A decade ago, Sergio Manancero—the founding business partner and president of La Doña Cervecería—spent a good amount of time visiting breweries and craft beer bars in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul. He quickly observed a noticeable lack of other Hispanics and Latinos in the taprooms.
There may have been more Spanish-speaking brewers in the Minneapolis area at the time, “but they didn’t make it,” says Manancero, who opened La Doña Cervecería’s Minneapolis taproom in 2018. “None of the spaces were trying to get Latino [or Hispanic] people to come to them,” he says. “You can’t just like be a brewery with good beer and be successful. You also must have a mission.”
Indeed, a 2021 survey by the Brewers Association, a trade group representing small breweries, revealed that just 2.2% of the country’s nearly 10,000 breweries are Hispanic or Latino-owned. A vocal handful of breweries, however, are hoping to change that narrative by attracting new customers and making the beer industry in general more attractive to Hispanics and Latinos.
Javier and Jose Lopez / Image Courtesy of Chuy Reyes Beers that Tell a Story
Embracing traditional Hispanic flavors and ingredients has been a way to reach out to the community through familiarity, but also revealing a broader range of beer styles beyond Mexico’s classic pale lager.
“We wanted the brand to represent our culture,” says Javier Lopez, who founded Casa Humilde Cerveceria and Coffee Roasters in Chicago with his brother Jose. In its beers and hard seltzers,
This Article was originally published on Wine Enthusiast
