Montanya staff in costume at a 2021 staff retreat.
We employ 21 people across ethnicities, gender and generation, from Gen Z to Boomer. They are hard-working, smart, committed to quality and supportive of each other and Montanya. We consider it a privilege and a responsibility to grow and celebrate diversity, build a more inclusive and equitable workplace, and create professional opportunities in a small, rural community.
We work hard to make sure our hiring practices break local norms and industry-wide trends. Our home town of Crested Butte is 96.53% white and our county is 87.2% white. In the rum industry, gender diversity is growing, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.
At Montanya, you’ll find women across all positions of the company, including distilling and management. (More than half of the rum we have ever made was distilled by women.)
We have also recruited a staff where 25% of employees are BIPOC. In our Tasting Room, which includes a bar and restaurant, we are also careful not to limit roles by ethnicity.
All too often, we’ve observed that a restaurant’s diversity is most evident in the dish pit or back of house, while the front of house positions remain homogenous.
We’ve also committed to providing meaningful and ongoing training in Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. It’s one thing to build a diverse staff and another to learn and grow as a team so everyone feels included and has mobility within the company regardless of ethnicity or gender.
Our aim is always to introduce and maintain gender and ethnic diversity throughout the company, and to outperform our community demographics.
While we can always do better, we’re glad to be on the right track and offer Crested Butte locals the chance to have a job they love in the place they want to be.
Montanya Employees at a Glance:
Based on December 2020 employment (full stats available in our 2020 Impact Report.
We work hard to prioritize full time positions over part-time, pay higher than average wages for our community, and keep staff employed year round in a tourist-driven economy. Full-time employees receive health, disability, life, dental, vision, and hospitalization insurance. We provide ski passes and paid vacation.
We also work with staff to create positions that support the needs of a growing rum company and individual career development. It has been so rewarding to see employees promoted into new roles with growing responsibilities, and to see how Montanya helps staff grow as professionals. As our crew helps us meet our goals, we love knowing we help them achieve theirs!
Diversity has always been a priority at Montanya, but the 2020 murder of unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis police officer motivated our founder and owner to take a more public stand for racial justice. We also participated in a Facebook boycott to protest its “hands-off policy” toward factually inaccurate, inflammatory, or violent content.
It was a turning point, inspiring new efforts around social justice. Karen hired a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Coordinator to bring valuable expertise to Montanya and support the development of the Melanin Mountain project, a local nonprofit dedicated to growing diversity and inclusion in our community. We added JEDI training to our annual staff retreat in 2020 and completed a five-week group training in 2021. We’ve also worked to educate our community about the value of diversity in the workplace.
There is so much more to learn and do, but we’re ready.
Montanya staff, including Founder and Owner Karen Hoskin (left), pose in front of a Black Lives Matter street mural in Crested Butte, Colorado.
