Leaders of the National Black Brewers Association (NB2A) shared their experiences as Black brewery owners during the final Tap Talk of the California Craft Beer Summit last week in Sacramento.
NB2A executive director Kevin Asato led a discussion including panelists Rob Archie, co-founder of Sacramento-based Urban Roots Brewing; Beny Ashburn and Teo Hunter, co-founders of Inglewood, California-based Crowns & Hops Brewing; and Marcus Baskerville, president of the NB2A’s board of directors and co-founder of San Antonio, Texas-based Weathered Souls.
Archie, whose hospitality empire began when he opened Sacramento’s Pangaea Bier Cafe in 2008, shared how the NB2A would have benefited him as he opened the craft beer bar amid the Great Recession.
“I didn’t have anyone to go to – I had zero experience in the restaurant world, even before I opened Pangaea – but I had a vision, and I had to be there every day to work it,” he said. “Having organizations like this when people have ideas is one of the things that I feel is really important is to get perspective on what it is that you want to do.
“Because I feel like you can contribute to this industry in a lot of different ways,” Archie continued. “You don’t have to open up and have a 15-barrel brewhouse and just come out the gates flying with distribution or anything. You can start super small. You can start with just a taproom.”
There are 83 Black-owned breweries nationwide, a number the NB2A expects to grow, Asato said.
“Our primary platform is to ensure that we advance the number of Black-owned breweries” he said. “That’s our No. 1 platform. We are also building a community of Black people in the beer industry, and we’re going to continue to fuel more and more people to be comfortable enough in this community.”
Baskerville said his top priority is to “get Weathered Souls bought out.” The hunt for an investor to purchase co-founder Mike Holt’s shares began last year, with a call for new investors in September.
Speaking to the audience, Baskerville admitted he was just “happy to be in beer,” so his ownership stake in San Antonio, Texas-based Weathered Souls involved “a situation that ended up not being that lucrative for myself” and instead is built on “sweat equity.”
Weathered Souls rose to national prominence in 2020 when Baskerville created Black Is Beautiful, an open source collaboration to raise money for social equity and racial justice organizations after the murder of George Floyd. The brewery expanded to Charlotte, North Carolina, in November 2022, but that location has been listed for sale since December 2023.
“I’ve realized that I’ve hit this situation where I’ve built this amazing brand and now I’ve got to pay a lot of money for it if I want it, and so I’ve been actually at a crossroads,” Baskerville said. “Do I want to continue the Weathered Souls brand and buy that out and and continue on? Or go on to start something new?”
In addition to running a multi-state craft brewery and serving as the face of a national craft collaboration project, Baskerville has taken on prominent roles in industry groups. He recently completed a term on the Brewers Association’s (BA) board of directors and serves as the president of the NB2A board of directors.
In San Antonio, Weathered Souls is waging an “upward battle of building brand recognition within the city, establishing that community base,” Baskerville said. The brewery’s “world-class stout program” has gained traction.
Championing diversity and inclusion within craft beer remains a pillar of purpose for Baskerville, even as he works to resolve Weathered Souls’ ownership situation.
“What I’ve noticed in this industry from the jump, there’s not a lot of people like this, like us,” he said. “I’m 14 years in the industry now, and there’s still not a lot of people like us, so continuing to voice that, continuing to build diversity, continuing to promote diversity, but then also trying to build something for myself at this point, and not for somebody else.”
Attending the summit was a homecoming for Baskerville, who grew up in Sacramento and recalled visiting Pangaea with his dad for sandwiches and glasses of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder.
A pivotal moment in Baskerville’s beer journey came in 2013 when fellow Sacramentan Annie Johnson, who was in the audience, was named homebrewer of the year by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA), Baskerville said. Johnson was the first woman in 30 years and the first Black homebrewer to win the award, according to the AHA.
”Here’s somebody that looks like me, somebody from the same neighborhood as me that has reached the epitome of what craft beer is,” Baskerville said he remembered thinking at the time.
“If she can do it, I can do it too.”
Representation, as Baskerville felt in Johnson’s win, is a pillar for the NB2A, which connects Black brewery owners in a more structured way than just casual networking so they can brainstorm and solve problems together. Black brewery owners often face obstacles that white owners do not.
“It means something when I’m able to sit across from someone who is in the same position that I am in and can have a strategic business conversation with me about how I build my business for a diverse consumer,” Ashubrn said. “I don’t think anyone truly can wrap their head around it. So when you ask, ‘Why does it matter?’ Just talk to any brewery owner who owns a brewery.
“They won’t understand. They can’t look at me and know when I walk in a room, they don’t see a woman, they see a Black woman,” she continued. “They don’t understand that as I build my business model, and I raise money, I might not get the money simply because I’m Black. A lot of people don’t want to deal with that truth, but it is a reality that we are still living in today.
“It’s a matter of having strategic conversations,” she continued. “It’s also a matter of just having a support system, who can say to you, ‘OK, I just went through that. Here’s what we can do next. Here’s how we pivot,’ because there’s a lot of pivoting – and not just being Black, there’s just pivoting in this industry in general. But when you are a person of color, your pivot game is strong. You are a champion of the pivot.”
All panelists stressed that being Black is not a prerequisite for NB2A membership. Hunter urged non-Black audience members to join the organization as a meaningful step toward diversifying the historically monolithic industry.
“If you are struggling to understand how to make an impact, how to be involved, how to be connected with someone who actually is developing solutions, I am inviting you today to join the NB2A. You don’t have to sit on the sidelines anymore. You don’t need to scratch your head and ask the one Black guy that comes to your bar, ‘Well, how do I do this?’”
Empowering more Black entrepreneurs in the industry will naturally draw in more consumers to support them from the Black community, which has often been neglected by the craft beer industry – despite having long been a topic of conversation, Ashburn said.
“Every single conference for the last I don’t know how many years always has a whole session about diversifying your customers, yet no one seems to be taking any additional action to change that,” she said. “If we think about the number of diverse customers that don’t know about craft beer, but do drink beer, it could literally change the trajectory of our entire industry. Everybody in this room will make money.”
Look for the NB2A to be highly visible during the Brewers Association’s (BA) Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) April 21-24 in Las Vegas. Ashburn will lead a conversation with conference keynote speaker Fawn Weaver, founder and CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey.
The NB2A will host a tap takeover featuring beers from more than 20 Black-owned craft breweries from 6-10 p.m. on April 23 at Beer Zombies.
To hear more from Asato, Ashburn and Hunter, watch their conversation during the Brewbound Live business conference in December 2023.