San Diego, California-based Modern Times Beer announced Monday that it will be closing its locations in Portland, Oregon; and Oakland, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, California; citing financial strain from the COVID-19 pandemic and “global declines in the craft beer industry.”
“As new leadership has stepped up and taken the helm over the last few weeks, it became clear that the financial state of the company that we are now tasked with directing is not just unsustainable, but in immediate and unavoidable peril,” the company wrote in a blog post. “As a result of this, we are forced to make some incredibly hard choices, which – while necessary for the health and continued success of our company – will result in many of our talented, hardworking staff losing their jobs.”
Modern Times will close four locations will close at the end of this week and lay off 73 employees. Those layoffs, along with “other voluntary exits” will bring the Modern Times’ headcount to 175, down from 266 as of November, director of marketing Dan Reed told Brewbound.
“There will be repositioning of some of the staff at these locations, but it honestly won’t be significant compared to the number of employees affected,” he said. “Our staff is filled with amazingly talented and wonderful people, and we very much hope to stay connected and see where our rebuilding and future growth takes us.”
The brewery’s Point Loma, North Park, Encinitas and Anaheim locations across Southern California will remain open. Additionally, the company said it will be refocusing its “distribution and hospitality efforts back to Southern California and the Southwest.”
“It is a surreal and painful turn of events for us, and we realize that the suddenness of it puts many people we care about in very difficult positions,” the company continued. “We truly wish that there were another way to resolve the financial issues we now face, but we have been put in a position – by the pandemic and global declines in the craft beer industry – from which this tremendously difficult path is the only way forward for us.”
The company added that “four straight years of rapid, costly expansion followed by an unforeseen and financially devastating global health crisis, and an industry-wide decline in sales” resulted in stretched “finances and company culture” that was no longer sustainable.
Going forward, the brewery will focus on a “we get smaller, we get smarter, and we get faster” business plan, which includes sustaining its remaining locations, resisting unaffordable expansion plans, and diversifying its viewpoints to “find a voice that speaks for [the] company as a whole.”
“We know we’ve asked a lot of our friends and family within the last two years, but if we could ask just one more thing, it would be that you pay some of your favorite beer enthusiasts a last visit this week,” the brewery added in an Instagram post.
The brewery’s Portland and Santa Barbara locations opened in 2018, while its Oakland and Los Angeles locations opened in 2019.
Last month, Modern Times announced it had hired Jennifer Briggs as CEO, a role she began filling on an interim basis in October 2021, and promoted Danielle Jackson to VP of sales. Briggs’ appointment followed Modern Times founder and CEO Jacob McKean stepping down from the chief executive role in May 2021. Chief operating officer Chris Sarette left the company in August. McKean remains the company’s majority shareholder.
The brewery was named nearly a dozen times on social media as a toxic workplace rife with favoritism and harassment as part of the outpouring of workers’ experiences that shook the beer industry during the spring and summer of 2021.
Modern Times was among the higher-profile breweries to take action in the early days of what became a watershed moment for the craft beer industry that played out on the Instagram accounts of Brienne Allan (@ratmagnet) and @EmboldenActAdvance.
In 2020, Modern Times was the nation’s 40th largest craft brewery by volume, according to the Brewers Association (BA). That year, the most recent for which BA data is available, Modern Times’ output declined -9%, to 63,663 barrels of beer. Its volume peaked in 2019 at 70,300 barrels (+3% from 2018). Modern Times recorded two years with double-digit growth in the years before (+38% in 2018, +22% in 2017).
Editor’s note: this story was updated at 8 p.m. ET to include additional information about affected employees provided by Modern Times.