‘We’ve had to be audacious to make an impact’: How Crowns & Hops is building racial equity in beer
Beny Ashburn and Teo Hunter had successful careers working for large advertising and entertainment companies respectively, helping make their clients famous and talk-worthy. But in 2015, they decided to apply their creativity and experience to launch and market their own venture. It’s known today as Crowns and Hops, and it’s not only brought a fresh new voice to the craft beer category but it’s building racial equity in an industry that’s particularly lacking in diversity. We chat with Beny and Teo to hear how their venture has developed from a social media presence with a ‘polarising hashtag’ to a bold challenger brand ready to bring meaningful and structural change to craft beer.
How did you come to work together on Crowns & Hops?
BA: I worked in the advertising industry for some of the big agencies in New York. I spent a lot of time in edit bays understanding how to create visual art and branding for big companies like Amex, Miller Coors and Verizon. And then, about eight years ago, Beats by Dre hired me, and so I moved to LA to help build their internal creative team. Once I left Beats, I met Teo. We actually met on Tinder. And Teo introduced me to craft beer and craft beer culture while we were dating, and I became fascinated by it.
TH: My background is primarily in entertainment packaging, working with studios like Universal, Fox and Warner Brothers Music. I’ve always been in the business of ensuring that products, performers and actors look at their very best and with great attention to detail. Ultimately, Beny and I have been able to take the very same skill set that we've used to promote, build and make companies billions but now for ourselves finally.
We started because of a passion for not only craft beer, but a passion for solving a problem, which was why craft beer wasn’t as diverse as it should be, especially with it being a community-based type business. We saw there was a lack of diversity, not only with the patrons in craft beer but also in the business of craft beer, and once we truly understood why and how things were the way they were, we were able to put language around that and a business plan together and create Crowns & Hops Brewing Company.
You’ve brought attention to the shocking fact that less than 1% of breweries in the US are black-owned. Why does craft beer, in particular, have such a lack of racial equity and diversity do you think?
Beny Ashburn and Teo Hunter wearing their ‘rallying cry’. Photo: Crowns & Hops.
TH: A lack of exposure to anything means nothing can really take root, you know? When there’s a lack of exposure to a beverage, a food, or business ideas or strategies on building wealth, it's not going to take root, it’s not going to be cultivated, and it's not going to grow.
Homebrewing means having the disposable income to invest in equipment, it means having the available time to homebrew, and it means having access to that beer-making process. If those resources are not available in your family or your neighbourhood, then again, it’s not going to take root. Craft beer has become something of a privilege because it is often at a higher price point, and it’s not as accessible to people of colour.
And finally, it’s systemic racism when it comes to owning anything in this country. We now understand the impact of systemic racism on getting loans, getting property, getting things at any brewery. Anyone with aspirations for wanting to be a brewery owner would see these as being hurdles. And I think now we’re starting to understand that those hurdles have been there for a very long time.
How did you launch Crowns & Hops?
TH: We started with the hashtag ‘black people love beer’, and it became a rallying cry that began to galvanise the concept. It was the quickest way for the community to find each other. Once we started using that very polarising hashtag, it became very apparent what we were talking about without having to give people a whole rundown of what we wanted to talk about.
We then evolved from that hashtag into creating an authentic experience that combined craft beer and black and brown culture. There hadn’t been any effort even to try and do this, which was so shocking at the time. Dope and Dank was our brand name until we received a cease and desist on the word ‘dope’. Ultimately, and we think for the better, we did what dope people do, which is reinvent themselves, and we created the Crowns and Hops Brewing Company.
How did you approach creating the brand and brand experience in a very different way to existing and white-owned craft beer?
BA: It’s funny because Teo and I get into arguments about this because he’s like, ‘are you looking at what other people are doing? Are you paying attention to how other people are showing up in craft beer?’ And I'd be like, ‘no, I'm not paying attention to what anyone else is doing.’ Because in my mind, this wasn't about craft beer necessarily. Crowns & Hops is about making phenomenal art and creating extraordinary branding.
I had just left Beats and watched how Beats turned something as simple as sound into a culturally relevant and emotional experience. That’s the headspace that I was in, and that's what I wanted us to do for Crowns and Hops. Because when we first started, there was still a point of entry for people to understand the difference between big beer and craft beer. So we couldn’t necessarily lead with beer. Because if people say they don't like beer, they won’t relate to what we were creating. So we had to lead with creativity and branding that felt more connected to black and brown people as individuals and spoke to their spirit and how they felt about the products they purchase and brands they trust.
And so that’s what we did. We were very specific about how we curated these experiences and the content that we produced. We knew it was vital for people to see what we looked like inside the space, which is similar to what Beats did. Beats showed people of colour wearing and wanting great sound. We showed ourselves and people of colour enjoying amazing premium craft beer. We’d show ourselves sitting inside breweries, standing in front of tap handles, pouring beer, standing in front of tanks, making beer, graining, mashing, and anything to show that we're a significant part of the process. And that’s something no one had ever seen before. People didn’t even understand how beer was made. It’s funny how so many people were like, ‘wait, how is beer made? Doesn't it just show up on shelves, and then we drink it?’ And we'd be like, ‘no, there's so much science behind it, there are so many flavour profiles and hop varieties,’ and it’s so much bigger than people think. And we wanted people to look at our brand or see the Crowns & Hops symbol or that Dope and Dank symbol and intrinsically know that this was something they could relate to.
It’s never been about us pushing product down throats and trying to have people spend money; we’ve just tried to create a brand that makes sense for people of colour. And we feel like we’ve accomplished that. Even to our detriment at times, because there have been many times where we've sat at home broke, trying to figure it out and beating each other up to be as perfect as we can be. But I think when you care that much about creativity and care about the details, it resonates with people.
Tell us about your collaboration with BrewDog?
BA: We connected with BrewDog in 2019. And that’s when we officially became Crowns and Hops. And it drew a lot of attention to see a Scottish brewery investing in a black-owned, Inglewood-based, craft beer lifestyle brand. Working with them allowed us to go overseas and run a crowdfunding campaign, which drew a lot of attention. We shared every step and moment of our trip. Seeing me and Teo running around Edinburgh and London and talking to crowds of Scottish and English people interested in us and Inglewood showed there was an important international conversation to be had around diversity and craft beer.
TH: Audacity sees and respects audacity. We had to be audacious and loud with everything that we did, to make an impact. And it was through doing that, that BrewDog saw us. We were loud, and we were polarising. We didn’t limp away or back down when we were questioned. Beny and I went into the whitest rooms wearing ‘Black people love beer’ shirts and not only had conversations but were tolerant, even when the conversations were awkward, and weren’t welcoming and naturally needed for some diplomacy to take place. Beny and I put ourselves out there. And I think when Brewdog saw that, they saw themselves in us and saw that same idea of what it meant to make an impact. It made for an immediate relationship and synergy.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, James Watt was one of the first people to reach out because I know he wanted to take action. And he trusted us, as people he’d already had a relationship with, to help deliver something that not only made sense for the moment but would bring about future change, and out of that, the 8 Trill Pils initiative to achieve racial equity in craft beer was born.
How has the beer industry, either the large established breweries or the industry's media, responded to your emergence?
BA: 2021 is our sixth year now, and every year has been a little bit different. In the beginning, as we were building relationships with breweries and brewery owners, it was a slow burn. They didn't know who we were, didn't know what we were about, didn't necessarily believe that what we were doing was long term.
But within the last year to two years, with COVID, and the murder of George Floyd, I think for black businesses in general, our voices are being heard and sought out in new and engaging ways that we weren't before. People are now starting to recognise and understand the disparity inside this industry, where they're not seeing people of colour.
TH: We wanted to be as investigative and curious just as much as we wanted to establish ourselves as a trusted resource, both to a beer community struggling with diversity and a local community unaware that there was even this paradigm of craft beer.
Small craft beer businesses were descending on local communities, and many people didn’t even know what the hell they were, you know? If you drop something foreign in the middle of a neighbourhood, and the only people that patronise it are people that don’t look or sound or share a common thread with you, then the instinct isn't to run to that; the instinct is to avoid it. And Beny and I focused on making sure that people retained ownership over their communities and didn't just allow people to come in without first building relationships with the incumbent neighbourhoods.
Because what we were seeing was craft beer, almost as the precedent to the gentrification of a neighbourhood. And we started seeing craft breweries use cultural monikers, ideas and concepts from the black community and other communities of colour. And that was happening because there wasn't diversity, there were no checks and balances, and no one in craft beer to say, ‘maybe we should think twice about this’.
And we saw an opportunity for correction, an opportunity for bridge building, and an opportunity for black culture, which we see as the most influential culture on the planet, to actually have a stake in craft beer.
Because ultimately, diversity and inclusion only makes existing organisations more colourful and more diverse versus building equity that empowers those groups to have a stake and create for themselves. And that’s what Crowns and Hops is. Crowns and Hops is proof of an end to systemic racism, it’s proof of not catering to white fragility, and it’s proof that the industry is ready for black and brown stakeholders and owners in this business.