Beer may come ahead. However, it doesn’t often come with a heart. But nestled within the Bohemian hinterland, the Pivovar Chříč isn’t your average brewery.
For one thing, it is staffed almost entirely by mentally and physically impaired people. For another, it diverts all its earnings to fund a primary school.
Petr Jakubicek is the brains in the back of the enterprise, tucked away in a village 50 miles west of Prague.
A brewery was mounted on the website in 1573, earlier than being closed by the Nazi government in 1943 to requisition grain to feed German forces at the Japanese front. It was later converted into a collective agricultural agency and stripped of its beer-making equipment by the communist government, which came to power in what was then Czechoslovakia after the Second World War.
Reopened in 2016, it is yet again producing beer, courtesy of a body of workers formerly unable to find work because of their disabilities.
The concept for the business enterprise was hatched by using Jakubíček and his spouse, Jana, as they sought a business version that would offer employment and meaning for disabled people within the area, ordinarily resident in a country facility within the nearby village of Zavidov.
It’s a big hassle in this u. S. That we’ve social institutions which are full of people physically able to operate,” said Jakubíček, 39, an NGO specialist from Prague who enjoys devising programs for the disabled.
The preliminary plan became a sheltered workshop generating wood or ceramic merchandise, before business possibilities in the sector’s maximum enthusiastic beer-drinking state drove the venture on a unique path.
“We had an enterprise supervisor who became concerned about how to get out of the red,” explains Jakubíček, who revived the long-abandoned brewery facility with the assistance of Propolis, a Czech civic institution. “We had a few examples of suitable practices regarding social enterprise plans. With timber and ceramics, you may discover clients buying it as soon as, however with a beer, we knew they might need to shop for it forever.”
Wheeling crates of beer from a cooling room, Vašek Stark stated his debt of gratitude to the corporation. Stark, sixty-two, has resumed full-time work for the first time since he was 20. At the same time, his profession as a specialist machine operator ended due to a road accident that left him with critical head injuries.
“I like the concept that the brewery is here,” said Stark, one of approximately 20 mentally and physically impaired people. “I would have liked to have labored earlier than I did; however, I couldn’t because I had to take care of my mother and father.”
Workers fulfill a spread of tasks, including bottling, labeling, cleaning, and delivering, on the premise of man or woman suitability. The production technique is overseen by a pro brewer with forty years’ experience. All receive a minimum wage of 12,2 hundred Czech korun (£420 a month), with the better-skilled earning extra.
More valuable, says Jakubiček, is the esteem gained by the people. “The essential issue is that operating right here gives them a feeling of pleasure,” he says. “It gets them out of the group, where some residents are extra significantly handicapped. Some of them may not recognize the value of cash. However, most of them can read and write.”
The result is a thriving brewery generating half a dozen varieties of lager, stout, and ale – consisting of an IPA known as Mahatma in honor of Gandhi – sold to pubs and licensed premises in cities such as Prague and Plzen.
Demand is increasing, Jakubíček says, thanks to word of mouth and consumer delight in an exceedingly competitive Czech beer marketplace dominated by long-established breweries, including Pilsner Urquell, Krušovice, and Staropramen, all of which have been owned by foreign proprietors in recent years.
About one hundred twenty 00 liters (240,000 pints) of beer had been produced to this point this year, with plans to boost manufacturing and possibly recruit extra workers.
The profits have helped fund the established order of a number one faculty subsequent to the brewery, filling a gap left by the closure of the village’s preceding kingdom faculty 10 years ago. Eighteen scholars – aged from six to 10 – are taught in a single lecture room along non-traditional coaching ideas based on Montessori techniques, overseen by Jakubicek’s spouse, Jana, a certified trainer.
