Threes Brewing Pulled From Menus After CEO's Anti-Vax Rule Tweet

BROOKLYN, NY — As Threes Brewing co-founder and CEO defends his claim that COVID-19 vaccine mandates are a "crime against humanity," restaurants and shops across Brooklyn are taking his beer of their menus.

Joshua Stylman doubled down with a blog post Wednesday, one week after outraging customers and employees by publicly comparing vaccine mandates to policies of the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany.

"As to the specific tweets comparing vaccine mandates to historical atrocities, I stand by my comments," Stylman wrote in post, linking to a tweet comparing vaccine mandates to an anti-democracy Nazi decree.

"What I am saying is I am against discrimination, and these mandates discriminate by creating a two-tier society based on arbitrary biomedical status."

Stylman's defense did little to appease Brooklyn restaurant owners and managers who told Patch they've already pulled Threes brews from the menu.

Colonia Verde beverage director (and former Patch reporter), Noah Manskar, said he didn't like the message he'd send if Threes beers remained on the Fort Greene restaurant's menu.

"I don't want our guests coming in and seeing a Threes beer on our menu and thinking that we tacitly endorse [Stylman's] incredibly offensive and medically inaccurate views," said Manskar.

"Workers in the hospitality industry are being protected by vaccine mandates and anyone who's saying otherwise has no place at the helm of a business that relies on those workers," Manskar added. "I think he's betraying the people who work in the industry upon which his company depends."

Stylman's message prompted Threes Brewing employees to publicly condemn their CEO, which emboldened BKLYN Larder owner Mandy Wynn to yank the beers from her shelves and publish an explanation as to why.

"The statement from Threes frustrated me because it seems hollow without any action behind it," Wynn told Patch. "But it was also clear to me that [the employees] couldn't take action, so I felt like I could."

But on Twitter, Stylman chastised those who said they'd boycott the beer, arguing it hurt Threes employees more than him. Wynn, and others, do not support that claim.

"If the business starts to suffer now, it's not random," Wynn said. "It's not the fault of the employees."

Reached for comment, Stylman refused to say more beyond the written statement, instead pointing to the positive response his blog post got on Twitter from others who oppose vaccine mandates.

While Wynn doubts that Threes will seriously suffer as a result of Stylman's statements, many customers and businesses are still deciding what supporting the business will look like in the future.

Vinny Milburn, owner of Greenpoint Fish & Lobster Co., has been hosting a pop-up in Threes' Greenpoint location (the businesses are separate and do not share income, he said), but doesn't know how much longer it'll last.

"There's nothing concrete as of yet, but if we don't stay through the summer it would be entirely because of [Stylman's] statements," Milburn told Patch.

"We firmly believe that vaccination and vaccine mandates are beneficial to the community at large."

Siobhan Greene, a New York City healthcare worker, planned to have her wedding at Threes' flagship location in a couple of months but is now second guessing that decision, even though family will be flying in and she's put a non-refundable deposit down on the venue.

"I chose Threes because it's a local, independently-run business where I felt good about spending my money," Greene said. "I'm devastated that Josh has taken that away from me."