Worcester, MA — Wormtown Brewery, Worcester MA, has reached an agreement with Branded Realty Group, to expand its brewing and packaging operations at its current location, 72 Shrewsbury St., Worcester, MA 01604.
The expansion, scheduled to take place in two phases over the next 12 months, will provide the rapidly growing award winning brewery with an additional 14,000 sq ft totalling of 24,000 sq ft. The first phase will include the build out of a dedicated 8,000 sq ft packaging hall that will feature an automated bottling line, kegging line as well as enough space to incorporate a canning line in the near future. The second phase consists of 4,000 sq ft and will be dedicated for future fermentation and capacity increases. According to Founding Partner/Master Brewer, Ben Roesch this expansion “will not only provide our packaging team with the tools necessary to significantly increase the amount of our beer that we package, but also help us to continue to focus on our commitment to quality.” He then communicated “that this step will allow Wormtown to build out up to 50,000 brewer barrels of capacity in the new space.” Currently the brewery brews almost 20,000 barrels per year, up from 3,000 barrels in 2014, the year Wormtown was recognized as the Grand National Champion at the US Beer Open in Atlanta, GA.
Robert Branca of Branded Realty Group said, “Wormtown Brewery is a best in class craft brewery and an excellent tenant in our Shrewsbury Street development. They, along with Volturno, Sweet Kitchen & Bar and 7 Nana complement and enhance Worcester and Shrewsbury Street’s dining and entertainment life. We are pleased that we will be accommodating Wormtown’s meteoric growth in one of our properties.”
The announcement ends an exhaustive search by the Wormtown team. David Fields, Managing Partner of Wormtown said “Over the past 9 months we have looked at some really amazing locations for the next phase of our expansion. In the end it was very important for us to be located here in Worcester. The City Manager, the Office of Redevelopment and all of our fans made it clear that they wanted us to find a great place here at home. Being a Grafton Hill kid it makes it even better that we can stay and expand in our existing location – which happens to be in the same zip code I grew up in.”