The money has found craft beer. Now it hasn’t penetrated that deep into the sub-strata of breweries who would like/need loans. Start-ups especially. But the private equity is looking for assets and they are tapping insiders.
First it was Oskar Blues detailing a plan of acquisition and now Rich Doyle (formally of Harpoon Brewery) has established Enjoy Beer LLC, that the Brewbound website describes as “an acquisition vehicle and craft beer consortium that he hopes will one day become a publicly traded company with multiple craft brands under its control.”
And they have come out of the gate with the purchase of Abita Beer of Louisiana. Enjoy Beer will be behind the scenes with sales, marketing, money to help the breweries under their banner better compete with national AKA BMC brands as well as those regional superpowers with multiple brewing locations.
How these umbrella corp’s will evolve will be an interesting social/beer/business test.
Here are my questions:
1. What if one brand takes off? How will the others react if they feel slighted?
2. Will breweries want to be part of a corporate structure taking orders from on high?
3. Will brewers move from one brand in the family to another and take recipes with them?