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

Evan, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

To me, the term “Other Brother” refers to the familial sense of friendship you have with people you’re not necessarily related to, AKA your “chosen family”. The term suggests the importance of community and in our case it includes our staff, regular customers, our neighbors, and other businesses we work with. The chosen family that surrounds us is my favorite part about our business and we certainly wouldn’t be here without them.

Evan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up skateboarding, it was what I lived and breathed as a kid through my early 20’s. I lived in a fairly remote part of California, Carmel Valley, and there weren’t many places to go skating or many events allowing us to connect with the community. So we had to make our own fun. I grew up building jump ramps, making zines, filming videos, inventing fake companies.

I wasn’t very good at skating, but my friends were. So naturally, I was the one who ended up with the video camera to film them. When I picked up the camera, it all clicked. Skateboarding is all about creativity, and the camera was the way I could be creative and still be involved in the fun. My inclination toward photography started off casual and eventually led me to commercial photography. I ended up going to California College of the Arts in Oakland where I studied both Photography and Industrial Design. A perfect blend of all the skills I learned from building those backyard ramps and late night filming sessions.

During college and some years after, I had the wonderful experience of being a freelance commercial photographer and producer. I worked in skateboarding and fashion mostly. Being a photographer and producer is a great backdoor entrance into the belly of brands I admired– I learned a lot in these years about the importance of a cohesive “brand”, storytelling and the many different versions of what that means.

My role at Other Brother Beer is Brand Manager and Creative director. Being in this role has allowed me to work with so many creative people from various backgrounds: from artists to brewers and chefs. In the beer industry, we are releasing new products seemingly every week, which can be overwhelming at times, but it’s a great exercise in creativity. When considering what products to make and stories to tell, I find I’m inspired most by nostalgia. Nostalgia is what drives all the creative projects behind Other Brother Beer. Making great beer and food while bringing people together is our mission and in order to attract people to our brand and taproom, a well designed product and environment facilitates that. I want folks that visit our taproom to delight in our labels, our merch and to enjoy visiting the taproom which I had a heavy hand in building and designing.

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

When the pandemic hit, our business was a mere three months old. We had to let go of our entire staff and figure it out. We’d invested too much into opening to give up so soon. Our team shrunk to the three of us co-owners overnight. Our brewer and operations manager were brewing beer and I was running social media, our online shop and making graphics to promote our ever shifting business model.

We eventually expedited our business plan to start canning our products (something we hadn’t planned until much further down the road) on a mini canning machine (individually) and hand delivering them to locals. Luckily we had a core group of loyal customers that kept us afloat during that time. It felt like we pivoted so many times that I can’t recall all of our schemes. Gradually, we were able to bring back our staff and open a market where we sold our beer, the bread baked in the bakery onsite, along with other pantry items we stocked. This allowed us to keep going when gathering was not permitted. We were so fortunate to resume any kind of business during those dark days.

The bright side of that moment that defines our origin story is that resilience is ingrained in our business. As a small business, there’s always surprises being thrown at you and I like to think the years of the pandemic have built a camaraderie amongst the team that has equipped us to face challenges as they come, whatever they may be.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

As I mentioned before, we wouldn’t be here without our enthusiastic and supportive community. Our space facilitates numerous community events, of which we hold regularly. We built the taproom to be very dynamic and adaptable, all the tables and booths can be cleared out of the space leaving it as a blank canvas for events. We have a music venue in the back, we host food pop-ups, art shows, community fundraisers and movie premieres to name just a few. All of these events have a strong community behind them of like-minded passionate folks. Aside from having great beer, I believe this is the key to our success as a business in our local market.

Having grown up in Monterey, I left at 18 because the area didn’t offer much in the way of events and happenings. It was my goal in opening Other Brother that it would function as a venue to host all the things that we were passionate about as young folks. Now I’m well into my thirties and I want our space to host something for everyone, no matter what age you are. For that reason, food events, which are especially dear to my heart, always go well with beer and are just as good at bringing people together.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.otherbrotherbeer.com
• Instagram: @otherbrotherbeer @otherbrother_live
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/otherbrotherbeer/

Image Credits
Evan Loewy See Monterey