It isn’t easy being the new kid in town. For that matter, neither’s being the new brewery. Peter Daniel and the team at Rapscallion’s Lawrence expansion have found an exception to the adage: Nothing is easy in the contemporary brewing industry, but the welcome the Immigrant City has shown them has certainly made things easier.
“Openness and willingness to collaborate is really what Lawrence is all about,” says Monica Manoski, executive director of Essex Art Center, a nonprofit art studio that’s served Lawrence and its citizens well for the last 32 years. “It’s really community spirited, and people show up for each other.” Essex Art Center is a separate entity from Rapscallion, of course; the key feature they share is their address, 56 Island Street, a floor apart from each other. Nonetheless, the relationship that Rapscallion has with Essex Art Center proves Manoski’s point. Here, people come together. Here, people act across fields, disciplines, and backgrounds.
Community Building
Daniel, co-proprietor of Rapscallion with his twin brother, Cedric, recalls meeting city officials at the brewery for safety inspections prior to opening—the standard compliance checks any new business must pass. Everything went to routine until the examinations finished. “We’ve never had a fire chief or a police chief come in, do what they have to do as part of their job, and follow that up by saying, ‘We’ll be back tonight to have a beer,’” says Daniel. “That’s a little foreign to me, which is not a bad thing.” Rapscallion’s other locations, in Acton, Spencer, and Sturbridge, met warm greetings in their respective communities, but Lawrence is simply different. Rapscallion is appreciated by its other neighborhoods; Lawrence is welcoming.
“They’ve got skin in the game. They want organizations here, businesses here, to work,” Daniel explains. “So they actually come back and support it. That happens in every community, but I’ve seen it accelerate at greater length here. I think that’s a great thing.”
As if to drive the point home, Gary Sidell, president of the Bell Tower Commercial Real Estate Group and the landlord of 56 Island, chimes in, comparing his own Lawrence experiences with his experiences in other cities. “There is something special about Lawrence. There’s a collaborative type of attitude here,” Sidell adds, reinforcing Daniel and Manoski’s anecdotes. “There’s not a lot of egos, right? People want to see something like Rapscallion be successful here.”
Most cities hosting new craft breweries would likely make similar statements. Spend a day in Lawrence, though, and you’ll find out in short order why the sentiment seems to apply doubly for its budding crop of hospitality establishments. People here embrace one another in entrepreneurial as well as cultural pursuits with neighborly zeal, seen in events like ¡Fiesta en la calle!, an annual block party thrown in July where all of Island Street becomes a pedestrian thoroughfare teeming with art, craft activities, dancing, live music, shopping, and food and pastries provided by local restaurants and bakeries. Everything unique to Lawrence’s character is presented in ¡Fiesta en la calle!—especially its Dominican roots.
Word of Mouth
Lawrence is a majority-minority city. More than 80 percent of its population identifies as Hispanic; Dominicans comprise the bulk of that figure, with Puerto Ricans coming in a close second. That tapestry of heritage, crucial for understanding Lawrence not just as a city, but as a people, feels familial. Setting up shop in an environment like that is consequently daunting. Craft breweries sink or swim in large part by word of mouth, and that dynamic increases in potency in communities like Lawrence. It’s on the Rapscallion Lawrence crew—brewer Brandon McGrath, head chef Victor Gonzales, mixologist Henrique Toledo, marketing manager Sierra Tucker, and Daniel, in tandem with Manoski—to meet the challenge of fitting into the city’s backdrop.
Tucker reflects on the ways Rapscallion has performed that same feat in its western Massachusetts locations: with chili cookoffs and summertime 5Ks, and by participating in town-specific events like Spencer’s Christmas Parade of Lights. “We do raffles for that, and the proceeds go back into the community,” Tucker says. “It’s about listening to the community, what they want to see from us, what they’re liking, what they’re not, and going beyond that.”
Daniel expects to see heightened involvement of that nature in Lawrence, too. Meanwhile, Rapscallion’s Lawrence facility opened in July and struck up a partnership six weeks later with Groundwork Lawrence, a nonprofit focused on improving the community through environmental progress, employment initiatives, and youth engagement. And the bond between Rapscallion and Groundwork best demonstrates how quickly Lawrence accepts newcomers into its makeup.
If the brewery’s charity programs will pay the city’s reception to their presence forward in time, their beer will easily suffice for now. It’s almost traditional for breweries to produce beers with a nod to their locations on the label. In that vein, Rapscallion named the flagship beer for Lawrence—a hazy American pale ale—after the Ayer Mill Clock Tower, south and across the Merrimack River from Island Street. Rapscallion’s core lineup is available in Lawrence, including Rapscallion Honey, their marquee beer, but McGrath is excited by the prospect of trying out new recipes in the space.
Guava Focused
In some cases, that boosted production means McGrath will satisfy both goals at once. A terrific example of that twofer is the guava margarita sour; in Dominican food, guava is used in every thing from dulce de guayaba (guava jam) to casquitos de guayaba (guava shells simmered in spiced syrup) to bizcocho dominicano (a white cake with guava filling). Rapscallion has the guava sour on tap.
Rapscallion itself feels tailor-made for Lawrence. It’s a Massachusetts craft beer institution going back to 2007, when the Daniel brothers opened their first location in Lowell. Adapting to an environment like Lawrence may seem like a challenge for such a tenured brand. But Rapscallion is meeting Lawrence and its community where they live and taking notes from the city one day, and one pour, at a time—and that’s what showing up is really all about.