One Philadelphia brewery is hopping mad after the city chopped down roughly 60 pounds of their hops. Why? City officials mistook the green plants for overgrown weeds.
ABC-affiliate WPVI reports the ultra costly mistake involved the famed Philadelphia Brewing Company. The company says their hop garden was completely destroyed when the city dispatched a team of weed whackers that wiped out “six months of hard work” overnight.
Brewery co-owner Nancy Barton says, “To come in yesterday to this, it was sad … You could walk around any neighborhood in this city and there are a million lots that are overgrown and trashed or whatever. We have a sign that says what we’re doing.”
The garden had signs explaining that the hops were being grown for the limited-edition release of the beer Harvest from the Hood.
To make matters worse, the city had dispatched an inspector to the scene after issuing the brewery a ticket for overgrown vegetation. The inspector verified that the hops were indeed hops — not weeds — and told them the “violation is closed.”
“He came back out he said, ‘I get it. I see what happened, violation is closed. No fine. Case is closed and you guys are good,'” Barton recalled.
Despite that, the Community Life Improvement Program not only weed whacked all 60 pounds of hops, they also packed them up and cleared them from the lot. It’s predicted the error cost the brewery “tens of thousands of dollars in projected revenue.”
The city is working to rectify the situation and is training staff in the hope of avoiding a costly error like this in the future.
Meanwhile, the brewery put the city on blast on their social media.