Founder of beer business that got its start in Batavia honored by SBA
In 1983, a Henrietta resident bought a small beverage company in Batavia with a vision for building a chain of stores that would offer customers a wide selection of handcrafted and imported beers.
Batavia Beverage Corporation became Angotti Beverage Corporation and Tony Angotti was on a path toward what is now three stores in the Rochester region, including the widely known Beers of the World in Henrietta.
That success has landed Angotti the prestigious honor of Small Business Person of the Year for the area's 14-county Small Business Administration district.
The Democrat & Chronicle published a story about Angotti today.
"I've always been a nut for imported beers and something different," he said Tuesday. "I always dreamed of something different, something that was not available in upstate New York. So I started bringing in beers, sometimes obscure beers, that nobody knew anything about and some are very well-known brands today."
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"The population today is not like it was years ago when our fathers and grandfathers used to go a bar and say 'give me a beer' and didn't even know what they were getting," Angotti said. "To them a beer was a beer. But today we have a very sophisticated drinking population that is looking for something unique, something different."
