Our story

Brewability is proof of what happens when people are given a real opportunity.

We are a brewery and a pizzeria. We are 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.

Too often, adults with disabilities are defined by assumptions about what they cannot do, long before anyone lets them show what they can. An employer hears the word disability and pictures a liability. They picture accommodations as a cost rather than what they actually are — tools for access. And they think, quietly, I'll just hire the other guy.

But we learn through opportunity. All of us. We get better by practising, by taking responsibility, by making mistakes and fixing them, by being trusted with something that matters. Whether that is learning to stretch a pizza base, pull a clean pint, or read a room on a busy Friday — those are the moments that build a person.

Adults with disabilities are usually never given those moments. And you cannot demonstrate an ability you were never allowed to practise.

Accommodation is not special treatment. It is simply access to contribution.

Sometimes a person needs a little more patience. Sometimes they need a task explained a different way, a picture-based menu, a colour-coded system, a workspace they can actually reach, or a shift pattern that fits their body. None of that makes someone less intelligent, less capable or less valuable. It removes a barrier that did not need to be there, and lets an ability that was always present finally become visible.

An accommodation does not lower the standard. It clears the path to it.

Our employees are not symbols

Nobody here is a background character in somebody else's mission.

They are pizza makers, bartenders, hosts, servers, performers, problem-solvers, collectors, musicians, coworkers and friends. They are the reason the food is good and the reason people come back. If they all walked out tomorrow there would be no business — which is a fairly ordinary thing to say about a staff, and that is rather the point.

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. That turns out to matter as much as the paycheque, though the paycheque matters too.

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.

Meet the Brew Crew

How we got here

Ten years, three addresses, one idea

2016
A brewery in a garage

Tiffany Fixter, a special education teacher and autism educator, watched her students finish her programme 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.

Founder Tiffany Fixter.
2018
Pizzability opens in Cherry Creek

A second location, this time a pizzeria — and for several people, including our bar manager Avery, the first job anyone had ever offered them.

The Pizzability crew in the early years.
2019
Everything moves to Englewood

Both businesses combine into one building at 3445 South Broadway: the brewery, the pizzeria, the colour-coded taps and the dance floor, all under one roof.

3445 South Broadway, Brewability’s Englewood home.
2024
People start paying attention

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.

Tiffany celebrates an award recognizing her work at Pizzability.
Today
Twenty-six people working—and hundreds more ready

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

Nobody builds a place like this alone.

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.

The story behind the jewelry counter →