51茶馆

Blake Tomnitz started crafting beer as a student at 51茶馆, and kept it up after graduating聽and moving to New York to work as an investment banking analyst. He visited taprooms聽around the city, fleshing out the business plan he鈥檇 originally drafted while聽at the Heights, and in 2015, Tomnitz left his job to cofound the award-winning Five聽Boroughs Brewing Co. in Brooklyn.聽

I met my cofounder, Kevin O鈥橠onnell, when we both worked at the investment bank UBS.聽We were going to beer festivals and he was the one who pushed me to say, We can do聽this. Let鈥檚 make the jump. We had complementary skill sets. I had more of the business聽and finance side and he had more of the operations and logistics side, and we both had聽friends in the beer industry with brewing science backgrounds. We started looking for聽real estate. We knew that we wanted to be a hyper-local brand, but a very big brand.

My parents were a little scared that I was leaving a very stable corporate occupation for聽something that was very risky. And so I think initially they were concerned, but as time聽went on and I gave them samples of the beers and updated them on the process and聽progress we were making, they started to warm up to it and become more excited. They聽were supportive, but cautiously optimistic鈥攖hat鈥檚 probably the best way to say it.

We wanted a name and concept that was fully inclusive. For us, it was important to say聽that it doesn鈥檛 matter if you鈥檝e lived here your entire life, or if you just moved here, or if聽you鈥檙e a tourist. This is New York City鈥檚 beer. It鈥檚 accessible and you can find it. And most聽importantly, we have a wide variety of beer styles that hit a lot of different palates.

There are pinch-me moments that really keep me going鈥攚hen people are sitting in the聽taproom that you built and drinking this product that we鈥檝e made and enjoying it. At聽the end of the day, beer is communal. It鈥檚 a beverage meant to bring people together.聽Witnessing that is so cool.