We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carl Roaches, Jr. a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carl thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

For The Culture’s mission is “to entice, educate, and excite people about the joys of craft beer.” From our perspective, certain aspects of the craft beer scene have grown stale. As a whole, from the outside looking in, the industry appeared to be a boys club without a lot of women, or persons of color, taking part. So we set out to disrupt the perceived norm.

From our perspective, the first step is guiding people to delicious and high quality craft beer. Obviously, people are not going to be interested in drinking beer if the taste is not pleasing to the palette. So, it is of utmost importance the beverage be delicious. Secondly, we believe that it is important to cultivate knowledge concerning craft beer so that people can feel more comfortable at breweries, or establishments where craft beer is sold. Assuming the beer is good, it’s so easy to be turned off by bad experiences at craft establishments or with those who claim to be craft beer connoisseurs. Not knowing what beer style you want at the bar, what differentiates one beer from another, or feeling invisible in the taproom are a few of the many things that will ensure low business sales and customer engagement. Lastly, we believe beer is extremely social as a libation. Picnics, family reunions, tailgates, etc.; there is rarely an instance where beer does not fit the bill. If you keep your customers excited about your product, you ensure they continue to patronize your establishment.

Carl, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My journey in beer started over twelve years ago when a good friend of mine introduced me to a beer named Allagash White, a popular Belgian-style wheat beer. It was the first time I found myself enjoying a beer. I figured it was a one off, so it was about six more months before I tried an additional brew. Again, at my friend’s behest, I tried the beer that cemented my desire to learn more about beer; Unibroue’s La Fin Du Monde. This is another popular Belgian-style beer. I was amazed at the beer’s complexity. The maltiness was balanced by a subtle sweetness, mixed with aromatic phenols and esters. Although I had no idea what a “phenol” or “ester” was at the time, I’ve since discovered they contributed to the amazing aroma of honey, spices, and coriander found in the beer.

Having only experienced certain big beer brands’ light beer offerings and malt liquor, I had no idea that beer could be so varied and unique in form and substance. At that point, it felt as though I had to try every craft beer I could get my hands on. For a while, I searched near and far trying to get my hands on beers of all types – hazy IPAs, Barrel aged stouts, Barley wines, etc. Over time, my thoughts turned from chasing good brew, to the possibilities of bringing good brew to the masses; specifically, those demographics who are seemingly ignored by craft beer.

Overwhelmingly, the demographic of craft beer drinkers presents as White and male. This is not to necessarily bash anyone. However, it also means there is a good chance there are people who end up not experiencing the deliciousness of craft beer because they are simply not aware that it is an option.

For our organization, being comprised of men and women of color, we are acutely aware of how limited awareness is of craft beer in our communities. People of color, by and large, only associate beer with “Big beer” brands, and/or malt liquors. As an organization, we would like to excite, educate, and entice persons of all races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations to give craft beer a try, and to see whether beer might be a libation option after all.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Starting a brewery is in and of itself an exercise in resilience. Unless a person is independently wealthy or has friends/family with tremendous amounts of cash to invest; brewery start-up is going to take time and money. Most don’t realize just how expensive brewery start-up is. Additionally, before you can sell your first beer, you need your location secured, your equipment secured, and you need have all drawings/plans in place while hoping the appropriate agencies ultimately approve your business for production. All of these things can leave you feeling hopeless, and your pockets feeling empty.

These are some of the many things that left the group at For The Culture frustrated for some time. Over several years, we would think we’d have a location that was meant for us, only for the deal to fall through. Or you’re under construction and discover there is a transformer shortage so you can’t finish your power upgrades. Or, while waiting on said upgrades, someone comes and steals your copper wiring. In short, there are many things that can occur to slow progress, however, we are continuing to push through and look forward to being open before the start of the new year.

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For The Culture built its social media presence as organically as possible. Being a business operating without revenue, it’s not realistic to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year promoting social media. We decided the best way was to start with our close friends and associates. We asked them to like and share our respective pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The next step was to ask for people to like and share our respective social media pages at the numerous pop-up events we hosted. This allowed us to develop a reasonable following without breaking the bank.

If I had advice for those starting to build their social media presence, it would be to consistently post media content. Unless a startup has a sizable marketing budget, it’s virtually impossible to be seen by a significant number of users unfamiliar with your business. The way that offers the most opportunity for views, without a huge marketing budget, is to be persistent in posting new content, as it pushes a businesses’ posts to more users organically. In this manner, content algorithms will begin to push your feed to the eyes of fellow platform end-users.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/fortheculturebc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/fortheculturebc
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/fortheculturebc