Last fall, Evans filed a lawsuit against Founders, though, at the time, news mostly stayed within Founders’ home state of Michigan before spreading through the national beer community. In the suit, Evans, who is black, claimed that an alleged racist internal corporate structure prevented him from professional advancement, and that racial slurs and attempted jokes by co-workers created an uncomfortable work culture. When he tried to report the issues, Evans said he was met with pushback from supervisors.

"Most humans, and particularly most people of color, will tell you that they don't have this idea that, 'If I just come forward and say I was discriminated against,' that it's going to work and people are going to believe me and justice is going to do whatever," Evans told Detroit’s WDET in an interview this week. "I saw this as a chance for me to actually use my voice and tell my story, and help others and actually receive some sort of justice."

In the interview, Evans said that the “company is not changing, they're not doing anything to change the culture of what they're doing.”

That’s also the interpretation for businesses no longer selling Founders beer.

“Ownership, company ethos, and company culture—those are all things that go into consideration when we’re purchasing something from a supplier,” says Zak Rotello, beer director at Rockford, Illinois’ Olympic Tavern. He doesn’t consider himself a “hardliner” when it comes to permanently removing breweries from his taplist—macro or craft brands owned by conglomerates like MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch InBev can still be found—but the case with Founders may push things too far.

“I would much rather extol the virtues of a brewery or brand I’m proud of for the work they do than talk about negativity around a brand, what they’ve done, or what they’ve been accused of,” Rotello says. “This is not a brand I’ve put a lot of focus on.”

In fact, the Olympic Tavern has only had one Founders’ beer on tap since the news of Evan’s lawsuit broke in October 2018, and that was an unexpected delivery Rotello wasn’t there to correct. “Everyone deserves their day in court to defend themselves,” Rotello says of the brewery, but trying to explain the situation to inquisitive customers creates a host of challenges.

"I've got 280 seats in my restaurant and a staff of 50 people," he says. "Information about a weekend dollar-off special can be hard enough to get through the pipeline, let alone allegations of racial issues within a company's structure."

Still, while the reverberations of the courtroom exchange are felt in media and drinking establishments, it’s bound to be some time until a measurable impact can be determined beyond a public relations emergency. Through the first three quarters of 2019, the Founders portfolio of beers was up almost 9% compared to the same timeframe in 2018, as tracked by IRI, a market research firm that compiles scan data from grocery, convenience, and other chain stores. In the brewery’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, sales have been flat over the past 52 weeks, while they're up about 7% in Detroit owing to sizable gains from Centennial IPA (11%) and Solid Gold Premium Lager (41.7%).

Production may be slowing, but in-store sales are still strong, which could at least potentially balance out any on-premise slumps caused by the loss of accounts in Detroit, Chicago, and elsewhere. But most important, this week’s news raises a pivotal moment of introspection for Founders’ management. In January this year, Founders co-founder and CEO Mike Stevens told Good Beer Hunting that the lawsuit forced him to reflect on what happened within the company to allow for a potentially toxic and racist culture.

"It's hard because you go home and lay up at night and think, 'Are we that?'" Stevens said at the time. "Did we screw up somewhere and didn't realize it?”

For at least one person, the answer is yes. In January, the company hired Graci Harkema as diversity and inclusion director to lead training in the hiring process and beyond. On Friday, Harkema posted a resignation letter on her Facebook page, writing about her frustration over the brewery paying lip service to issues of diversity instead of making deeper changes to its company culture.

"In every conversation and with every action, you've been most concerned with winning the lawsuit," the letter states. "You are most concerned with the ego of 'winning' than you are about the loss of customers, loss of reputation, and loss of employees' wellbeing."

The letter went on to note that problems weren't "a staff issue" but "a leadership issue."

"Your actions have explicitly shown you are more interested in the optics of my face, than the impact of my voice," the letter reads.