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• Black owned distilleries full#

Anything that we could do, we are here to do that." "Coming from a third-world country, I have seen it all in terms of what it's like when it comes to support and poverty. "Our entire model is to be here to support the community in any way that we can," Louis says.

Black owned distilleries full#

Through Toast's charitable arm, Toast First Response, Louis collaborated with a friend to bring 18-wheelers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, full of diapers, food, water, and other supplies to contribute to the relief efforts for the devastation left by Hurricane Irma in September 2017. Like Pitbull, Louis is big on 305 pride - he describes himself as "a very big Miamian" who loves to support his adopted city and the state of Florida. The next year, Louis executively produced International Takeover, a compilation album that featured Pitbull and other Miami artists. Louis says he and Pitbull go way back - when Louis was on the marketing team at Miami Subs as the sandwich chain was restructuring, he persuaded Pitbull to come on as a business partner in 2012.

Toast Distillers now fully owns the Miami Distilling Company, which produces Miami Club Rum, E11EVEN Vodka, and Pitbull's Voli 305 Vodka. Toast in-house brands include the Toast vodka and a line of seltzers that are currently in the process of going to market. The spirits company now manufactures alcohol products, develops brands internally, and facilitates the distribution needs of other brands. The Miami Distilling Company welcomed him onboard with 49 percent of the company, until this past November when Louis bought the remaining 51 percent of the distillery, making his Toast Distillers the parent company. After Toast became the official vodka of America's Cup and Sundance Film Festival, in 20 respectively, Louis saw the opportunity for the brand to grow. Since bringing Toast Vodka to market in 2015, Louis has grown the business and now owns an entire distillery out near Doral. After launching in Florida, he worked with distribution facilities to put his vodka on store shelves and at bars across the U.S. Louis created Toast Vodka to be the world's first ultra-premium spirit made with unflavored coconut water. "We are just working and trying to execute the plan." "We don't really promote ourselves as a black-owned business where people would even know," Louis says. Today, Toast Distillers in Miami is one of the nation's few black-owned distilleries. The name, he says, is a toast "to life, to love, to us." Although he had long had dreams of creating his own liquor brand, Toast was directly inspired by the earthquake. Louis cites that near-death experience as the fuel that prompted the creation and soul of his brand Toast Vodka, which he began working on shortly after he returned to Florida. "I later found out that everyone inside the hotel died." It was a couple of hours later that the earthquake struck," he tells New Times.

"Instead of checking into my hotel, I decided to go into the town for some food.

Looking back, Louis says he easily could have been among them. On the afternoon of January 12, 2010, a historic 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the island nation, resulting in the death of approximately 200,000 Haitians. Months later, Louis was visiting his home country on a volunteer trip when he had a life-changing experience. And he has pulled strings to leverage those celebrity relationships to help his community back in Haiti - on December 5, 2009, Louis threw his first major benefit concert, where Ross headlined a crowd of roughly 750,000. Moving to Miami at age 21, he became involved in the entertainment industry and began building a career in music production, event management, and concert promotion.Īs he became more well connected, Louis rubbed elbows with some of Miami's biggest stars, including Rick Ross and Pitbull. Originally from Haiti, Dieuveny Jean "DJ" Louis emigrated to West Palm Beach when he was 12 and pursued his passion for music as a guitarist in school and at church.