Black Viking Brewing is Montgomery County’s first and only black-owned beer company. Led by BBD member Shaun Taylor, the company started in August 2020 and launched its flagship beer – Zingabier – in October 2021. Today, Zingabier (a play on “Zinjibier”–the scientific name for ginger) – can be purchased all around the Washington, D.C. region.
How Did Black Viking Brewing Get Started?
I’m a Montgomery County native. I graduated from Magruder High School as an all-county basketball player and got a degree in business management from Belmont Abbey College near Charlotte, North Carolina. I tried corporate sales for a short while, hated it, and pivoted into education and basketball coaching.
However, I had a strong interest in beer and had started with home brewing. I also began building community in the beer space. I found that I enjoyed the marketing and community-building aspects of beer more than the brewing part, so in 2020 I partnered with a former student player, Jamil Abdur-Raoof. He enjoyed brewing beer and he’s the one who came up with the name “Black Viking.” He was our first brewmaster. I was responsible for building relationships and getting the word out about our brand.
I started the “BYOB Show” on Facebook – where I would have my friends come to my house to talk shop, all while drinking different beers. We’d just drink beer and talk – and the show had started routinely getting between 200-1500 views. It’s been an incredible marketing tool. Today, the BYOB Show has been rebranded as “Black Viking TV” (BVB TV), moved from Facebook to Instagram, and is going strong. We recently put out our 50th episode, and we have viewers from all over the world.
Leveraging Resources and Relationships at Black Viking Brewing
Here’s the landscape: There are approximately 9000 breweries in the U.S. today. Only 75 of them are black-owned. Of those, only about 45 have physical breweries. The rest are brands. I’ve been vocal about MoCo being one of the most diverse counties in the country. Yet, we don’t have many Black brewers.
The craft beer industry seems to believe that Black people don’t drink high-end beer. Well, we were able to identify a lane that’s open for Black consumers. We aim to be both a production facility and open a taproom brewery in Montgomery County. And, as a Black-owned company, we can unapologetically center Black consumers in our public marketing. But like I always say, we are Black-owned, not Black-only, so we are all about inclusion.
Vital for our growth has been leaning on people who have expertise. To produce our first brew, we partnered with Baltimore-based Oliver Brewing Company, Maryland’s oldest brewery which began production in 1993. We were pleased with this collaboration. The industry is plagued with all the usual barriers to entry: lack of access to institutional capital, no generational wealth to invest into our businesses, and dealing with racist systems. So we were thankful to get a leg up from a well-established mainstream brewing company.
Today we have an advisory board comprised of small-stake partners who are themselves successful in business. They are helping us navigate these bigger deals and refine our approach to be able to reach new markets. This has kept me free to “keep my feet in the street” and build the brand of Black Viking. We also had the pleat sure of collaborating with Troeg’s Independent Brewing (Hershey, PA)–one of the largest craft breweries in the country–to release a limited edition blackberry schwarzbier at last summer’s “Barrel & Flow ” beer festival. And we have now begun to collaborate with one of the big Pennsylvania brewers – one of the godfathers of craft beer in the country.
2023 is already shaping up to be another historic year for Black Viking Brewing. By January, we will have finalized a major distribution deal in Maryland, making us the largest Black-owned beer brand on the East Coast. Shortly after, we will execute our strategically planned expansions into DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Lastly, in April we are releasing our next core drink, as well as partnering with one of the most iconic breweries in the world to release a unique and limited edition beer. We expect to become heavies in the D.C. market in 2023 and make inroads in the Pennsylvania and Virginia markets.
Best Advice for Start-ups and Young Businesses
MoCo is a great place to do business. The county is so diverse – and not just culturally, but also socially, and economically/business-wise.
Businesses need to get in the flow of information. You can find someone doing what you want to do in almost every sector. I’d say small businesses should make sure they are reaching out to people, building strong networks, and taking advantage of the great diversity here in MoCo.
For folks hoping to get into the brewing business, it’s important to know that you must be tough to survive. There will be lots of hoops to jump through and hurdles to threaten your progress. Many people tap out just before they get to the finish line.
Networking is key. I am happy to share knowledge and information with the next generation of brewers. I personally love the networking piece. Being able to leverage those relationships to get valuable information has been key to our success.
