San Francisco’s Anchor brewery closes for good

USA | The news comes as a shock: San Francisco’s historic Anchor brewery stopped making beer on 12 July and will close down at the end of July. This means the end to a 127-year run for the California institution that weathered the earthquake of 1906, Prohibition, and several bankruptcies.

The company's 61 employees were given a 60-day notice. They will receive transition support and separation packages. Though production has stopped, the brewery will continue to distribute its remaining stock.

The brewery has had a long history of near-failures and comebacks since it was founded in 1896. That year, Ernst Baruth and Otto Schinkel Jr. bought a beer-and-billiards hall on Pacific Street in San Francisco and dubbed it Anchor. The last time it faced closure was in 1965. Luckily, it was saved by the Stanford student Fritz Maytag, who bought a 51 percent stake in the company and turned it into the country’s first craft brewery.

Declining sales

However, Anchor has been facing declining sales since 2016, but it was the pandemic which did Anchor in this time, media reported. The brewery has been losing around USD 10 million a year since covid, as it struggled to pivot from mainly on-premise sales to grocery stores. Anchor's sales volume dropped to 65,000 barrels (-10 percent) in 2022, from 90,000 barrels in 2018 and 132,000 barrels in 2013.

The news of its closure comes just a month after Anchor decided to stop distributing nationwide to focus on California, which already made up 70 percent of its sales. Media reported that it has been unable to find a buyer. Its assets will now be put up for sale.

Sapporo failed to turn the business around

Anchor was bought for around USD 85 million by Japanese brewer Sapporo in 2017. Employees at Anchor unionized in 2019 following the sale. The union was in the process of negotiating its second contract when the shutdown was announced.

“Over the past several years, we implemented a variety of measures to improve the business, such as releasing new products, product renewals, and making brand investments,” Sapporo President Masaki Oga wrote in a release announcing the decision. “However, Anchor’s business performance continued to be sluggish.”