Our story
Brewability is a brewery and a pizzeria on South Broadway in Englewood. Nine beers on tap, dough made from scratch, live music on weekends — and a dance floor you can feel through your feet. Every bit of it is brewed, built, poured and carried to your table by adults with disabilities.
Which makes this place two things at once. It is somewhere to spend a Friday night. It is also the evidence for an argument we have been making for ten years: that adults with disabilities are far more capable than the world assumes — and that most of what holds them back was never the disability in the first place.
The people and the place
Brewability is more than a building, a menu or a beer list. It is the people who show up, work hard, make each other laugh and bring their whole selves to every shift. Every person on this team has something only they can give, and this place would not be Brewability without them.
What we actually make
A nice story does not fill anybody up. People come back for the food, the beer and a night out worth staying out for — and the crew knows it, because they made all three.
Made from scratch, here, every day we are open. Colorado Green Chile & Pork with local green chile sauce, Pesto & Prosciutto, Sweet & Spicy finished with hot honey. Gluten-free crusts, dairy-free cheese and a baked mac and cheese people order as a main course.
Nine on tap, brewed in the building. Every beer is named after a color and every tap is coded to match, so an order is “a Blue, please” instead of a paragraph. Blue is the amber ale, Red the chocolate coffee stout, Gold a peach cider. It is quicker for our team, and quicker for you.
Live music on weekends, bingo, trivia, fundraisers and birthday parties — on a dance floor that vibrates, so the music comes up through your feet as well as through the air. Deaf and hard-of-hearing guests do not watch the dancing here. They dance.
Real jobs, real skill, real pride — and a place that is theirs as much as anyone's.
They are pizza makers, bartenders, hosts, servers, performers, problem-solvers, musicians, coworkers and friends. They are what makes this place whole, and they are where its character comes from. When the whole crew is on and everyone is smiling, you can feel it the moment you walk through the door. On the days someone is missing, you feel that too.
For a lot of people here, Brewability is also the first place they have felt genuinely accepted. Somewhere you can talk openly about being disabled without being pitied for it or treated as less than anyone else in the room.
Ask them why they come in and plenty of them will not start with the paycheck. They will start with the purpose, and with being seen — known by name, counted on for a shift, part of something that would notice if they were gone. The paycheck matters too, and it should. It is just rarely the first thing anyone mentions.
What people build here — handling money, working a rush, being relied on, being good at something — does not stay behind the bar. It goes home with them, and it turns into confidence and independence in the rest of their lives.
How we got here
Tiffany Fixter, a special education teacher and autism educator, watched her students finish her program ready to work and find that nobody would hire them. So she opened Brewability Lab in a garage in a northeast Denver industrial park, and hired them herself.
A second location, this time a pizzeria — and for several people, including our bar manager Avery, the first job anyone had ever offered them.
Both businesses combine into one building at 3445 South Broadway: the brewery, the pizzeria, the color-coded taps and the dance floor, all under one roof.
Tiffany receives the Honey Badger Award. By now the story has been told by the Los Angeles Times, Colorado Public Radio, 5280, The Denver Post and The Colorado Sun — and a documentary crew has started filming.
Today, 26 people work at Brewability. More than 700 others are waiting for the same chance. Every name on that list represents talent, potential and someone ready to contribute.
The support behind the story
Brewability would not have been possible without an extraordinary support system: family and friends who believed in the idea before there was a building, a tap wall or a waiting list.
One person has been there from day one — believing in Tiffany’s vision, encouraging the team and helping Brewability grow into the community it is today. Her support is still part of the brewery, including jewelry from her family’s Golden shop that is sold right at the bar.
That kind of steady belief does not always appear in the spotlight, but it lives in every shift, every gathering and every person who gets the chance to be seen for what they can do.
Brewability TV
We film what actually happens here, because watching somebody work says more in ten seconds than a paragraph of mission statement ever will.
Redefining disability in the workplace
We learn through opportunity — by practicing, taking responsibility, making mistakes and being trusted with something that matters. Adults with disabilities are rarely given those moments, and you cannot demonstrate an ability you were never allowed to practice.
Accommodation is not special treatment. It is simply access to contribution.
Sometimes a person needs a task explained differently, a picture-based menu, a color-coded system, or a workspace they can reach. That does not lower the standard. It clears the path to it.
In the press
Reading about it is fine. Turning up is better.