A San Francisco brewery known for pioneering the canned craft beer movement is shutting down after 25 years in business.
As first reported by Brewbound, 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood is closing the doors to its brewpub within walking distance of Oracle Park.
The brewery, whose popular craft beer is sold in almost 30 states, is also shutting down operations at its taproom and its production facility, both located in San Leonardo. The latter facilities are slated to be closed in November, but reports say the brewery in South Park will close within the coming weeks, due to an anticipated drop in business after the MLB season ends, per SF Gate.
The news is shocking to the community and the beer industry, given that the brewery founders, Nico Freccia and Shaun O’Sullivan, took to social media just last week and shared they were stepping away from daily operations and bringing in a new CEO “aimed at bringing in suppliers both both inside and outside the beer space, with the goal of developing a broader platform and filling capacity at our San Leandro production facility.”
21st Amendment Brewery is known for its award-winning beers, like the Hell or High Watermelon and the Amendment Lager. According Brewbound, the founders hope to find a buyer for the brand.
“This is all very new … a week ago, we were moving in a different direction, and we were excited about a potential path forward with building a platform,” Freccia told Brewport. “But it just wasn’t tenable. So a pivot has been made.”
In an interview with SF Gate, Freccia explained what exactly is leading to the brewery’s closure, saying that its lender “essentially came to the conclusion that this is just too much pressure in this industry, too many headwinds, and they’re not going to fund this anymore.”
Freccia also told SF Gate that “general economic uncertainty, the fact that consumers tend to jettison discretionary spending on things like alcohol when the economy gets tough” were other contributing factors.
“We built a big facility at a time when the industry was growing rapidly and we were growing 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent a year,” Freccia told Brewbound in reference to one of the San Leonardo facilities. “That growth came to a slowdown and then a standstill right after we opened.”
Like most breweries, 21st Amendment Brewery enjoyed early success. According to Beer Street Journal, 21st Amendment Brewery ranked among the nation’s top 50 craft producers by volume from 2016 to 2019. But since then, like many breweries, it has struggled as consumers’ habits and tastes shifted to something other than beer, like seltzers and low- to no-alcohol beer.
If the brewery can’t find a buyer, the focus will shift to celebrating what they had for nearly three decades.
“While it’s bittersweet, we’re trying to make this at least a little bit of a celebration of the brand and of 25 years of pioneering in craft beer,” Freccia told SF Gate. “All of the family we built, and all the great brands and beers and stories. I’m trying to focus on that.”
