North American Breweries announced today that effective immediately, they’ve closed the Pyramid Brewery that’s been located in Berkeley, California since 1997. That leaves just the Walnut Creek alehouse remaining in California, after they closed the Sacramento brewpub in 2013.
At Pyramid’s website, it offers only the following by way of explanation.
The Pyramid Berkeley Alehouse is now closed.
Thank you so much for your support and patronage over the years! We also want to thank our employees for their dedicated service. Our other locations remain open and available to provide great beers and a wonderful experience. We hope to see you there.
The East Bay Express has a bit more of the story, explaining “Berkeley’s Pyramid Alehouse (901 Gilman St.) is now permanently closed, according to a message on the restaurant and brewery’s answering machine.”
Of course, the story isn’t complete without acknowledging that they haven’t been brewing at that location since 2013, when the brewers voted to unionize and shortly thereafter the company suspended brewing claiming it was to “fix a quality issue.” Which was obvious nonsense, especially now that the closure has gone from temporary to permanent. The original “temporary” period to “fix” the brewery was supposed to be 6-9 months, which meant it should have reopened and brought back the laid-off brewers sometime between March and June of 2014, or a little over one year ago.
This is, at least in part, what happens when breweries become part of larger businesses like equity firms, who only care about profit and bottom lines, and not the businesses themselves. Pyramid is part of North American Breweries (NAB), and was created in 2009 when equity firm KPS Capital Partners (KPS) bought it along with Magic Hat, Portland Brewing, Labatt’s USA, Genesee and a couple of other brands. In 2012, KPS sold NAB to Cerveceria Costa Rica, a subsidiary of Florida Ice & Farm Co., for $388 million.
East Bay Express later added this update, apparently from a press release from NAB:
The company decided to close its Berkeley facility in order to prepare the building for sale — “after an extensive evaluation process. “We have made the decision to focus our West Coast production in our Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington locations,” said CEO Kris Sirchio.
Frankly, that’s about as believable as the celebrity or political figure embroiled in scandal who retires “to spend more time with his family.” I’m sorry to see the brewery go, but frankly NAB has become a difficult company with many layers to get through before finding an actual live person who can, or will, answer questions about the company’s brands. When Sacramento closed, I spent hours on websites and phones just trying to find someone who would comment or answer questions, and this time I’m not even going to try, given how awful it was last time. One commenter on the EBE piece said, “[w]ord on the street is that another brewery is looking to purchase the property,” so perhaps we’ll have good news about the location soon.
R.I.P. Pyramid Berkeley 1997-2015.
They sold the brewery equipment 2 months ago
Building is rumored to be sold, but not to a brewery
Sam A. balked at 18 million pricetag
Did they sell the brewhouse? Who? Would have loved to give it a good home!
Did you buy it Brendan
When I first started working there in the late nineties, they were already experiencing labor issues. When I heard the bs about the “quality concerns” , I knew it was a ruse. I know that any brewery, regardless of quality concerns, could fix the problems them self, or bring in someone. Sorry to see it go. Try Mark House at NAB in New York,or Martin Kelly for the word on what’s true.i’m sure Simon Pesch still has some inside info too.
Good luck,
Bill
I was at the Sacramento venue in 2012, at that time I thought it was already an operation without soul. I think Pyramid as a brewery will appear to be a blind alley at the end.
Another example of the damned corporate beancounters f-ing up a good thing (which began with the deterioration of the menu)! I went there a lot for dinner on my way home from work from opening days until I retired. The original menu (which lasted 2-3 yrs) was great; each successive one got progressively worse, tho the pizza remained decent (save for the minis served at happy hour more recently – those sucked). I’m surprised that nobody’s mentioned the stories I’ve heard about the infection that stopped production there (which any astute brewer could have fixed in no more than a week), Also have heard that they would bring servers/bartenders who had NO brewing experience back into the brewery to help out with grunt work.
The good news is that many former “regulars” there moved to Elevation 66 in El Cerrito, which opened Labor Day weekend 2011 & have remained as loyal as I have (I wasn’t a weekday regular @ Pyramid; went there only occasionally after I retired). Better is that Sam Adams didn’t buy the place (thanks, Brendan for that) – they don’t come close to matching the good stuff made up & down the West Coast!
Thanks for the union busting angle in your report, Jay. It puts this whole scenario into perspective. It would be worth know if the Portland and Seattle breweries are union?
Any way, lack of soul is why a lot of breweries retrench.
WA & OR aren’t “right to work” (aka “union busting”) states – any info from Pyramid employees there would be interesting to read. Further, (per Wikipedia) 3 states in the Midwest adopted rtw laws in the last 3 years – WI this year; IN & MI in 2012 (only ones in the 21st Century). 22 other states have them, most recent of which was enacted in 1985 – in MS, it’s built into the state Constitution ratified in 1956.