After 127 years, Anchor Brewing is no more.
The first and oldest craft brewery in the US, which started in San Francisco in 1896, announced on Wednesday that it would end its operations after it struggled financially as a result of a competitive market, inflation and declining sales, particularly after the storied brand’s 2017 acquisition by the Japanese beer distributor, Sapporo.
Those factors “left the company with no option but to make this sad decision to cease operations” a company spokesperson, Sam Singer, said in a statement.
Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, mourned the loss of the company in an interview with the Guardian.
“Anchor was essentially the grandfather of all American craft brewing,” he said. “When I was still a home brewer in the mid-1980s, Anchor Steam was well-loved but their massively hoppy Liberty Ale was a revelation. You know that old saying about a band who only had maybe 50 people at its first show… but every one of those people went and started a band? That was Anchor Brewing Company. And all their people were the best.”
Anchor’s decline represents the wider economic challenges craft beer distributors face in the years since the pandemic when consumer habits have changed and sales have suffered across the industry, leading to smaller breweries being acquired by major beer distributors, to rebrand, or to cease altogether. Sales are down.
“The stake through the heart of Anchor was the pandemic,” Singer told the New York Times. He added that 70% of the company’s products had been sold to restaurants and bars, which suffered in the years since the Covid pandemic.
The company was on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1960s, with the headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1959 spelling its fate: “Last Steam Beer – An Institution Dies.” It had already survived through San Francisco’s historic earthquake, which destroyed its operations, and the prohibition era. But after Fritz Maytag acquired the brewery in 1965, the storied company ushered in an era of specialty beer popularity, guided by its popular pale ale and its bold Christmas ale.
Harry Schuhmacher, publisher of the trade publication Craft Business Daily, told CNN that the end of Anchor represented a “sad day in the history of craft brewing in America”.
“I know Fritz must be heartbroken,” Schuhmacher added. “He literally nurtured that brewery from insolvency in the 60s to becoming San Francisco’s hometown beer and symbolic of America’s craft beer resurgence.”
During the pandemic, they rebranded and sold its products in grocery stores. But in the last month, the company limited its distribution to California and ceased making its popular Christmas ale after 50 years.
Anchor ultimately “couldn’t make up for the significant loss of sales”, Singer told the New York Times. “The bottom line is that Anchor ran out of money, and it ran out of time.”
The company has given its 61 workers 60 days’ notice and would continue to sell whatever beer remains in its possession through the end of July.
Over the years, Sapporo made “repeated efforts” to sell Anchor, without luck. Anchor’s statement left open hope that history would repeat itself, noting it was “possible that a buyer will step forward for the brewery as part of the liquidation process”.
“It takes a lot of creativity, nimbleness and no small amount of luck for breweries, even great ones, to survive all storms and remain the choice of the people,” said Oliver. “I hope they climb back somehow.”
