Ouch, this doesn’t sound good, sad to say. The Motley Fool is reporting that the Craft Brewers Alliance is out of cash. In a post entitled Who’s Broke Now?, they indicate that the combined corporation that includes Widmer, RedHook, Kona and Goose Island “had only $13,000 in cash in its last reported numbers” and on top of that is “$19 million in debt.” I hope there’s more too it than that, because those are not good numbers. Anheuser-Busch InBev still owns 35% of CBA, but it’s unclear if they’d bail them out or even if that would be desirable.
Really? I always thought those brands were pretty successful
A successful brand does not mean that a successful company. All good beer but when you figure in debt, plus operation cost you just never know.
This boils down to who’s been playing w/whose $$. The overt knowledge:
1) Widmer brews Kona brews under license/contract & distributes with their brews wherever.
2) Redhook is hooked into AB distribution system – what’s happened since IB bought AB out?????????????
We need Chicago folx to chime in about Goose Island, which has been on the scene for 15-20 yrs & looked to be doing fine when I visited both pubs last year.
This scenario reex of beancounter mania, to the detriment of craft brewers who’ve spent years creating (barely) profitable niche markets. Beancounters care only about the bottom line, & most have no clue about the craft brew industry. Even if they do, “what’s best for the stockholders” mantra takes precedence over the brews, & they’re more prone to listen to the marketing folx than the brewers & bartenders (witness Pyramid’s failed 2-yr experiment w/ soju-based cocktails, which the bartenders in their Berkeley establishment hated).
Bottom line is that the working staff at any establishment knows what sells & what doesn’t – & what “fringe” products need to be kept to satisfy “regulars”. The beancounters are for crunching income & outgo – the “marketing” types should have no influence on them, & probably need the ax unless they’re doing outside sales.