Anchor Brewing considers potential offers from employees wanting to buy 127-year-old brewery – Mercury News

Anchor Brewing is open to considering potential offers from employees who want to acquire and preserve the historic San Francisco brewery, a spokesperson confirmed Saturday.

The company announced on July 12, announced that it would cease operations, sending shockwaves across the Bay Area, causing beer to start flying off the shelves. The brewery was a pioneer in the California craft beer scene, founded in 1896 and survived the Prohibition era from the 1920s to the early 1930s.

The brewery’s ownership has changed over the years, with Anchor almost recently acquired by Japanese conglomerate Sapporo in 2017. But declining sales in recent years forced the company to downsize, eventually announcing its closure earlier this month.

But over the past week and a half, a group of employees have worked desperately to preserve Anchor’s 127-year-old tradition. And the company now says it is ready to sell.

“We have received an email from a spokesperson for Anchor’s Union saying that ‘Anchor Brewing employees have met, discussed and have decided to begin an effort to acquire the brewery,'” said Sam Singer, a company spokesman, in a statement. “Given our deep respect for Anchor Union and our team members, we would be happy to consider any legitimate and legally binding acquisition offer by our employees that includes a verifiable source of funding.”

Singer said a union spokesperson also clarified that the investigation into the brewery’s acquisition was conducted on behalf of an unidentified group of employees, not the union itself.

But with Singer warning that “time is running out” and that the company plans to move forward with a bankruptcy filing in early August, a potential sale of Anchor Brewing is looming.

The Anchor union said in a tweet Saturday morning that it was “overwhelmed by the response to the call for help.”

“We are working behind the scenes to figure out the best way to raise funds and actually do this,” the tweet said. “We think this is much bigger than GoFundMe, and we want it to be as calculated as possible.”

I was overwhelmed by the responses asking for help. We’re working behind the scenes to figure out the best way to raise money and actually do this. We think this is much bigger than gofundme, and we want it to be as calculated as possible. We will publish the information as it becomes available!

— Anchor Union (@anchorunionSF) July 22, 2023