Shane Monteiro at Carmine Street Beers.
Photo by Carmine Street Beers
Although 2013 wasn’t that long ago, it’s ancient history by craft beer standards. Many of the breweries that opened around that time are now considered the grandparents of the field. It’s a strange phenomenon, but one that makes sense in a relatively young industry that is rapidly evolving.
The same year the original hyped breweries of the American craft beer scene were opening, Shane Monteiro and his father were wondering why they couldn’t get a reasonably-priced six pack in the West Village. They started Carmine Street Beers, a staple of the Manhattan beer scene. Although today, drinking establishments in the Village seem as ubiquitous as craft breweries, Carmine Street Beers spent three years as one of the only games in the neighborhood.
Kenny Gould: What’s your background?
Shane Monteiro: I was born in Bombay. I moved to Staten Island when I was 2.
KG: And were you there for a while?
SM: I grew up there most of my life and went to college in Manhattan. The beer store started when I was 20. My dad started that, more or less. In 2013, beer wasn’t really where it was now. Opening a beer store was cool, but we didn’t have the access to breweries that we have today.
KG: Why beer?
SM: My dad managed a wine store next door and he ran a print shop where the beer store is today, but in 2013 offices started integrating print into their own businesses. He was looking for a reason to stick something into the spot. That’s when he noticed it was very difficult to buy retail beer in the Village. The corner bodega would rip you for a Corona, charge something like $16 for a six pack. The only alternative was the Whole Foods on Houston. So you’d either suck it up at the bodega or get on the F train. When the print shop was going down, he thought, “Why not be a beer place?”
KG: And what’s your dad’s background? Is he from Bombay?
SM: My dad was born and brought up in Bombay. There wasn’t one particular reason he decided to come to the States, but his brother had lived here for maybe a decade before. He was a citizen, so he could sponsor my dad’s citizenship. Bombay is nice and all, but I guess my dad always wanted to provide a better life for his family. So we left Bombay and he decided to make it here. When he came, his first couple jobs were menial things. He worked at a deli for a while, one of those 24-hour places on Staten Island. He had a job with the ferry; he’d work at the Dunkin Donuts on that. His friend had owned a print shop since the late ‘80s and then he hired my dad. Then the friend wanted to get out, so he sold my dad the business.
KG: Your classic American Dream story.
SM: I guess it is. You work hard and ideally someone notices.
KG: And how did you get involved?
SM: My dad had been managing a wine store for years. He has always considered himself a wine and spirits person. When the store opened, I took it upon myself to do a lot of reading for it. I spent a ton of time on Rate Beer and Beer Advocate. I read about what the distributors were offering. I really hit the ground running and picked up ordering. By the time I turned 21, the store was a year old, and I started taking up more of the buying and focusing on the specialty bits. Even in 2015, specialty wasn’t king. I was still in college so I’d go to class, come back, check on the store. It was mostly retail so it wasn’t a really difficult thing to manage.
KG: Is it a family business?
SM: I guess you’d call it that. It’s usually some member of my family or one or two other guys. I do all the buying, ordering, really anything pertaining to beer.
KG: Do you think this is your future?
SM: I went to college for economics and I’m still working on a masters for it. I just have to write a thesis. But I don’t know. In college, I was gung ho about this economics thing. I wanted to be in finance or consulting, or maybe statistics. But you put more and more time into something—especially something that’s pretty demanding, no matter how nice it seems to work in the beer industry—and you feel attached to it. You want to see it succeed. I liked that feeling. You see something grow and you’re like, Wow. Every day seemed like the same day, but we actually grew. So I wouldn’t say it’s the thing that got me into making beer a priority career path, but I found out that I was pretty good at it. And why complicate things?
KG: And the shop? What is the future like there?
SM: The future of Carmine Street Beers is a little uncertain. We just celebrated the 6th anniversary on a seven-year lease. For me, no matter what happens, I’m going to find myself somewhere in beer. That’s for certain. If the landlord is going to bump my rent to something crazy, that remains to be seen. It really all comes down to that.
KG: Speaking of anniversary, I know you just celebrated yours. What was that like?
SM: The anniversary is always one of our busiest days of the year. But I couldn’t even tell you what it was like. There were a lot of people over the course of the day. It goes from noon to close, which was like 10:00 PM. I was there all day. We poured some amazing drafts, some stuff from OEC, Equilibrium, the Other Half/Parish collab, the beer we made with Interboro. Usually, that day for me is just a blur of work. I get a few good pours in for myself but it’s really a day for us to turn up our taps to the max and not really consider anything else. It’s about getting the best beer we can get so people have a great time. It really helps that we have good relationships with our distributors and importers. A lot of it actually has to do with them being so on board.
KG: If Carmine Street Beers has done one thing really well over the past six years, what do you think it is?
SM: I think a lot of people don’t jump into craft beer. It’s not usually their first beer. Which is to say, the people whose first beer wasn’t an Budweiser or MillerCoors product are very much in the minority. Part of the reason we’re so successful is that we don’t shoo those people away. We actually carry a bunch of macro stuff. I always made the argument that you’re never going to convert someone to liking craft beer if you scoff at their macro beer tastes. There are plenty of excellent arguments for why supporting macro breweries is a bad thing, but the person drinking that beer isn’t thinking, “I’m supporting this giant industry.” The only way to pull those people away from macro is to serve it and prove it against craft. Maybe my guy who buys my Corona sees my Grimm and says, Wow, that’s a cool logo, let me give that a whirl. But I wouldn’t have him as my customer if I didn’t serve macro. One of the main reasons to open was to fill a hole in the neighborhood for beer. To turn my back on that now seems silly.
—Interview edited for clarity and brevity.