Amid challenging industry headwinds, two New York-based craft breweries are merging, Brewbound has learned.
New York City-based The Bronx Brewery and Elmsford-based Captain Lawrence Brewing “have signed a merger agreement with the goal of enabling both companies to achieve greater scale and efficiencies to confront the growing (and at this point, well documented) structural challenges in the craft beer industry,” Bronx president Damian Brown told Brewbound.
With the merger, most Bronx production will move roughly 20 miles north to Captain Lawrence, Brown wrote in an email. It is not yet clear how many employees will be retained during the shift.
“We’re actively in conversations to move as many members of our brewing and packaging team to that facility as possible to continue producing our beer,” he added.
The Bronx Brewery was founded in 2009 and opened a taproom in its home borough in 2011. In 2022, it tripled its presence and opened two locations in Manhattan – one in the East Village and one at Hudson Yards.
“While this partnership will involve a lot of changes on both sides, our mission of brewing the best possible beer and using it to build community will remain the same,” Brown said.
Last year, The Bronx Brewery’s production declined -2%, to 6,671 barrels of beer, according to the Brewers Association’s (BA) May/June issue of the New Brewer.
In March 2023, Captain Lawrence and U.S. Beverage (USB), a bev-alc portfolio company and importer, entered a sales and marketing partnership. No equity was exchanged as part of the agreement. As part of the arrangement, Captain Lawrence’s sales team joined USB.
Since the partnership was announced, Captain Lawrence has expanded distribution to Kentucky, its 11th state.
USB’s portfolio also includes Uinta Brewing, which it acquired in 2022 via a joint venture with Colorado-based family office Crestone. The company’s 2023 output, which includes Captain Lawrence’s volume, declined -4%, to 54,123 barrels, according to the BA.
At off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm NIQ, dollar sales of the Captain Lawrence brand family have declined -11%, to $4.18 million in the 52-week period ending August 10. Dollar sales of The Bronx Brewery’s portfolio have declined -7.2%, to $2.8 million in the same period, according to NIQ.
NIQ data does not fully capture data from some classes of trade, such as independent liquor and convenience stores, which are prominent in the New York market. It also excludes the on-premise channel and at-the-brewery sales.