Superstar Tastemakers Wendy & Felipe Bravo of Fox Fermentation Project
More than one thing was clear on the first date of Wendy and Felipe Bravo. Not only did they end up getting married, they also co-created a business together, the idea of which was born the first time they met. “Basically, the concept of Fox Tale started the first time Felipe and I actually talked,” reminisces Wendy Bravo. “It came up as a shared vision. I wanted to have a cool café community space; he always wanted a brewery. And as soon as we started dating, one of our first hobbies was him teaching me how to home brew.”
That was in 2017, and if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, the brick-and-mortar space in downtown San Jose that has evolved into Fox Tale Fermentation Project might never have existed. Both Wendy and Felipe lost their jobs in 2020, as did so many people, and so they just started fermenting stuff at home.
Felipe had been teaching Wendy about home brewing, pulling on his decade-long background as a homebrewer as well as seven years in production brewing for places like Fort Point, Original Pattern and Devil’s Canyon. He also studied electrical engineering in grad school, writing his thesis on automated homebrew systems.
But Wendy was also already pretty savvy in the fermentation department, having a degree in holistic nutrition and pioneering Facebook’s fermentation and superfoods initiatives. So they continued to tinker and experiment with fermentation projects in their forced “downtime,” eventually giving and selling their products to friends out of their garage.
And as their experiments gained popularity, they envisioned the next step. “We talked over those years about starting a business, and the pandemic showed us ‘What do we have to lose?’” recalls Wendy.
“We built Fox Tale from the ground up. We had help from friends and our own grit, and we created everything together,” she says. The brewery and restaurant opened in 2022, and it truly has been a bootstrap creation from day one. Especially as they have seen so many businesses close in the current economic climate, they can reflect on how much they have learned.
“We really just had to teach ourselves everything. We started as a brewery that specialized in cool unique beers, with a side project on fermented bites. But we learned how limiting that was, and we needed to pivot and expand to reach a bigger market,” says Wendy.
“We learned very quickly how to make really cool specialty mocktails and teas because that’s important for folks not drinking alcohol. And also the food. Being a restaurant keeps people coming in. I had to teach myself how to own a restaurant, even though I’ve worked in them since I was 18 years old. We very quickly became a fermentation plant-based restaurant and nano brewery.”
As that restaurant owner who finds herself rooted in the kitchen part of the business, Wendy says that a customer favorite is the “funky nachos,” completely vegan and loaded with her Fermented Mole Michelada Mix, veggies, sun-dried tomatoes, cultured cashew queso and jalapeño garlic kraut. “It is by far the most popular dish,” she says.
Anyone familiar with Fox Tale knows that their specialty beers are excellent, often with super unique ingredients like pawpaw fruit or Floriani red corn. Wendy is quick to compliment Felipe for this. “He’s such a talented brewer. And obviously there’s certain things you have to have [as a brewery], like an IPA. But we can also get as weird as we want because we’re so small, and our customers want that, they want something unique and different,” she says.
So what’s a nano brewery and restaurant to do in the face of popularity and outgrowing a tiny space?
When asked what they envision for the next phase of Fox Tale, Wendy says, “We’re really been trying to figure out what the future looks like in a realistic way. Obviously finding a bigger space would be everything for us. We are tiny, we don’t have a full kitchen, we’ve had to make our offerings enticing without having the capacity… But it’s been really cool. And we are flexible, and we love San Jose. We are very community-based, but we are open to what opportunities come at us.”
The Bravos really do appreciate their location in DTSJ, finding synergy with their neighboring tenants on the block and similar-minded small businesses. It’s a community with shared goals. But the greater vision for Fox Tale involves property, with a dream of starting their own farm. “Expanding our footprint without getting too big for our britches,” Wendy says. “We want to connect with chefs and farmers and independent businesses. We’d like to do farm dinners and show up at art events; that’s where we really thrive and what we really love.”
Ultimately, Wendy says that the dream is “to grow big enough to sustain the culture of connectivity while making the products that we love.”
Fox Tale Fermentation Project
30 E Santa Clara St, Suite 120, San Jose
