By Jackson Hawkins
The Board and Brew, located on Baltimore Avenue between The Varsity and University View, is a hybrid between a bar, restaurant and coffee shop. The restaurant offers drinks, food and over 500 different board games customers can play as they enjoy their meal.
According to the 2022 FBI annual crime report, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes increased from 2021. The data showed there were 815 anti-LGBTQ+ crimes reported and ones with anti-transgender sentiments reached 408 incidents.
Board and Brew launched a fundraiser at the beginning of April spanning all of trans-visibility month in support of the Trevor Project, a non-profit organization that serves as a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth.
The fundraiser has a special menu, and for each order placed, two dollars from each order will be donated to the Trevor Project. The special menu includes two non-alcoholic drinks and one margarita.
The “Sucker Punch” is a non-alcoholic slushy with ginger beer and hints of lime, lemon and cranberries. The “Cherry Blossom Lemonade” contains lemon juice and cherry blossom simple syrup which is derived from cherry blossom tea. The “Purple Rain” margarita comes in a tajin-rimmed glass and contains butterfly pea flower syrup along with Cointreau, an orange-flavored liqueur.
Randy Hayek, the beverage director at the Board and Brew, has worked at the company since 2016. Hayek created the drink menu and had a vision when creating the combinations for the three drinks.
“I kind of had a rough goal to try and get the trans flag colors, but the blue was particularly tricky,” Hayek said. “The charity ended up being the Trevor Project, which is more inclusive for the entire LGBTQ community, so really what I was looking at was just like spring color and spring flavor.”
While this is not the first fundraising effort Board and Brew has done, Benjamin Epstein, the Board and Brew co-founder and co-owner, said this was the first year doing a fundraiser with donations going to the Trevor Project. Before choosing an organization, Epstein polled his workers about where they would like to donate, eventually choosing the Trevor Project to make sure that they donated to an organization where a majority of the proceeds go directly to the people.
This fundraiser is very close and present in Epstein’s everyday life with the impact it can have on the youth and community around him.
“I’ve got girls… one in middle school and one in elementary school,” Epstein said. “I’ve got a close friend whose kid is trans and he has just been having a lot of issues.”
Employees like Arabella Tansimore, a junior information science major, have worked for a year and a half as a barista, credit management for creating an environment that fosters inclusivity.
“There are a lot of people from a lot of different places,” Tansimore said. “Not everyone is American, not everyone is straight.. it is a diverse set of people.”
Featured image: Board and Brew’s drink menu for the fundraiser. Photo taken by Jackson Hawkins