Three East Coast craft breweries have teamed up to launch a new multi-facility contract brewing platform.
B3 Beverage Company is a joint venture from Stratford, Connecticut-based Two Roads Brewing, Philadelphia-based Yards Brewing and Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania-based Bald Birds Brewing.
“We recognized a substantial opportunity in today’s shifting beverage landscape,” Bald Birds founder Joe Feerrar said in a press release. “When the Two Roads and Yards teams saw the potential, they also got excited about leveraging our respective strengths to grow our core businesses and offer even better service and a wider array of options to existing and future contract partners.
“We’re confident that the fusion of time-tested leadership and next-gen execution will position B3 to become one of the most trusted partners in beverage manufacturing,” he continued.
Leaders of Two Roads, Yards and Bald Birds will remain in place at their respective companies, which will all continue existing operations. Feerrar, who founded Bald Birds with his wife Abby Feerrar in 2017, will lead B3 as CEO.
All three partner companies have experience in contract brewing, but for Bald Birds brewing and distilling clients’ products has been a “longtime focus,” according to the release. The brewery’s 150,000 sq. ft. facility produces more than 1 million case equivalents (about 72,500 barrels) of beer, non-alcoholic (NA) beverages and ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktails.
Both Two Roads and Yards are located near I-95, the highway connecting most major cities on the East Coast, while Bald Birds is near I-80 in central Pennsylvania.
Two Roads was “the first brewery to be designed, built and staffed to offer contract services including craft beer, barrel-aged products, hard seltzers and RTD cocktails,” according to its website. The facility can produce 200,000 barrels annually and offers canning, bottling and kegging capabilities. Lawson’s Finest Liquids has been among Two Roads’ most notable long-standing contract brewing clients.
“The opportunity to share resources and best practices with seasoned, growth-oriented, quality-obsessed brewers we‘ve long admired comes at the perfect time, with our mutual contract manufacturing businesses poised to accelerate,” Two Roads CEO Brad Hittle said in the release. “B3 enables us to serve and grow our contract customers the right way, while maintaining the needed focus on our strong brands, distributor relationships, and core geographies, with minimal territorial overlap.
“Most importantly, the teams that built our brands, reputations, and businesses will remain intact, setting the table for our next growth phase.”
Yards, the oldest of the three partners at 31 years old, has 250,000 barrels of contract brewing capacity, and can work in batches from 100 barrels to 600 barrels, according to its website.
“In the face of a currently challenging environment for craft beer, we recognized right away that we are stronger together,” Yards CEO Trevor Prichett said in the release. “Our collective capabilities allow us to offer turnkey contract solutions for other craft brewers, providing them with consistent high-quality product at competitive prices and without the need for capital investment in new brewing equipment.”
Both Two Roads’ and Yards’ own-brand production output declined 4% in 2024, to 39,181 barrels and 24,224 barrels, respectively, according to the Brewers Association’s (BA) May/June issue of the New Brewer magazine. Bald Birds produced 831 barrels of its own brand last year.
Exposure to new markets and partners via contract brewing relationships under B3 could be a boon to each involved brewery, leaders pointed out.
“For our own brands, this is a great opportunity, as our collective sales and marketing resources and complementary distribution footprints can help us find more growth in new geographies,” Yards founder and brewer Tom Kehoe said in the release.