The brewd mentality

Bangalore: After working for a while in the corporate zone in companies like HP and ANZ, the young grad in business studies, wanted to give the city, a share of what it does best.

It was Meenakshi Raju’s love of craft beer that led her to study brewing after her business studies and start the city’s first microbrewery, The Biere Club in the city many years back.

And now it’s her love for people that made her stretch her boundaries to open 153, Biere Street on a one-acre area in Whitefield.

“Bengaluru is known for its outdoors. One cannot really sit on Brigade Road and have a good time and that’s how this space was born. I’m a very people’s person and like to make new friends. My love for travel has taken me to many places around the world. I always liked places like the South Street Seaport in New York, the Cubbon Garden London, quaint locales of Europe, Clarke Quay Singapore, besides other open spaces in Melbourne and Los Angeles where people would be seen chilling alfresco. Everywhere I went drew inspirations. I would always click pictures and draw them from my own imagination. This place is a culmination of all my experiences. My idea was on a book and my brother Aravind and I have executed it by working in tandem,” says the young lady with a dimpled smile.

The single, petite and pretty entrepreneur, adds, “Whitefield has a growing expat population, who are looking for newer and exciting things to do — 153 Biere Street is made like a Cobblestone street with large open retail units like Tailorman, Ohana Flowers, The Design Edition and Do-Something, live pottery, a California styled organic themed restaurant called Mustard and Cress, a patisserie called Everything Stops for T — a house with sweet, scrum-diddly-upmtious, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, a Victorian theatre for performances and The Biere Club. That’s why I’m opening with a weekend carnival on March 1 and 2 called Le Fiesta in true European spirit and style. We have had enough of flea markets. I plan to curate innovative and exciting things like Yard sales, where people can come out, mingle over a carnival with street artists, get caricatures done and soak in the fiesta.”

Getting candid on what she likes to do when she’s not scurrying for work, Meenakshi reveals, “I like to listen to soothing music and hang out with family and friends. I’m not a heavy metal kind of person, other than that I enjoy all kinds of good music. I love to lie down and read a good book.”