Dragon Manjit Minhas: success as ‘young, Indian, a woman’

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It can be a unique path for female founders and women leaders in Canada’s private businesses.

When they were very small, Manjit Minhas and her brother, Ravinder Minhas, liked to move their lemonade stand from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to see what premium they could charge based on what they guessed the average income of residents might be on a particular street.

At the age of 19, with more than lemonade savings but just as much business savvy, Manjit and Ravinder pooled $10,000 and launched their first beer brand.

Less than a decade later, they purchased a brewery and named it Minhas Craft Brewery, which made the siblings the youngest brewery owners in the world at the time.

Today, Manjit is the chief executive and co-founder of Calgary-based Minhas Breweries, Distillery and Wineries, a title she likely did not foresee herself taking on when she was training as a petroleum engineer. She is also a Dragon on CBC’s Dragons’ Den reality venture capitalist pitch show.

Minhas Breweries has manufacturing and warehousing hubs around the world and produces more than 120 beers, spirits, liqueurs and wines. Its group of breweries is in the Top 10 largest in the world, with recent annual revenue of more than $200 million.

Manjit Minhas has received several awards, including Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and WXN’s Top 100 Women Entrepreneurs. Her philanthropic interests include helping raise almost $60 million for United Way of Calgary and Area, and, along with her brother, funding a free, all-girls engineering school in India.

Here, she talks about her immigrant parents’ influences, her childhood in Calgary, how she became a Dragon, and the attributes that brought her business success as a young woman and person of colour in a traditional liquor industry.

What are your memories of growing up in Calgary?

“I was born and raised in Calgary and had a pretty idyllic, typical middle-class upbringing.

My dad was an engineer who worked with one of the biggest oil companies in town, named Pan Canadian, in downtown Calgary. My mom was a stay-at-home mom.

We lived in Northwest Calgary. My brother took the yellow school bus to school. We played in the park that was right up the street from our home. We played every sport that you can imagine, pretty much from soccer to basketball to swimming to field hockey.

Calgary was a really nice, ‘big-small’ city in that it had everything. I don’t ever remember being stuck in traffic or taking long to get really anywhere.

I have never officially moved from Calgary. And that is where I’m raising, with my husband, my own two girls, because I enjoyed my upbringing here so much that I wanted to give them the same experiences.”

When did you have your first entrepreneurial spark?

“It was something that was always kind of there. My brother loved having lemonade stands growing up and moved around the neighborhood to where we could change the price as far as where we thought the neighbors had a little bit more money or were a little more generous.

But I would say, really, it started when my parents opened up liquor stores when it was privatized in the mid-nineties. And that was also the time that my dad was laid off from the oil sector in the downturn in the industry.

My parents had liquor stores in Calgary, and I was always there, whether it was doing homework at the boardroom table, or whether it was working and stocking shelves and washing floors.

I learned a lot about being an entrepreneur and being a business owner, not only from being a fly on the wall, but also my dad really sharing the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, how to deal with landlords, how to deal with sales reps, how to deal with staff, how to deal with the bank, a variety of different things.

I learned a lot about service, about a business plan, about competition, about knowing your numbers and understanding margins and profits.

That’s really when I started to understand the liquor industry even better, and what the gaps in the marketplace were, and where there was opportunity. In university, my brother and I came up with the idea of premium spirits at an everyday low price, or fair price, as I would like to call it.”

How did your business take shape in those early days?

“We started as a sales, marketing and branding company. In those early days, we never really dreamed of being a manufacturer and actually being worldwide. Just operating in Calgary was really what the goal and plan was – for it to be a little bit of a side hustle and to earn some extra money on the side.

Whereas fairly quickly, within five years, we determined that if we paid some closer attention and put more resources into this, we could actually make a go at it and compete with some of the large companies in the sector.”

Did you take a drink or two?

“We were also good consumers. When you’re a good consumer, you definitely know what you want. And also, you understand what is missing.

Most people back then would just complain about what is in the marketplace. And I think that I was, sure, good at complaining, but my dad used to always say to us: ‘There’s no point in complaining, if you’re not going to do anything about it.’ I tell my girls that all the time.

You have to turn ideas into action. There are lots of dreamers in the world, but there’s not as many doers. And those are the people that I want to back on the show, as well as in my own life. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but it’s the execution that really is what is important.

Understand that failure comes more often than success. What are you willing to put on the line?”

Who was there as a support system or champion in your corner during those early years?

“Definitely my parents. My dad is definitely the pragmatic one, and the one who supported us and guided us. My dad was that sounding board, which everybody needs, and sometimes you need somebody a little more mature.

Even to settle disputes in those early days, you’re making a lot of decisions that are going to affect the trajectory of your business, and where you’re going to invest with limited capital.”

He was always our mediator, and sometimes still is.

My mom absolutely was also our great supporter, but she more often told us to have fun, but make sure that you pursue something else at the same time and be able to build not only your competence but have an education.”

Your mom wanted you to have a safety net.

“Because my parents are immigrants. They came to this country with nothing, my mom at 9, following her father, who worked in the sawmill. And my dad at 21, with an engineering degree that wasn’t recognized in Canada.

They had no family here. They always instilled hard work, but also the idea that you have to have fallback plans, and many of them, because you never know what might be around the corner.”

How did you handle competition or challenges in the liquor industry?

“Once we got into the industry, I discovered and had mentors, and people around me in the industry.

Most of them were from the U.S., and they were family-owned distillery owners that I really admired. I wanted to learn from whatever they were open to coaching; somebody like me, who was young, Indian, a woman – definitely looked nothing like everybody else in my industry.

I had big dreams of changing the world, and I was going to do everything in my power to do that. My mentors were amazing and are still very involved in my life in a variety of different ways.”

How do you think your education choices informed your career trajectory?

“I don’t think my education [in engineering] has anything to do with my business. For me, that kind of is a blessing. One thing education did for me was it gave me the confidence to understand deadlines, and working with others, and how to research and how to continuously learn that it’s a never-ending experience.

I take one hour every day to just learn something new, to read, to listen to podcasts, to talk to new people. I’m a big advocate of learning.”

Did you feel nervous making the change to manufacturing your own alcohol brands?

“Yes, for sure. Lots of risk and lots of fear, going into the manufacturing side of the business.

It was seven years after we started, and we hired people that were smarter than us and had a team that also understood that side of the business more than we did. We learned from them.

There is something to be said about having courage, and not being afraid always of being wrong. You will be wrong, more than you’ll be right.”

What were some of your greatest challenges and greatest triumphs?

“It’s 350 days of challenges for 15 days of glory when you’re an entrepreneur.

No two days are alike. That’s what I love about being an entrepreneur. It’s not a nine-to-five, it’s all the time and sometimes not at all.

A lot of my days are putting out fires, for sure. It’s full of challenges with products that don’t work or a supply chain that goes wrong.

Right now we’re dealing with inflationary pressures, like a lot of other businesses. With competition with governments in our business, it’s a regulated industry and there is a lot going on all the time.

But that’s not to say that there aren’t triumphs. We’ve been in business for 24 years and we’ve built some amazing partnerships and brands and had a lot of success.

I’m not really one that’s great at celebrating those successes. That’s the entrepreneurial drive and ambition in me, that’s always like, ‘Okay, great; let’s move on.’”

How did you become a Dragon?

“It was nine years ago, and I had two daughters – a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. The CBC had done a story on me and my brother, when we were really just starting out and breaking into some new markets. We were living at my parents’ still at the time, and the CBC producer must have still had their phone number.

Years later, by chance I was with my girls at my parents’ house, who live across the street from me. The phone rang and I picked it up and it was a CBC producer. I said to him, ‘What took you so long to call?’ He thought I was joking, but I really wasn’t.

Was it a done deal right away?

“I was telling the family at my parents’ house and my brother and my husband both said I was crazy to even think about it. My daughters were so young, and there would be travelling, the shooting schedule, moving to Toronto, a variety of things.

I told them it didn’t seem possible, but they asked me to try the audition anyway.”

You almost didn’t go to the audition in favour of getting a few extra hours of work done in Toronto?

“My brother knows me too well, and trusted that I would go to Toronto, but that I wouldn’t go to the audition, because I would be of the mind that I could use the two hours to get some work done in the city.

He got my dad to chaperone me to come to Toronto, and because my dad was with me … I don’t want to say that I’m scared of my dad, but he definitely got us there.

It was such an amazing experience, and they offered me to be on the panel as a Dragon. But I needed a support team to be able to help do that. And, well, everybody said yes. Pretty much my whole family, including my parents, came to Toronto for a month. And it was an amazing first experience.

And I’ve never looked back. We’re nine years in and my kids have grown up and I have invested in dozens of entrepreneurs, and it has been such a life enriching experience to be a part of their journeys, successes and failures.”

Any challenging or investments you have regretted?

“Not all of them have been successes by any means […] It’s tough because you just want to believe in them.

Sometimes you sure want to shake them and say, ‘What are you thinking?’ I’m always remembering that those are people’s lives, their dreams. A ton of their money and their families’ and friends’ money, is on the line and you try to help them move on in the right direction or make a new business plan, but it’s not always possible.

But just to be a part of that, all of those successes, your first time you see your product hit a shelf, in a flyer and just get it even to market and procuring. Even helping people … and not make the mistakes that I made. Being able to be somebody in their corner has just been such a rewarding experience for me.

It’s been an amazing way for me even to see what Canadians are constantly inventing and innovating, and what problems they are solving.”

What have been your highlights as a Dragon?

“There are so many, and it usually is about meeting some pretty fantastic entrepreneurs who really blow your mind.

I tell myself, and I think we all do, ‘Don’t underestimate them.’ Someone will have a crazy idea, and they tell you they sold $6 million worth of their product in the last year. There are so many creative innovative Canadians who are changing the world, one product, one service, one idea at a time.”

When it comes to giving back to your community, what are your favorite philanthropic initiatives?

“I’m a big supporter always of newcomers and immigrants, and all of the immigrant aid societies and newcomer associations to help them settle, to help them understand Canadian life. You want to help them get jobs and pursue further education if they need. Many of us were born and raised here and sometimes take that for granted. That is always near and dear to my heart.

And anything to do with women and children. I give a lot of time and energy to the United Way, and I’ve been campaigner for the YWCA. We just finished building a $15 million crisis shelter in Calgary for women, children and their pets, who are fleeing from domestic violence.

I really do believe that this country has given me and my family opportunity, and it is my duty to give back in any way that I can.”

Are you seeing any trends in venture capital right now?

“Definitely. In the egg space; everybody whom I love is worried about how we’re going to feed the world.

I am a big investor in the food and beverage space, just because I know it well. And so I would say that that is something that I am very much watching closely. I’m also seeing a lot more patient capital in that world, which is really nice.

I do feel that AI is helping a lot of different industries. And it’s very beneficial in a lot of ways to people figuring out how to integrate it properly.

I would say the three-year plan is definitely also making a comeback; going away from short-term plans; a little more patient capital, understanding the marketplace, inflationary AI, supply chain, all the struggles that people are having.

I would say growth at any cost is definitely out for now, revenue returning and returning in consistent ways is important, sustainable investing. I’m a big advocate of ESG. I’ve learned a lot about it myself. And I chair a couple of committees and boards that I sit on, which is really fascinating. It’s important to understand how we affect not only the environment, but how it affects the bottom line, how social impact and governance really are the foundations of great companies that can last a long time.”

What sectors in particular do you feel the most excited about?

“The agricultural and beverage space. There is a lot of creativity in both of those spaces. I’m interested in how we’re bringing healthier food to the world, from shorter distances with less labour being involved.

I’m interested in more nutritious and nutrient dense options. The eggs industry, again.

And then the beverage space. I’m fascinated to see how we’re bringing more functional beverages into play.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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