In This Story:
How a five-dollar tip on a Mexican beach led to a craft tequila brand
Why Valor built its foundation on day one instead of waiting for success
What life looked like in a village that only had water one or two days a week
The three-generation family that showed volunteer doctors what agave country is missing
How you can help bring healthcare to the people who make tequila
The tip was 100 pesos.
That's about five dollars. A hotel guest on a Mexican beach handed it to a waiter who had spent four hours serving them.
Christiane Maertens saw it from the sand. She was on a New Year's trip with a friend.
I kept thinking about that team member heading home after the shift, and about whoever depends on that paycheck. Through their hard work, a worker and a family absorb the difference between a cheap price and a fair one.
On the same trip, she ordered a drink made with a particular tequila brand when a man sitting nearby, from Monterrey, interrupted to suggest a different choice. By the end of the trip, he and his wife were dear friends, and he had started Maertens' education in tequila.
She started picturing the people behind the tequila. The jimador cutting agave by hand with a coa, a long-handled blade sharp enough to slice a thick leaf in one stroke. The day laborer doing field work, riding to remote agave plantations in the back of a truck. The bottling line workers. The families waiting for water.
Christiane Maertens. Photo courtesy of Gente Buena Foundation.
Tequila production reached 495.8 million liters in 2024, according to the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT), the industry's regulatory council. Registered agave producers grew from 3,180 in 2014 to 42,200 in 2024, according to government figures reported by AFP.
"How little of that value comes back to the people, in wages, safety, water, and healthcare, is what I could not unsee," Maertens says.
So she did something about it. She started a tequila brand called Valor, and a foundation called Gente Buena.
Maertens has spent her career helping other companies do good.
She ran the environmental education portfolio at The Walt Disney Company, and served as deputy director of the North American Association for Environmental Education. In 2019, she founded DoGoodery, a social impact agency for companies that want to make an impact but don't have the expertise in-house to do so.
"What I learned in my career and by building DoGoodery is that being in it for the right reasons and having a strong value proposition aren't mutually exclusive," she says. "That belief is what Valor and Gente Buena are built on."
A 2021 dinner with her mentor Tom Staggs, Disney's chief financial officer during her time there, changed everything.
"He said I should start my own product company, so I could demonstrate what it means to build responsibility in at the beginning instead of treating it as an afterthought," she says. "I had spent so long helping other companies do good that it felt like my turn to do it myself."
"And well... I don't think me starting a tequila company was on Tom's bingo card!"
Supply chain inequity exists in every industry, but she picked tequila because it was personal. Her mother is from El Salvador. Her father is German, and in the 1980s he bought a farm in La Paz, Baja California Sur. She grew up moving between El Salvador, Mexico, and Los Angeles.
"For me, tequila was never abstract," she says.
Most founders would build the brand first and the charitable foundation later, once the business was prospering. She refused to adopt that customary sequence.
I didn't want the foundation to be something we promised to get around to once Valor was successful. I wanted it built in from the start.
Her tequila brand Valor gives 10% of its revenue to her foundation Gente Buena. Not profits, but revenue. It's a budgeted line item, not money left over at the end of a good year.
Valor High Proof Blanco Review
"The brand had to be built on two things: exceptional tequila and the credibility that comes from actually putting your money where your mouth is," she says. "That meant building both at the same time, which has meant a lot of sleepless nights."
"I've put most of my own resources into both along the way, because I wasn't willing to ask anyone to believe in something I wasn't backing myself."
The tequila half of that bet is definitely holding up. The Tequila Report's reviewers scored Valor High Proof Blanco a 94, Valor Reposado an 89, and Valor Blanco an 88. All three are made at Familia Landeros, NOM 1599, in the village of San Pedro de los Landeros where Gente Buena started.
What Did Gente Buena Find When It Listened to the People of San Pedro de los Landeros?
"If we wanted to build a more equitable and transparent supply chain, we needed to start with the people and community connected to bringing our bottles to the world," Maertens says.
In her case, that community is San Pedro de los Landeros. It's a small rural community in the municipality of Tequila, with 51 households and 176 people.
Gente Buena didn't arrive with a project. It paid researchers from the University of Guadalajara and El Colegio de Michoacán to live in the community for months, to assess needs.
The researchers spent their time sitting with families, Maertens says, "in conversations that did not feel formal, listening for what people were already worried about and already trying to solve."
Three needs came up again and again: water, healthcare, and economic opportunity.
Water was the most urgent.
Before the project, none of the households surveyed had water every day. For many, it came one or two days a week. Half the families spent more than three hours a day accessing or storing water.
"Imagine what that does to a household," Maertens says. "Water arrives, and everyone drops what they are doing to fill barrels and rooftop tanks before it stops."
When the tanks ran dry, families bought water off a tanker truck.
(These) are the decisions nobody should have to make. Mothers had to choose who got bathed and who waited, which clothes got washed, whether there was enough to cook and clean on the same day.
The fix was water storage cisterns. Each household built the platform or cover for their own water tank. The municipality sent an excavator and workers to assist. Pronatura México, a conservation nonprofit, led the installation with university teams. Gente Buena funded the early research and first phase of the work up front, and additional funders joined to complete the project.
"It took everyone," Maertens says. "And then, the excavator broke at the second house."
There is volcanic bedrock nearby. The job needed a rotary drill that wasn't in the budget.
"We scraped together the funds and figured it out," she says.
Ultimately, 20 cisterns were installed, each holding 5,000 liters.
One of 20 cisterns being installed by Gente Buena in San Pedro de los Landeros. Photo courtesy of Gente Buena.
In a follow-up survey, every family surveyed said the cisterns had reduced the time and effort women in their household spent getting water.
"It was help we never imagined getting," one resident said.
Another stated, "I can go to work without worrying, and I know I will have water when I get back."
Other villages have noticed. Some have asked why San Pedro got water and they didn't.
"The answer is that Valor started in the community where its tequila is produced, and that's the model we hope other brands will replicate," Maertens says. "If more brands invested in the places their tequila comes from, far more communities would get the same help."
How the Good Agave Pledge Works
"A brand our size could never fund this work alone, and that was never the plan," Maertens says.
The Good Agave Pledge lets other tequila brands help as well. A brand can join through a membership fee, the proceeds of a single barrel project, or both. Gente Buena directs its funds based on community priorities and guidance from its academic partners.
Thirteen brands and partners came to a recent summit in San Pedro de los Landeros. The women of the community cooked for them. The donor group painted a mural and cleaned up the children's play areas.
Rich LoGatto from the NYNJ Agave club noticed broken bikes and soccer nets and started a holiday fundraiser for new gear. John des Rosiers of Cambio Tequila ordered new soccer goal nets on the spot.
"It's one thing to care about where your tequila comes from," Maertens says. "It's another to share a meal there, and to leave thinking about the kids who need a new soccer net."
In the future, brands participating in Gente Buena may have access to a sticker or seal to include on their packaging, but not yet.
"We wanted to build a proof of concept first, then standards, then a mark that means something, similar to 1% for the Planet," says Maertens.
Current brand participants in Good Agave Pledge include Valor, Almatitán, Amatitense, Atanasio, Cambio, 3 Cuerdas, El Tequileño, Lost Lore, Montagave, Nock, Polanco, Siempre, Tierra de Ensueño, and Tesoro Azteca.
What Happens When Free Doctors Come to the Valley of Tequila?
"One person can replace a soccer net, but it will take all of us working together to bring healthcare to this region," Maertens says, and that's the next mission for Gente Buena, and hopefully you can help (see below).
The Tequila Valley has a community hospital for emergencies and a regional hospital in Magdalena, about 20 kilometers away. For a serious illness, a complicated birth, or a bad injury, people often have to travel about 60 kilometers to public hospitals in Zapopan and Guadalajara.
Most people who harvest agave work in the informal labor sector, outside Mexico's social security system. The share of Mexicans without health insurance rose from 9% in 2018 to 26% in 2021, according to a study last year.
"So the people doing some of the most physically demanding and dangerous work in the industry are the least likely to see a doctor," Maertens says.
Here's how she explains it to a tequila drinker in Chicago or Dallas or Boston or Charlotte:
Every bottle of tequila begins as a plant cut by hand in an open field, with a razor-sharp blade, in punishing heat, one heavy agave at a time. If the person holding that blade gets hurt and can't work or develops diabetes and needs medication, the care they need is far away and costs more than their family can pay.
"We think the people behind tequila you love deserve the basics: a checkup, a prescription, and someone to call if they need help," she asserts.
On July 31 and August 1, 2026, Gente Buena debuted its new free medical clinic in the region.
Dr. Hillary Glen, Founder and Executive Director, Point Washington Medical Center and Dr. Josh Hodges, Medical Director, Point Washington Medical Center getting ready to open the pop-up clinic last summer. Photo courtesy of Gente Buena Foundation.
Dr. Josh Hodges, Medical Director, Point Washington Medical CenterGetting ready to open the pop-up clinic in San Pedro de los Landeros last summer. Photo courtesy of Gente Buena.
Two volunteer clinicians, Dr. Hillary Glenn, DNP, and Dr. Josh Hodge, MD, came from Point Washington Medical Clinic, in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Dr. Orlando Virgen of Centro Médico Virgen supervised locally, with bilingual volunteers and the University of Guadalajara team alongside.
"Appointments were slow on the first day," Maertens says. "Once people saw that care was welcoming and truly free, trust spread through the community and on day two lines formed before the clinic even opened."
One particular visit emphasized the importance of the program. (Details have been changed to protect privacy.)
A grandfather, his daughter, and his teenage granddaughter came in together. Years of untreated diabetes, high blood pressure, and vascular disease had taken the grandfather's independence. He could no longer walk to the market.
His daughter thought she was healthy. Her screening showed blood sugar in the diabetic range and elevated blood pressure.
"She was where her father had been 20 years earlier, and she didn't know it," Maertens says.
The granddaughter was already showing early signs of insulin resistance.
"These weren't three separate cases of chronic disease," Maertens says. "They were one story told across three lifetimes, and each generation had moved a step further down the same path."
Patients also raised mental health issues.
"Someone comes in with high blood pressure or uncontrolled blood sugar, and when you start talking, you find out they haven't been sleeping, they're anxious all the time, and they've never had anyone explain that those things are related," Maertens says.
In October, the doctors came back. They held 24 follow-up appointments and saw six new patients. Returning patients said they felt better, and their blood pressure and blood sugar numbers had improved.
What patients need most, Maertens says, is the promise of more frequent access to healthcare. "Just as important, they need to know that the care will continue to be consistent, high-quality and free."
The program has three stages. First, more pop-up clinics with virtual check-ins in between, including a much larger one in early 2027. Next, a box truck converted into a mobile clinic to reach even more remote agave communities. Eventually, the plan is a permanent community health center for the Valley of Tequila.
The full, physical center has no price tag or date yet. But for now, just $100,000 would fund two pop-up clinics, a full year of virtual care, and a down payment on the mobile clinic truck.
How You Can Help Gente Buena
As the world's largest tequila publication dedicated to telling the stories of tequila brands and the people who make them, The Tequila Report stands with Gente Buena and its mission of providing healthcare, water, and other services to agave workers, their families, and their communities.
The Tequila Report seeks to raise $10,000 for this important work and will match all donations from its subscribers, dollar-for-dollar, up to $5,000 in matching funds. Please consider making a donation, and we'll double it.
Thank you for your support and generosity!
About the Author
Jay Baer has spent 30+ years studying tequila and agave spirits. He is the co-founder and editor of The Tequila Report. Jay is also the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, and has spent three decades building and advising brands.
In addition to The Tequila Report, Jay and his business partner, Maddie Jager, are co-founders of Slingshot, an invitation-only community of craft tequila brands, and The Craft Tequila Conference.
Jay lives in Bloomington, Indiana and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
