DRINK Florida is the latest distribution point for Danny Robinson and his Hoop Tea adventure.
Finding The Sweet Spot Hoop Tea founder Danny Robinson turns beach experiment into a thriving business
D
anny Robinson’s life was neatly planned and laid out. He majored in political science at Iona College (N.Y.) in the early 1980s, and he was going to become a big-shot lawyer in the Big Apple. Then something unexpected happened — he discovered he hated the thought of being a lawyer. “All it took was to do an internship at a law firm to discourage me from ever becoming a lawyer,” Robinson says. “Actually, it also discouraged me from having any kind of 9-5 job. I saw guys in New York still spending hours on the subway every day in that rat race and quickly realized it wasn’t for me. “So, now I always tell people that I work 80 hours a week to avoid a 40hour work week.” Those long hours are spent doing something he loves in a place he loves — Robinson is the owner and operator of Backshore Brewing Co., in Ocean City, Md., and he helped create its signature alcoholic brews, Hoop Tea. Robinson first came to Ocean City during college and would head to the Maryland beach resort annually to work as a bartender. “And after doing that for four summers, I had no desire to go back to New York,” he says. Robinson “saved his pennies” from his bartending gigs, and in 2005 he opened a restaurant-bar on the boardwalk between 9th and 10th streets. He called it Hammerheads on the Beach. ►
By Kevin Noonan
JULY 2021
| OUTANDABOUTNOW.COM
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