Barrel 20: People Make a Place

Borrowed, Learned, & Thought

At 15, I got my first real job, aka my first actual paycheck, at a Wegmans that had just come to the area. I started as a cashier and on Helping Hands, keeping the carts organized in the lot. Eventually, I was promoted to Front End Coordinator, overseeing the cashiers and handling customer concerns during my shift. We were taught that the front end was the most important part of the store, because it was the last touchpoint a customer had before leaving. I took that to heart.

I’ll never forget my favorite substitute teacher, an older man, walking in one day. I got excited to say hello, then realized he was coming over to ask me which register to start his shift. I learned a lot in that job. About what it means to lead others, about the complexity of people, and most of all, how people make a place as much as the place makes them.

Back then, my sights were set on getting out of the suburbs after college. I did. I never expected to be living back home, taking my son to daycare just minutes from the store. Now I go in and feel a strange bond with the young cashiers, the urge to tell them to pay attention, that it can be more than a job. I still run into people I worked with; some never left, and they ask about my music, as if no time has passed since they came out to watch me perform. I could go on about the stories, lessons, and connections from my time there. That place was a source of so much for me, and for so many others.

Barrel turns 20 today, June 1, and it marks two years since I moved into the CEO role. It's as much a celebration of how far we've come as it is a feeling that we're standing at the start of something new. I went looking for the right way to mark it, and I landed back at that grocery store, because what it taught me is what I’ve spent 13 years living here. People make a place, even when that place exists within tiles on a screen.

In my application to Barrel, I ended my email with what I’d been searching for:

“From what I can tell from your website, the Barrel culture is one that I have been desperately searching for. In my current position, I am the only graphic designer in the office and I miss the collaboration of a design team. Although I can always be counted on to bring fresh ideas to the table and work independently, I truly believe that, when necessary, collaboration is what breeds some of the most exciting work.”

About a week later, Peter wrote back. They weren’t hiring designers, but he wanted to meet “in case the right moment comes along,” and asked me to stop by the office. I remember taking my lunch break and running down Grand Street with a briefcase full of my print design portfolio. Two months later, they offered me a 3-month contract, and not long after, I went full-time. That was the beginning. A chance, and I gave it all I had.

What I couldn’t have known then was how much this place would ask of me, and give back. On my first day, Sei-Wook brought me into a client meeting. Maybe an hour on the job, I was already in the action, and I loved it. I kept putting in the work and taking on new responsibilities, carving out a path of my own. Along the way, I moved in with my wife, then girlfriend, Dana, got married, moved back to the place I grew up, bought our first house, and had two kids. I stopped drawing a line between my life and work a long time ago. So much of who I’ve become, I owe to what I’ve gotten to do here, and to the people I’ve done it with.

Peter and Sei-Wook started out as the founders who hired me, became my mentors, and eventually became the people I can call with anything. They believed in what I could become before I could see it myself, and that’s the sort of belief I’ve tried to instill in this place. Work that stretches you, the trust to take it on before you feel ready, and people beside you who make you better.

In Setting the Table, restaurateur Danny Meyer captures something I return to often. Everyone on a team could be working somewhere else; they’ve volunteered to be here, and they deserve more than a paycheck. We spend a third of our lives at work, and what makes that time matter is the people we do it with, what we learn from one another, and the respect and trust we build. That’s what I want this place to be. When we invest in each other and in our own growth, the further we all go.

Twenty years in, almost everything about how we work has changed. We’re a CPG-focused agency now, working from home rather than one office, with technology reshaping what we do faster than I’ve ever seen. The Barrel of today will never be the Barrel I joined. And yet, a certain spirit lives inside these virtual walls, one I’ve been lucky to help shape and proud to carry into the next decade.

There’s a symmetry in where I started and what we do now. I learned about people at a grocery store, and I’ve spent my career helping the brands that fill those shelves build something people connect with and trust. So to mark twenty years, the thank-you bag felt like the truest way to say what today is really about.

Thank you for where we are and where we’re going. To Peter and Sei-Wook, who built the foundation we stand on. To everyone who has given a piece of themselves to Barrel. And to the people behind the brands who let us do this work.

I think about that kid sprinting across the front end to help a cashier, and years later, running down Grand Street with a portfolio, neither with any idea how much those people and places would teach me. That hasn’t changed, and it’s what keeps me energized. The work we’ve yet to do, the people we’ve yet to meet, and who we become on the other side.

Lucas