Overview

Type: Private, Family-owned
Founded: 1972
Headquarters: Chicago, IL
Employees: 1000+

Mark Anthony Brewing provides supply chain management and brewing services for The Mark Anthony Group of Companies. They are the fourth-largest brewery in the United States and brew crowd favorites like White Claw® Hard Seltzer, mike’s® Hard Lemonade, mike’s HARDER®, Cayman Jack® and MXD Cocktails.

Safety is paramount to Mark Anthony Brewing and they strive to provide a secure and healthy work environment for their employees. Mark Anthony Brewing’s Senior Corporate Security and Risk Manager, Rodney Carbajal, handles workplace violence training and manages emergency response. We spoke with him to learn about Mark Anthony Brewing’s experience with Alertus since becoming a customer in 2023.

Challenges

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Mark Anthony Brewing operates three state-of-the-art brewery and production facilities in Glendale, Arizona; Columbia, South Carolina; and Hillside, New Jersey. Safety is a major priority for the company, so around 2022, Carbajal and his team decided to look into improving their emergency mass notification system to better communicate to their 1,000+ employees across widespread areas.

“We operate 1.1 million square foot facilities in two locations, so it is paramount to be able to create and send instant notifications for situations like an active assailant, a medical emergency, severe weather, or a shelter-in-place warning,” said Carbajal.

Technical Issues and Need for System Unification

Before Alertus, Mark Anthony Brewing had an emergency notification system at one of its locations but encountered technical issues. At the same time, another one of its larger plants was interested in enhancing its fire alarm system. “We had one system not working well at one facility and another facility interested in improving the fire alarm system, so we figured that unifying all of our locations with the same mass notification system would make the most sense,” said Carbajal.

They chose Alertus because of its multilayered notification approach and system unification capabilities and moved forward in replacing their original system.

Solutions

MULTILAYERED NOTIFICATION APPROACH

At their Columbia facility, Mark Anthony Brewing deployed Alertus Desktop™ Notification, Alert Beacons®, Panic Buttons, Text-to-Speech Horns and Speakers, the Rapid Response Console, and the Fire Panel Integration via the Alert Beacon®. The company is in the process of implementing the Alertus System at its Glendale plant. Once Glendale is completed, they will implement the system at their plant in New Jersey followed by their Chicago headquarters.

The manufacturing facility employees have found the speakers and the panic buttons to be particularly useful. “While we were in the installation process at the Columbia location, we almost had a deployment, and without being completely trained, one of our employees immediately went to activate one of the medical buttons,” said Carbajal. “So having the buttons there has caught their attention.” They’ve also had a fire activation in which the fire alarm system went off but the system worked and people responded accordingly, demonstrating the significance of Alertus’ powerful integrations with fire alarm systems.

Ease of Deployment and Seamless Integration

Carbajal is pleased with the ease of deployment and seamless integration with the virtual server. The simplicity of having a variety of emergency buttons and different means of activation through the Alertus Activator App or Desktop Activator has made Carbajal feel that they’ve achieved their needs with Alertus. He also finds the Alertus Recipient App useful in distributing push notifications and receiving geo-tagged incident reports from end-users.

“Alertus is a traditional mass notification system with facility-based speakers and devices but has a modern edge by offering desktop alerting and mobile apps, so Alertus covers the full gambit of mass notification we need in today’s world,” said Carbajal.

In his opinion, Carbajal feels that an active assailant/active shooter scenario is the most critical to address with a mass notification system like Alertus, “because if you can get notifications out quickly to save hundreds of people, the system is worth it and pays for itself one hundred times over,” said Carbajal. He also noted that fire scenarios are essential to address with a mass notification system as they can spread very quickly in a manufacturing environment. Severe weather and sheltering in place are also common scenarios their industry faces.

In all, Carbajal likes Alertus because “they put their name and reputation behind all of their products and services.” For the future, Mark Anthony Brewing plans to test the system twice a year, standardize their drills, and look into integrating Alertus with their digital signage throughout all of their locations.