Everyone wants to have a cool summer internship. We apply for to the most interesting and exciting internships from the batch.
This past summer, senior Asher MacDonald had the amazing opportunity to work for Downeast Cider House in East Boston. Asher is originally from Hillsborough, North Carolina. He is a Politics major with a concentration in political economy and a Spanish minor.
Downeast Cider House is an American craft hard cider company founded in 2011, by recent Bates graduates. Downeast has both year-round and seasonal ciders. Asher had the chance to work on the sales team for Downeast.
As a part of the sales team, Asher usually made phone sales and did staff trainings. A phone sale, Asher said, consisted of calling a company that would like to distribute Downeast and introduce them to the company to familiarize them with how to explain the company’s brand. And most importantly how to sell the cider. Asher also was tasked with undertaking staff trainings, in which he taught bartenders how to talk about Downeast. Occasionally, Asher gave tours at the cider house, hosted accounts for the company, did crew drives, worked events. For crew drives, Asher would bring samples of Downeast Cider to bars to potentially get Downeast on tap. While on the team, he worked at tasting festivals where he would talk about Downeast and give out ciders.
Over the course of the summer, Asher did many fun and exciting things. He went on a trip down to Newport, Rhode Island for the Crew Drive, a market blitz. Ten people went down to bars and had them sample ciders to be put on tap. On the last weekend of the year, a group of the Downeast crew went to Western Massachusetts, rented an Airbnb, and hosted an industry party for their wholesale sellers. It was a fun weekend, they floated down a river in tubes with a cooler full of Downeast floating next to them. A great way to end a summer!
You must be wondering what Asher’s favorite flavor of Downeast is. He enjoys the Summer Blend, a lemon ginger apple cider. With the Summer Blend, Asher recommends making a Downeast and Stormy by adding rum to the mix. Asher and everyone in Downeast always had the opportunity to taste test flavors before they were released.
“Downeast is such a small company that I interacted with the founders every day. And I got a look at different parts of the cider house such as the brewing and sales processes and I even saw a part of the packaging line! Downeast Cider House is growing really quickly and is the biggest independent cider house in Boston. They are a hard-working company filled with great people!”
It is evidently clear Asher had a great time working with the Downeast crew and had an amazing summer internship as well. If you see Asher around campus, don’t forget to ask him about Downeast Cider!