Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Remy Zurita. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Remy, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have a background in hospitality. I worked as a concierge in luxury hotels in Paris until I moved to California in 2014. When I first moved to California, I worked in restaurants. While working for Officine Buona Forchetta, I had the idea to produce and distribute house beers for restaurants. This is how Hopnonymous began – in fact, the name Hopnonymous combines “Hop” (i.e. the ingredient for beer) and “anonymous” (because we were working behind the scenes to create house beers for restaurants). In the beginning, I would work with restaurant owners to develop not only their house beers but also custom tap handles etc. As we began to work with more and more restaurants, customers were very happy with our beers and the interest in a Hopnonymous tasting room began to grow. At the end of 2019, we had the opportunity to open our tasting room in Kearny Mesa. We were thrilled to contribute to the already robust San Diego beer scene and to create a space where our guests can enjoy a strong sense of community and excellent customer service. We opened our tasting room in December 2019 – just months before COVID-19 forced us all to lockdown. We are grateful to have been supported through that difficult time by all our amazing guests who kept us afloat through take away beer orders. Since then until now, our guests and our restaurant partners like the Buona Forchetta group have been a huge part of the Hopnonymous success and identity, and we are looking forward to introduce more delicious beers and community togetherness as we enter our fifth year together!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am born and raised in Dunkerque in the North of France. In France, I completed a university degree in hospitality and a masters degree in conciergerie. I lived and worked in Paris as a concierge in luxury hotels for almost ten years before I met my wife and moved to California.

Our head brewer Hunter is a San Diego native and has worked the past ten years in some of the best breweries in San Diego like Coronado Brewing, Ballast Point, and Mikkeller.

When I opened the Hopnonymous tasting room, I wanted to apply my background in hospitality and create a community focused space where guests feel at home and among family. It is very important to me to create a warm and welcoming environment for everybody and to always provide excellent customer service. Of course, our guests also enjoy a variety of delicious beers brewed by Hunter – we offer many different styles and have a new release every week so that everyone will find something on our menu to enjoy.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As I mentioned, we opened our tasting room just a few months before COVID-19 lockdown. It was a crazy and uncertain time for everyone – we were allowed to sell beer to-go but because we were so new to the beer scene we weren’t sure if we would be able to sell enough beer to keep our doors open. The community really rallied and supported us. Our neighbors came regularly and took beers to go. Despite the hardships of the time, we were able to continue business and even form lasting relationships with our guests – many of whom became regulars and who we are happy to welcome often to the tasting room to this day. We will always be grateful to our community that supported us in a difficult time and we are happy to have made it through and had the opportunity to grow our tasting room into a warm and welcoming place for this same community to gather.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Our social media is run by our Social Media Manager Cece who our regulars will know well from our tasting room! Cece has put a lot of time and dedication into learning how to best build and maintain a strong social media presence. We also have to thank Sergio and his company Omatic who is our photographer and videographer. We use our social media to show the hard work that we put into developing our beers and also to showcase our community through video and pictures of our regulars enjoying our beer and each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hopnonymousbrewing.com/
• Instagram: hopnonymous_brewing_co
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hopnonymous-brewing-company-san-diego

Image Credits
Sergio Santamaria