Crown & Hops is a Los Angeles-based craft brewery founded by Beny Ashburn and Teo Hunter and is one of only 60 Black-owned breweries in the country. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these businesses are in danger of closing their operations. To help other Black owners within the sector, the brewery is creating an initiative to lend a hand.
The “8 Trill Pils” Fund, an initiative between the LA brewery and Scottish
craft brewer, BrewDog, has $100,000 available to offer financial support to Black owners with their business.The name came from a statistic released from the Business Case for Racial Equity by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation case study that found the U.S can earn $8 trillion in GDP gains by closing the racial equity gap by 2050.“Initiatives like ‘Black is Beautiful’ have helped drive awareness to problems that plague the Black community. We want to
build on that momentum and drive the conversation forward, specifically regarding racial equity,” Beny Ashburn, cofounder of Crowns & Hops said in a press statement. “With The 8 Trill Pils Initiative, we hope to drive the craft beer community to take action in our own arena, and lead as an example for other industries with similar underrepresentation.”