California craft beer pioneer Stone Brewing will close three Escondido locations and lay off hundreds of workers as production moves to Paso Robles and Kansas City, Mo.
Stone Brewing — a subsidiary of Sapporo USA that was sold to Firestone Walker Brewing Co. and Duvel Moortgat USA in a deal that closed May 15 — plans to eventually lay off a total of 220 employees, beginning with 58 workers on Oct. 19, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letters that Sapporo USA filed with the state Wednesday.
Mass layoffs are coming to another San Diego-based food company. Tinned fish giant Bumble Bee Foods plans to close a production facility in Santa Fe Springs “sometime in 2027, most likely in late March 2027,” according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter the company filed last week.
Zach Keeling, Sapporo USA CEO, said in a statement that Sapporo USA is winding down the Escondido brewery in phases because it has “not yet found a viable long-term solution” for the site.
Sapporo USA had acquired Stone Brewing in 2022, according to the beer trade publication Brewbound.
“This is an understandably difficult time for our Escondido employees and community, and we’re committed to supporting them through this transition,” Keeling said. When the acquisition was announced in April, it noted the Escondido portfolio was excluded from the sale.
Stone Brewing, launched in 1996 in San Marcos by Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, was the poster child of the West Coast craft brewing boom of the 2000s and 2010s. In 2016, it became the first American brewer to operate in Germany, The Times has reported.
By 2018, the craft beer industry’s buzz was starting to wear off.
The pandemic dealt a heavy blow to Southern California’s independent craft breweries.
San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co., the maker of the iconic Anchor Steam craft beer, was hemorrhaging money when it was shut down by parent company Sapporo Holdings Ltd. in 2023. Though Chobani yogurt billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya announced he was buying the company in 2024 and pledged to save it, Anchor Steam beer has still not returned to shelves.
Stone Brewing beer will continue to be made, according to the April acquisition announcement. Production of the Stone portfolio will gradually transition to Firestone Walker’s brewery in Paso Robles, Calif., and Duvel USA’s Boulevard brewery in Kansas City, Mo., the joint statement said.
Firestone Walker and Duvel USA plan to hire a “significant number” of Stone Brewing employees across hospitality, sales and marketing, according to the joint statement.
Meanwhile, Bumble Bee Foods plans to lay off 197 workers on Nov. 19 and estimates that it will lay off another 36 workers when the fish canning facility finally closes.
“This decision is part of an effort to streamline our supply chain and production network by reducing the number of processing points in the value stream,” Bumble Bee Foods spokesperson Arielle Schechtman said in a statement.
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