While Erik Bruun has run SoCo Creamery in the heart of downtown Great Barrington for around a decade, his role in the community stretches back far longer- and much wider.
“He, for the majority of his time here, has been the advocate for the underdog," said Betsy Andrusm executive director of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce, the nominating committee of which unanimously dubbed Bruun Business Person of the Year.
“When he went into business, he worked for Chris Hodgkins, our Massachusetts legislator. He worked to drive funds back to the Berkshires, which, for so many years, we received nothing. We handed over money, we got nothing in return. So, he really drove funds back and tried to stress the importance of what the Berkshires was to Massachusetts, which, that's a hard sell, because you have the majority of the population living towards Boston. But once people did see the value here, they were wholeheartedly ready to invest.”
In addition to his legislative work, Bruun worked as reporter for the Berkshire Eagle before entering the world of business in the 90s.
“I didn't get this award because I'm a great business person at all," he told WAMC. "It's more like I've done a fair amount for the community and happened to be a business person.”
He says his efforts straddle the complex identity of Great Barrington itself- the intersection of commerce and its stark demands with the progressive values for which the community has long been known.
“The organizations that I've gotten involved with are the ones that are seeking to level the difference, the Railroad Street Youth Project, the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire, Community Health Program- These are all organizations that work to find support systems for the people who, they may not feel they need it, but it certainly helps to have a place to go where your voice can be heard and valued," said Bruun.
Railroad Street Youth Project – named for the Great Barrington roadway SoCo Creamery sits on – offers youth empowerment programming to Southern Berkshire County.
“25 years ago, when on Railroad Street there were a lot of disaffected young people hanging out in the street, there was a lot of issues going on," Bruun explained. "A lot of young people were dying at the time. It still happens occasionally, tragically, but there are a lot of alcohol-related car accidents, suicide, overdoses, stuff like that. And so, there was an effort by some of the young people to try to take the initiative, to do something about it, to help each other out and that became the Railroad Street Youth Project, and I was the founding board president for 10 years on that.”
The group produced real results for young people.
“The biggest project was we did with something called Project Native, which was a native plant greenhouse that was started by a 19-year-old dropout, and it became a million dollar a year native plant nursery at a time when nobody thought of native plants as something special or important,” Bruun told WAMC.
Community Health Program offers Medicare services and subsidized healthcare to the Berkshire community.
“It's a way of keeping access to healthcare, something that is available to as many people as possible, and similarly, with housing for the [Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire]," said Bruun. "So, these are all realms in which the economic trends that have pushed, driven this divide between the empowered and the disempowered and the wealthy and the less wealthy, or the people who are struggling with it- These are ways of sort of softening the edges of the raw capitalism that that the business world is.”
Bruun says he’s seen disparities in Southern Berkshire County increase since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020. A surge in well-heeled city dwellers relocating to the countryside contributed to the region’s brutally expensive housing market becoming even less accessible to working people.
“We live in an unjust world, and I think some of the outlines of that injustice are pretty paramount in these second home communities where there's extraordinary wealth and entitlement and privilege, along with a lot of people who are just scraping by to find a way to live in the community they grew up with,” he told WAMC.
In the face of increasingly vivid social stratification, Bruun sees ice cream as the great equivocator.
“The 62-year-old successful business executive is just as delighted to have a big scoop of chocolate ice cream with rainbow sprinkles as the eight-year-old child who's coming in with a class trip," he said.
As he prepares to end his tenure at SoCo Creamery and determine his next undertaking, Bruun shared his advice to the aspirant businesspeople of Berkshire County.
“Treat your help as a resource, an asset, and as a full person," he told WAMC. "If you treat people, your employees, as intelligent and with respect, they will bring respect and intelligence to the job, and realize that your role is more complicated than a paycheck and a set of tasks. When you are the boss, when you're head of the business, you're an authority figure in their lives, and everyone has different relationships with the authority figures in their lives. And bear in mind that a lot of what goes on is not about you, it's about the drama inside of people's heads. So don't take it personally.”
