launched Get Artistic in 2018 to help sustain the vibrance of Athens, Georgia’s creative economy.
To create high-impact development opportunities for local artists, we introduced the Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Program in Summer 2020. The AiR program develops an individual artist’s professional skills through the production of creative deliverables as well as the enrollment in an artist-focused certificate program prior to the start of their residency.
Our most unique, and newest, impact program stems from our desire to come alongside individuals in need to help them go further faster. While we unfortunately cannot say yes to every request that comes our way, we can do for one person what we wish we could do for everyone.
Every year, a team engages our nonprofit network to identify a client of theirs who is telling a story of resilience amongst hardship, and subsequently works out a plan to mobilize as many resources as possible to set up that individual for continued success. We then brew a beer and put those profits to work.
Click around this site to learn more. And don’t hesitate to email us.
Ultimately, we believe that good companies are good citizens, discovering how they are uniquely positioned to serve their communities, then mobilizing whatever that is for the benefit of others. So join us, won’t you?
Creature Comforts is dedicated to better being through being curious. From our scientific brewing process to our wide-awake creative impulse to our small-town tenacity, Creature Comforts is driven by the promise that a curious mind leads to better living. We take inspiration from those who crave curiosity and share its reward. The thinkers, the inventors, the artists, the explorers. We feed our curious spirit through the pursuit of finely balanced artisanal beers, and our mission is to light that desire and follow its flame with our consumers. Creature Comforts craves curiosity.
If you’ve never explored our brand portfolio, each created to help you navigate the beautiful and complex world of beer, we invite you to do so.