Krewe Du Nord Brings New Orleans Vibrancy to Minneapolis: A Conversation with Maria Kustritz
by Angel Adaeze
Mark your calendars for Krewe Du Nord festival, a vibrant, free, and all-ages event presented by the Du Nord Foundation & Nobool Presents! This unique celebration of New Orleans music, food, and culture, infused with Minneapolis flavor, takes place on Saturday, June 21, 2025, from 2PM to 9PM at the historic Coliseum Building.
image via Du Nord Foundation’s Website
In the heart of South Minneapolis, Du Nord isn't just a producer of fine spirits, it's a testament to community resilience and a thriving hub of local pride. What started as a craft distillery took a pivotal turn in 2020, becoming an unexpected, but necessary, tool in its neighborhood.
It is important to note, since our candid conversation, The Du Nord Cocktail Room, along with its New Orleans-inspired restaurant, Lagniappe, officially closed their doors on May 31, 2025.
Owners Chris and Shanelle Montana stated via the business’ Instagram that while they had ambitious hopes for the revitalization of this stretch of Lake Street, "rebuilding on this stretch of Lake Street came with real challenges."
Despite the closures, the Du Nord Foundation will continue to operate, ran by Executive Director, Maria Kustritz, affirming their commitment to the community and their respective missions, including the upcoming Krewe Du Nord festival.
image via Du Nord Foundation’s Website
Here, Maria shares the pivotal moments of 2020 that transformed Du Nord from a craft liquor producer into a beacon of community impact, leading to the creation of the Du Nord Foundation, the imbedded meaning of "pride of place".
Angel Adaeze: What’s your Du Nord origin story? How and when did you get involved?
Maria Kustritz: I actually just hit my six years in the Du Nord fam because I started on the distillery side in April of 2019. I really got lucky; I was in the right place at the right time and kind of knew the right people. I didn't have a background in booze at all, or in beverages. Chris had to teach me how to make booze, how to do all the production stuff.
My job was sort of different every six months. I had one year of doing my job as a regular job, and then 2020 hit. We switched to making hand sanitizer. Then George Floyd got murdered, and we did a community market, and we started the Du Nord Foundation. There was a lot of stuff going on, and I was still just on the spirit side making booze. It was a wild ride. Did you live here in 2020?
AA: I did not, however, a lot of my friends were actively in the street during that time.
MK: Yeah, 2020… it's one of those things where people who were in Minneapolis, you know, they're like, "Oh yeah, you remember?" And like, "Yep." And we're so close - the Third Precinct is literally right there. We were over there every day, seeing what was going on, being a part of it after work. Initially, Chris [Montana] and I went over there, handing out bottles of water and hand sanitizer because we were making hand sanitizer here. It was a very emotional several weeks.
June of 2020 was the turning point for Du Nord as a company and for the Du Nord Foundation. Most nonprofits start when somebody has a really good idea, or they see a problem and say, "I have a solution for that." The Du Nord Foundation started the opposite way.
The warehouse right there had gotten broken into, fires started, and there was a bunch of water damage from sprinklers. The story about how damaged we were got blown up a little bit. We were like, "Our distillery didn't get destroyed! Who wrote that?" But people started sending money. Somebody started a GoFundMe for the distillery, and it grew really quickly. Chris and [his wife] Shanelle were like, "We have insurance; we're going to be okay, but there's a lot of other businesses that aren't going to be okay."
And so the Foundation started with a pile of money. It was like, "Well, how do we give out this money in the best way, the way that makes the most sense?" Very quickly, by August of 2020, we had given out half a million dollars to 70-plus local businesses in amounts up to $15,000. I think that's the amount where the folks who received it didn't have to pay taxes on it. They were thinking through all this.
I moved over to working on the Du Nord Foundation in January of this year, 2025. I had a background in working at nonprofits and was kind of ready for a change. I had been doing production for a while, so I finally said yes to Chris. I wasn't around for the first iteration of Krewe Du Nord in September of 2024; I was out of town that weekend. This will be my first!
AA: From everything that happened in 2020 - as someone who wasn’t here - in doing my research it did indeed sound like everything [the distillery] burned down and was left barren.
MK: It was like, "How did people come up with these stories?" I live less than a mile from here, and I was getting texts and phone calls from friends who don't live in Minneapolis, and they're like, "Are you okay? Do you need to leave?" I was like, "Hey, what the hell are you seeing on the news? I've been at the protest every day, and yeah, there's some scary sh-t, but not what you're talking about." The scary thing is the cops shooting rubber bullets when there are pregnant ladies standing right there. I'm not worried about any of these guys looting the liquor stores.
AA: So Du Nord has been pretty rooted in community, both literally in its place here and also figuratively. When you think about the concept of pride of place, what does that mean to you, and how does it shape the way that you might approach your work or that Du Nord might approach it?
MK: “Place” has been at the core of Du Nord since the day Chris started the distillery. He grew up around Minneapolis, went to South High. He knew this neighborhood; he intentionally wanted to be in this neighborhood. This distillery being in this place, the original cocktail room, was always a neighborhood place. The thing about Du Nord is that even as we've grown and gotten a little bit more professional, we've really tried not to lose our sense of community, our sense of neighborhood.
A big part of how Chris and Shanelle led the Du Nord response in 2020, Chris has said it so many times, was "this community took care of me". That has just been their mindset all along: you take care of your community; you are a part of your community, not separate from it. It was obviously not even a question.
Lake Street, Longfellow, Corcoran, it's always been one of the hearts of Minneapolis. It's changed over the years, and had its ups and downs. Anyone who lives close to it has always been like, "Yeah, it's awesome." You can be in the span of a few blocks and have so many different kinds of food, hear so many different languages, see awesome art, the murals. It's just a great place to feel strongly about.
AA: Speaking of place, Krewe Du Nord is inspired by New Orleans' bright, vibrant culture. What has motivated the hybrid of New Orleans and Minneapolis? How does that reflect?
MK: I think it really started because Chris, Shanelle, and their family live in New Orleans now. They moved there in 2020. The lively culture down there, Chris always wants to find ways to bring a little bit of that up to Minnesota, get Minnesotans to loosen up a little bit. The big piece, too, is that it's a little bit different than any other festival throughout the summer. Part of it is like, we wanted to find something that would stand out, that isn't just every other block party you can go to in Minneapolis in the summer. That's kind of where the New Orleans spin came from. It's really just trying to find something unique, and them living there made it an easy choice; there's a lot to draw on.
AA: Are there any specific sounds, flavors, traditions, or what have you from New Orleans that are really considered when putting on the festival, or what do you all go through to be like, "This feels like..."?
MK: We want to figure out the right mix of Minneapolis and New Orleans. Like last year, we are flying up bands from New Orleans. Last year, it was a band called Big Six. This year, it's a band called Soul Rebels. The local bands we get to complete the bill are in that same vibe, like Brass Solidarity and Minneapolis and St. Paul Funk and Soul All-Stars, a supergroup of sorts and folks that have played with Prince in the past. We were trying to get some of the buskers from New Orleans up here to have that vibe and energy and then surround them with the Minneapolis versions of that too. Hopefully, the music will be a hook for folks to come out and see a band that otherwise you'd have to go down to New Orleans to see.
For food, this year we're also trying to expand to include more restaurants from Lake Street and fill out our food vendors that way. All the food won't be specifically New Orleans food this year, but it'll be Lake Street folks.
Last year was really New Orleans focused, and this year, because we do want to broaden the focus beyond just the Du Nord bar and Lagniappe and Du Nord Spirits, and say, "Hey, come to this part of Lake Street today, but come back to somewhere else along Lake Street another day."
One thing I love about New Orleans is this feeling of joy for joy's sake. Minneapolis has that in pockets and in moments, certain days at certain places. There's a lot that's different between these cultures, but there are these moments of crossover. A place like going to Mayday, for example, or Art-a-Whirl, these things that happen in Minneapolis where you're like, "Yeah, there's little DIY, really grassroots-y, and the energy that comes with that, and the colorfulness, and the freedom of it." That is something that happens on such a bigger scale all the time in New Orleans. Up here, we just have it in these little places, but when we can get the ground fertile for another one of those little places for that to pop up, that is a win for Minneapolis. If we can have more locations, events, and moments of this joy, freedom, colorfulness, and creativity, I think that really adds to our city.
AA: Being a part of The Festival Producer Incubator Cohort means growing alongside different festival producers. There's a nice range in terms of festival age. What have you personally learned from the experience?
MK: I've never put on a festival before, never put on an event. I think it's been really helpful to have our mentors, to have the cohort meetings. It is a good, helpful reminder of checking in to see where everybody else is at and then either feeling like, "Oh my God, I'm so far behind," or "Oh my God, I'm not...". [laughs]. I think one of the bigger challenges with all of this is like we all can see the need for resource sharing. My biggest thing is I just don't even know the right question to ask. You know? 'Cause I feel so new at this so I am always happy to meet people and connect.
AA: When you think about this being the second iteration, and your first time doing it, what is your dream for the festival?
MK: Oh my God, let me tell you what the dream for the festival is. [laughs] This comes straight from Chris Montana. His dream is that someday it will be big enough that we can close off Lake Street, and he can get John Batiste here to be singing on a big old stage right in front of Lake Street.
He would talk about that early on, and we were like, "You need to calm yourself down. Like, that's going to cost a lot of money." But you never know, man. Chris is such a charismatic guy, such a big-picture, big-vision guy. It has been really cool to watch how people respond to him through the years. I've been like, a little bit behind the scenes, like a little sidekick, and just to see like, he can walk into a room and start talking, and people are just drawn to him.
Hopefully, the Third Precinct will be renovated and revamped into its new self by then. Having that in that place, having Lake Street closed down and John Batiste singing right there in that spot - that is Chris's dream.
Don’t miss the Krewe Du Nord festival on Saturday, June 21, 2025, from 2PM to 9PM on the Coliseum Building’s lot!
Learn more about the event and register for free tickets on the Du Nord Foundation’s website.
Learn more about the Festival Producer’s Incubator Cohort, here.
The Great Northern Festival Incubator Program is made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis.
Lake Street Lift projects were made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis.
