Tara Hankinson: Brewery co-founder, customer experience whiz, and loves a chilled red

Welcome back to Cheers with Nat – the podcast dedicated to cheering on women in drinks.

We’re continuing our four episode mini-series from NYC!

Today’s guest is Tara Hankinson, co-founder and co-CEO of TALEA Beer Co.

TALEA was founded with a mission to bring craft beer to a broader audience – and you’re about to hear exactly how they’re doing it.

From brand voice, to customer experience, to collaborations and partnerships, Tara tells us how her early inspiration and entrepreneurial spirit snowballed to get her where she is today… and she’s got loads of great insight to share.

What stuck with me from this conversation:

On getting to where she is now: “This is probably my 5th or 6th career post-undergrad, so it’s not as linear as most people think. I think a lot of people expect to find that dream job at age 23, 24 and that’s just not practical. So, it took a bit, but I love it now. And I think Leann and I are actually good at it. Both because of all the non-linear starts and stops we’ve had in our career and because we are very agile and flexible and have built this business from the ground up.”

On her initial vision for a business: “I had always loved wine, and I felt such a connection to the experience of going to a great winery and wine tasting. And that high end hospitality-forward experience had never been a part of the beer world that I had explored. So that was kind of my original kernel for getting interested in beer.”

On being data-driven: “Nowadays, you can export every Google review you’ve ever gotten and put it into Claude or Gemini and say, what are the positive trends, what are the negative trends, what’s the biggest opportunity in our negative reviews to turn this experience around. That didn’t exist when we started the business, but I think just thinking of customer experience as something you can quantify, you can use data to make decisions and make investments.”

On TALEA’s brilliant beer descriptions: “This is meant to be relatable and approachable and to convince you to stay on the beer side of the menu versus the wine and cocktails that are on the back.”

On collaborations and partnerships: “I think [they’re] a way in which we are continuing to challenge the preconceived notions of what craft beer is and who it’s for.”

On what the business is here to do: “In its simplest form, we are trying to give people little moments of joy.”

 

Links & things:

What we’re drinking:

• TALEA’s spicy marg sour (and their brite lager as a back up!)

TALEA's:

• Taprooms

• Social, and

• Latest collaborations

  • x NYPL

  • x Flamingo

  • x Levain

Other shout outs:

• An early inspiration: Wölffer Estate Vineyard

• A mentor: Mike Seitz at Bare Bottle

Highlights from our last call round:

• Podcast recc: Acquired

• Producer we need to know: Wild East Brewing

• Where Tara wants to visit: Germany

• Another awesome woman in drinks we should meet: Jamie Fox from the New York Brewers Guild

 

Recording info:

• April 2026 in NYC

• We recorded in the basement of Talea West Village… right next to a rather noisy ice machine that decided to chime in part way through our conversation! The background noise settles soon after, so please do hang in there. (And thanks for your patience and understanding!)

 

Subscribe | Follow on Instagram | Email