Following news that Kings & Convicts-owned Ballast Point had ceased production at its Miramar, California brewery and sold the facility to an unnamed buyer, the company has confirmed two rounds of layoffs, San Diego Beer News reported last week.
The 107,000 sq. ft. brewery’s new owner will contract brew Ballast Point offerings while the company seeks to develop a new headquarters and production facility, according to San Diego Beer News. Ballast Point will also continue to operate the Miramar bar and restaurant for at least the next 18 months, Kings & Convicts CEO Brendan Watters told the outlet.
“We’ve sold the production facility to a group that can utilize the scale of that site while Ballast Point simply focuses on brewing our own beer,” Ballast Point wrote in a social media post. “This change will allow Ballast Point to focus on high quality production of our core brands through our partners, innovation in our taproom-restaurants, and planning for a sustainable brewery footprint as we seek a local site that we can develop into a more nimble brewery similar to our original Scripps Ranch site.”
The new brewery would feature an 80- to 100-barrel brewhouse, considerably smaller than the Miramar facility’s 300-barrel brewhouse.
In addition to selling the Miramar brewery, Ballast Point has also sold its Home Brew Mart location to former long-time employee Jim Johnson, who managed the operation from 2015 to 2021, according to San Diego Beer News.
Ballast Point founder Jack White opened the store in San Diego’s Morena neighborhood in 1992. While running the store, he homebrewed the beers that would become Ballast Point’s earliest offerings in 1996, according to the company’s website.
Johnson’s planned changes to Home Brew Mart include downsizing the outlet’s footprint by half to vacate the 40-handle taproom and production brewery adjacent to the homebrew store. Instead, Johnson plans to brew on a one-barrel pilot system and offer pours from an 11-tap panel to create a more intimate environment.
“We’re getting the band back together and moving the show from the stadium to the juke joint,” he told San Diego Beer News.
Requests for comment to Ballast Point leadership about layoffs were not returned. San Diego Beer News reported that Chris Takeuchi, former R&D brewer at Ballast Point’s Little Italy taproom, was among the workers whose roles were eliminated.
Kings & Convicts was the 30th largest craft brewery in the U.S. by volume in 2023, according to the Brewers Association’s (BA) May/June issue of New Brewer Magazine. The brewery’s output declined -3%, to 88,257 barrels – less than half of the 206,000 barrels Ballast Point produced in 2019, the year Kings & Convicts acquired it from Constellation Brands, according to the BA.